Weblog for the AMIS Technology corner
Archive for July, 2006
Building an ADF Faces Tree Component with mixed (DEPT and EMP) nodes in 5 minutes using JHeadstart 10.1.3
Jul 28th
For a project we are currently executing at AMIS, using the Oracle ADF, with ADF BC, Binding and Faces as well as JHeadstart 10.1.3 (currently in beta), the need arose to make use of Tree components in the web UI. A requirement for this tree was that it had to be mixed: nodes based on various ViewObjects. In this article, I will show how we were able to create such a tree in less than 5 minutes, using JHeadstart. We will also see what remaining issues there – apparently issues in ADF itself.
An introduction to the ADF Faces Tree Component can be read in this previous blog article: Getting started with ADF Faces in JDeveloper 10.1.3 – Using the Tree Component, comparison with MyFaces Tomahawk Tree2
The OpenOffice.org presentation I gave at J-Spring 2006
Jul 27th
On June 15, 2006, the Netherlands Java Users Group (NL-JUG) organised the J-Spring 2006 Java Conference. During this conference I gave a presentation about the OpenOffice.org Java API. Have a look at these links to see the presentation and the files that are needed to run the demos:
The OOo presentation in OOo format
The OOo presentation in PPT format
The Numbering.doc document needed for the demo
The PrintDemo.odt document needed for the demo
The SpreadsheetSample.xls document needed for the demo
The TextTemplateWithUserFields.odt document needed for the demo
Creating a dynamic (AJAX) Column Footer Summary in a Table Component using ADF Faces
Jul 27th
One fairly common requirement for web applications is the display of Summary fields with calculated values. An obvious example is a table of multiple records with column-summaries appearing underneath the table. Using ADF Faces technology, it is fairly simple to quickly develop an application that presents a multi-record layout based on data retrieved from a database. In this article we will see how we can add a summary column to the columns in such a table layout – and to make those summaries automatically updating when a value for one of the records in the table is changed in the specific column.
FNDLOAD Oracle Alert
Jul 27th
A month ago, I posted an article on this blog how to transfer an Oracle Alert using FNDLOAD. At the time, there was no documentation online about this, so I had to make the config file myself.
This morning I was searching Metalink and ran into the following note 376891.1 (dated 14-JUL-2006)
According to this note Oracle has its own config file to transfer Alerts using FNDLOAD. This note was not present at the time I needed it, but seems to be now. Still, there are a few things I don’t understand :
Why is the alert config file (alert.lct) not present in the $FND_TOP/patch/115/import , where all the other config files are placed ?
Why is Oracle Alert not mentioned in any FNDLOAD documentation on Metalink ? For example, note 274667.1 shows us all the data types that can be downloaded using FNDLOAD..but an Alert is never mentioned.
It seems I have done a lot work for nothing, but at least I learned how FNDLOAD works in detail.
I suggest that everybody who wants to transfer Alerts using FNDLOAD, uses the Oracle config file ($ALR_TOP/patch/115/import).
Show lookup details in popup (dialog) window using ADF Faces & JHeadstart 10.1.3
Jul 25th
This article describes how to implement simple popup (dialog) windows with (lookup) details for specific fields in our web application. The application we discuss is based on ADF Faces and has been generated using JHeadstart 10.1.3 (beta – I have used Build 78). Most of the concepts from this article can be applied to ADF Faces applications not based on ADF Business Components and not generated using JHeadstart. The contents of this article is heavily inspired by the section on Deep Linking in the JHeadstart 10.1.3 Developer’s Guide – with the notable addition of using dialog windows as target for deep-link navigation.
The example we will develop in this article is a simple EMP-DEPT application. On the Form page where we see the Employee details, the name of the Department is actually a hyperlink that can be clicked on by the user. When clicked, a dialog window opens and displays the Department details.
J-Fall Call for papers
Jul 25th
Op 11 oktober 2006 vindt de J-Fall, de najaarsconferentie van de NL-JUG plaats. De conferentie zal worden gehouden in de Reehorst in Ede.
De Deadline voor deze CFP is 31 augustus
Read the rest of this entry »
Introduction to SOA, BPEL and Oracle BPEL PM through a real life business case (Dutch white paper)
Jul 25th
We @ AMIS have been busying ourselves with Oracle BPEL in specific and SOA in general for quite some time now. Oracle BPEL PM was launched in our organisation very early on in 2005 when we organized the first European demonstration of the Oracle BPEL plugin for JDeveloper in conjunction with Oracle. We have been presenting, writing, discussing etc. Oracle BPEL PM in various ways since that moment. One of the things we did in May 2006 was – again together with Oracle – run a marketing campaign around Oracle BPEL PM and our service offerings for SOA implementation. As part of that campaign, we published a white paper, presented at various conferences and organized a workshop where participants could walk through the business case for themselves.
The white paper we published Read the rest of this entry »
One Analytic Function can do more than a thousand lines of code…
Jul 25th
My colleague Alex Nuijten did a very fine presentation on Oracle Analytical Functions during the recent ODTUG 2006 conference in Washington DC. His paper for this conference was nominated for Best Paper award. The paper has appeared in the Conference Proceedings, was published in the June issue of the Dutch Optimize magazine for Oracle Developers and has now been included in the July issue of the Quest Software’s The Pipelines Newsletter, going out to 28.000 software developers worldwide.
You are probably anxious now to read the paper for yourself Read the rest of this entry »
Getting started with Lucene 2.0 – A powerful java search engine
Jul 23rd
Lucene is a text search engine written in Java. It’s very
easy to use (for both developers and users) and fast. The creator of Lucene
(Doug Cutting) started with Lucene in 1997 and still Lucene is a big player
with Java searching. This also means that it is highly unlikely to find a bug
and that it’s almost impossible to increase performance (Lucene is blazingly
fast)
This article handles the basics of Lucene and is not only
intended for developers, the first part of this article describes what Lucene
is, how to use it as an end-user and what it can do for you. The first part is
about the possibilities that Lucene will give you, how you create queries
(still understandable for everybody, queries aren’t scary, it’s just another
word for question 
). After that I will start coding. Read the rest of this entry »
Connecting to a webservice from an ADF application using JDeveloper 10.1.2
Jul 21st
In the Netherlands, the addresses of houses are uniquely defined by their postal code and house number (is this correct English?). One of our customers wanted to have the street and city automagically determined by the house number and postal code using a webservice. This webservice is provided by www.webservices.nl so it was up to me to make our application use that webservices. One of the challenges I had was to make the webservice be contacted via HTTPS. I got a X509CertChainIncompleteErr while trying so read on to learn how I solved this.
Please note that the webservice of webservices.nl used in this example is a paid service. If you like to follow my steps, please use a free service instead of this one.
