In a long hoped for but little anticipated move, Oracle yesterday announced ADF Essentials – the free edition of the ADF framework. Oracle now offers a complete free stack to develop and deploy applications – with Oracle Database XE, GlassFish Open Source Edition and ADF Essentials, optionally running on Oracle Enterprise Linux. It’s a red LAMP if you will.

ADF Essentials is exactly the same as ADF – it is just a subset of ADF. Even some of the highly advanced features in ADF are included in ADF Essentials – such as Data Visualization (DVT), Business Components (ADF BC), Data Binding and Taskflows. The parts not included in ADF Essentials are by and large more for specific use cases – ADF Mobile, Desktop Integration, Customization – or targeted at integration with other components in the Oracle Fusion Middleware stack – such as Data Controls for Essbase, BI and BAM.

Some of the features of ADF that are not available with Essentials that are unfortunate to let go off: ADF Security (!), publication of ADF BC as Web Service, the Web Service Data Control and remote taskflows. However, for most of these features, alternative solutions can be created or are already available – such as More >