Last week I participated in a ADF workshop given at AMIS by Peter Ebell and Lucas Jellema. "
I followed a similar workshop almost 2 years ago. Back then it was related to ADF and Struts and the amount of Java coding for a non Java person was almost too much, well to my taste. Back then I had difficulties to get the complete picture.
I asked myself " is it possible for a "classic" Oracle developer to make an easy transition to ADF?
The workshop of last week concerned ADF Business Components, Java Server Faces, ADF Faces and the ADF Model (& Data Binding).
- Day 1 & 2: The first two days were given by Peter who introduced us with the ADF Business Components. These two days navigated us from creating the Business Components, the enrichment of the View objects, the creation of additional view links to the implementation of Business Rules with as result a popper basic understanding of how business components work (surprisingly easy).
- Day 3: On day three Lucas introduced us to Java Server Faces, the successor of Java Server Pages (JSP). We got exposed to Managed Beans (because there us more than just a pretty face as Lucas stated), the Converters and Validators, the way navigation is implemented and Internationalization since not everybody understands English. And again although there was some Java coding needed very understandable for this "classic" Oracle man.
- Day 4: ADF Faces (aka MyFaces Trinidad). On this day I experienced how rich the ADF Core components are. Whilst it took some coding to create a storable table in JSF the ADF component already has this standard built-in. I created menus, worked with regions for reuse of page fragments and was introduced to the partial Page Rendering, yes some ADF Faces components go AJAX. I was really impressed. These components really rock and I have heard that more components will be introduced with JDeveloper 11.
- Day 5: On the last day of this workshop our application came to life by adding the model to our application. We were shown how to create a full blown, fully database backed standard web application with Search, Browse and Edit facilities on real database data. And again I was impressed. Sure I was not able to even approach the time Lucas spent to create the application but it is fairly easy to create a simple web application with the mentioned functionality.
Conclusion: Yes it is possible to make a transition for a "classic" Oracle developer to ADF Faces. How? Follow a training/workshop or if this is not possible buy the book "Oracle JDeveloper 10g for Forms & PL/SQL Developers" by Peter Koletzke and Duncan Mills.
