Weblog for the AMIS Technology corner
Archive for March, 2005
Strangely well timed article on ADF BC: Most Commonly Used Methods in ADF Business Components
Mar 31st
Just found this paper: Most Commonly Used Methods in ADF Business Components by Steve Muench (15 March 2005) on OTN. This paper provides a high-level description of the key ADF Business Components classes in the Oracle Application Development Framework, summarizing the methods that ADF developers write, call, and override most frequently.
The introduction to many commonly used ADF BC methods and the indication of what they provide a hook for is very useful when you are working on ADF BC projects.
The paper Business Rules in BC4J (revised August 2002) is useful complement to this paper.
BPEL and Service Oriented Analysis and Design (SOAD)
Mar 30th
Recently I read an interesting Article about BPEL related analysis and design issues. BPEL stands for Business Process Execution Language and is the world standard to describe “Business Processes” in XML format. BPEL can be seen as a layer on top of the webservices standards like SOAP and UDDI. By means of BPEL one can describe a sequence of webservice calls, one can pass information from one web service to the next (like session variables) and one can describe how to react on exceptions during the execution of successive web services. This is a very short summary-like description of BPEL, which gives an idea of what is meant with the term “Business Process” within Business Process Execution Language.
Anyway, while reading about BPEL and more specific the analysis and design issues of BPEL, I came across various interesting Articles. One Article describes how a BPEL process can be described by means of an UML Activity Diagram. This article can be found here. Software is available to automatically convert such an UML Activity Diagram into executable BPEL code.
Reading further Read the rest of this entry »
New article for OGH Visie on ADF and ADF JHeadstart – (sorry it is in Dutch)
Mar 28th
For the April issue of OGH Visie, the magazine of the Dutch Oracle User Group, I have written an article on Oracle 10g JDeveloper ADF and JHeadstart 10.1.2 for ADF. It goes into the productivity and complexity challenge with Java/J2EE and illustrates how ADF and JHeadstart work together to deal with that challenge. It demonstrates a small application being generated with JHeadstart on top of the ADF Binding Framework, using Struts, ADF Business Components and either JSP or UIX.
You can download the article at: Java/J2EE productiviteit in de overtreffende trap – Oracle ADF en JHeadstart 18-03-2005.
Java is ontegenzeggelijk een blijvertje gebleken. Java/J2EE is een zeer wijd verspreid ontwikkelplatform, serieus te nemen door iedere organisatie die aan applicatie ontwikkeling doet. Echter, zeker voor organisaties die jarenlang ontwikkeld hebben met Oracle Forms, vaak in combinatie met Oracle Designer en mogelijk Headstart voor nog meer geavanceerde generatie, is de overgang naar het Java/J2EE platform enorm. Van een zeer productieve, erg gestructureerde ontwikkelomgeving naar een omgeving die nog complexer, veel minder gestructureerd en over het algemeen factoren minder productief is. Read the rest of this entry »
How to migrate Domains and Table Definitions with the JHeadstart 10.1.2 Designer Generator
Mar 27th
The JHeadstart 10.1.2 release for ADF and JDeveloper 10.1.2 – published late February 2005 – includes a substantial number of improvements over the previous 9.0.5.x releases of June 2004 and October 2004. The main change surely is the support, both Design Time and Run Time, of the ADF Binding Framework that ties View/Controller to the Model and its registered Business Services (based on ADF Business Components).
Among the less visible changes is the rearchitecturing of the JHeadstart Designer Generator (JDG). The JDG is a tool that can read definitions from Oracle Designer – such as Module, Table or View and Domain definitions – and generate them into ADF BC Entity Objects, View Objects, Associations and ViewLinks, the JHeadstart Application Structure File and the Domain Definitions file. Since Oracle Designer is capable of capturing the essence of any Oracle Forms application, with the JDG we have a way to migrate a substantial portion of any Oracle (Web)Forms application, whether generated from Oracle Designer or not. Read the rest of this entry »
Oracle Warehouse Builder 10g Paris Release … Oh ja, ook voor Data Warehouses! (article on the OWB 10gR2 Paris Release)
Mar 25th
This article is about a very interesting Oracle tool: Warehouse Builder. A tool that is much more versatile than its name suggests. OWB can be used for diverse activities as graphical Database Design and DDL generation, Data Profiling and Cleansing, Generation of PL/SQL code for loading and transforming data, generation of Data Mining, BI Beans and Oracle Discoverer applications and of course the design and build of a Data Warehouse. Unfortunately, the article is in Dutch – although it has very nice pictures.
Een van de minder bekende producten uit de Oracle Developer Suite, waar ondermeer ook Oracle Designer, Forms, Reports en JDeveloper in zitten, is Oracle Warehouse Builder. Dit product heeft al een flinke geschiedenis, deels onder de naam Data Mart Suite. Sinds December is de zogenaamde Paris release van Oracle 10g Warehouse Builder in beta. Wij hebben bij AMIS geprobeerd deze release van alle kanten te bekijken. En dat zijn er nog al wat, want Oracle Warehouse Builder (OWB) is een tool om: Read the rest of this entry »
Eindgebruikers zijn Olifanten – Driedaags seminar ‘Effective Oracle by Design’door Oracle-fenomeen Ask-Tom Kyte (article from Optimize, March 2005)
Mar 25th
The March 2005 issue of Optimize, the Dutch Oracle Developer Magazine, contains a review of the Tom Kyte seminar AskTom-Live. This seminar has been discussed in many details on this weblog. A summary of the most interesting findings has been included in this article. Unfortunately, this article is in Dutch.
Op 8, 9 en 10 februari verzamelden 65 zeer ervaren Oracle professionals zich in het Domstad College te Utrecht om Tom Kyte te horen spreken. Dit seminar bewoog zich op het grensvlak van de DBA, de ontwikkelaar en de architect. Belangrijke thema’s waren Performance, Applicatie Architectuur en Database Design, waardevolle features nieuw in 10g. De leidraad vormde het boek Effective Oracle by Design van Tom Kyte.
Zeven consultants van AMIS woonden dit seminar bij en op basis van hun ervaringen is dit artikel geschreven. Het schetst een beeld van de belangrijkste thema’s van dit seminar. Enkele intrigerende voorbeelden illustreren het verslag.
Create logging data in the same table
Mar 25th
Suppose you want to log every update on a table. You want the log records to be in the same original table. You cannot do this in a simple update trigger because this will have a the famous mutating table problem as a result. This post will describe a simple short solution which solves this problem.
Suppose we have a table my_table with two records:
create table my_table(col1 varchar2(2), col2 varchar2(2));
insert into my_table values ('a','a');
insert into my_table values ('b','b');
W3C considering binary XML standard
Mar 25th
Just read on news.com that the W3C consortium is considering a binary XML standard. This could really speed up a lot of transactions. The mayor drawback of course will be the fact that these messages are not human readable.
I believe this could be a good thing to speed up webservices. A binary XML message format should be much faster to process and parse than an ASCII version of the same message.
Anton heralded by Steven Feuerstein as very creative PL/SQL developer
Mar 25th
Steven Feuerstein, one of the world’s leading PL/SQL experts, runs a series of column on OTN (Oracle Technology Network). One of the repeating elements of his column is the PL/SQL Challenge. This is a problem or puzzle that PL/SQL Developers can sharped their skills on. One of the recent challenges proved to be very difficult and the number of reactions Feuerstein received was rather small. However, one of the top PL/SQL Developers at AMIS, Anton Scheffer, sent in his solution. Read the rest of this entry »
Oracle BPEL Process Manager 10.1.2 Beta 3 available for download
Mar 25th
I just received word from Sandor Nieuwenhuijs that the next Beta (B3) release of Oracle BPEL Process Manager has just been made available for download on OTN. Go for software and documentation to the BPEL Home Page on OTN. Read the rest of this entry »
