Oracle Application Development Framework

Computing

Computing is usually defined as the activity of using and improving computer hardware and software. It is the computer-specific part of information technology...

, Oracle
Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation that specializes in developing and marketing hardware systems and enterprise software products – particularly database management systems...

Application Development Framework, usually called Oracle ADF, provides a commercial Java framework

Software framework

In computer programming, a software framework is an abstraction in which software providing generic functionality can be selectively changed by user code, thus providing application specific software...

for building enterprise applications. It provides visual and declarative approaches to Java EE development. It supports rapid application development

Rapid application development

Rapid application development is a software development methodology that uses minimal planning in favor of rapid prototyping. The "planning" of software developed using RAD is interleaved with writing the software itself...

based on ready-to-use design pattern

Design pattern (computer science)

In software engineering, a design pattern is a general reusable solution to a commonly occurring problem within a given context in software design. A design pattern is not a finished design that can be transformed directly into code. It is a description or template for how to solve a problem that...

s, metadata

Metadata

The term metadata is an ambiguous term which is used for two fundamentally different concepts . Although the expression "data about data" is often used, it does not apply to both in the same way. Structural metadata, the design and specification of data structures, cannot be about data, because at...

-driven and visual tools.

Supported technologies

Based on the MVC architecture

Model-view-controller

Model–view–controller is a software architecture, currently considered an architectural pattern used in software engineering. The pattern isolates "domain logic" from the user interface , permitting independent development, testing and maintenance of each .Model View Controller...

. Oracle ADF can support any combination of the following:

Model

EJB
Enterprise JavaBean
Enterprise JavaBeans is a managed, server-side component architecture for modular construction of enterprise applications.The EJB specification is one of several Java APIs in the Java EE specification. EJB is a server-side model that encapsulates the business logic of an application...

s
Web Services
TopLink
TopLink
In computing, TopLink is an object-relational mapping package for Java developers. It provides a framework for storing Java objects in a relational database or for converting Java objects to XML documents....
Javabeans
JavaBeans
JavaBeans are reusable software components for Java. Practically, they are classes written in the Java programming language conforming to a particular convention. They are used to encapsulate many objects into a single object , so that they can be passed around as a single bean object instead of as...
POJO
Plain Old Java Object
In computing software, POJO is an acronym for Plain Old Java Object. The name is used to emphasize that a given object is an ordinary Java Object, not a special object...

- simple Java classes (Plain Old Java Objects)
ADF Business components
Portlet
Portlet
Portlets are pluggable user interface software components that are managed and displayed in a web portal. Portlets produce fragments of markup code that are aggregated into a portal. Typically, following the desktop metaphor, a portal page is displayed as a collection of non-overlapping portlet...

s
CSV
Comma-separated values
A comma-separated values file stores tabular data in plain-text form. As a result, such a file is easily human-readable ....

and XML
XML
Extensible Markup Language is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open standards....

files
JavaServer Faces
JavaServer Faces
JavaServer Faces is a Java-based Web application framework intended to simplify development integration of web-based user interfaces....

(JSF)
ADF Task Flows
Struts
Apache Struts
Apache Struts is an open-source web application framework for developing Java EE web applications. It uses and extends the Java Servlet API to encourage developers to adopt a model-view-controller architecture. It was originally created by Craig McClanahan and donated to the Apache Foundation in...

View

Swing
Swing (Java)
Swing is the primary Java GUI widget toolkit. It is part of Oracle's Java Foundation Classes — an API for providing a graphical user interface for Java programs....
JavaServer Pages
JavaServer Pages
JavaServer Pages is a Java technology that helps software developers serve dynamically generated web pages based on HTML, XML, or other document types...

(JSP)
JavaServer Faces
JavaServer Faces
JavaServer Faces is a Java-based Web application framework intended to simplify development integration of web-based user interfaces....

(JSF)
ADF Faces
JavaServer Faces
JavaServer Faces is a Java-based Web application framework intended to simplify development integration of web-based user interfaces....

The Oracle JDeveloper

JDeveloper

JDeveloper is a freeware IDE supplied by Oracle Corporation. It offers features for development in Java, XML, SQL and PL/SQL, HTML, JavaScript, BPEL and PHP...

free Integrated Development Environment

Integrated development environment

An integrated development environment is a software application that provides comprehensive facilities to computer programmers for software development...

provides a graphical interface for creating data-management applications using ADF.

Implementers can deploy Oracle ADF applications on Java EE-compliant container

Web container

Web container is the component of a web server that interacts with the servlets. A web container is responsible for managing the lifecycle of servlets, mapping a URL to a particular servlet and ensuring that the URL requester has the correct access rights...

History

Oracle Corporation has marketed parts of Oracle ADF since 1999 — specifically ADF Business Components — then known as "JBO" and later as "BC4J" ("Business Components for Java").

The ADF architecture with the generic model/binding layer was introduced with JDeveloper 9.0.5.

In June 2006 Oracle Corporation donated the ADF Faces component library to Apache Trinidad

MyFaces Trinidad

Apache MyFaces Trinidad is a JSF framework including a large, enterprise quality component library, supporting critical features such as accessibility , right-to-left languages, etc...

. (ADF Faces, Oracle's JSF

JavaServer Faces

JavaServer Faces is a Java-based Web application framework intended to simplify development integration of web-based user interfaces....

implementation, includes over 100 components.)

Licensing

The Oracle Application Server licence includes a component for a licence fee for Oracle ADF. This means that all users who have purchased an Oracle Application Server licence may use Oracle ADF for free. Users who want to deploy ADF to a third-party application-server can purchase an ADF runtime licence at their local Oracle sales office. Users can develop and test Oracle ADF applications free of charge declaratively within Oracle JDeveloper.

Oracle Corporation purchased WebLogic in June 2008, and thus no longer regards it as a third-party application-server, so ADF is included in every WebLogic license.

Supported customers can get access to the source code for Oracle ADF through a request to Oracle Support.

External links