Skip to main content

Me and my ADF

--Just a random set of opinions read no further if you are looking for technical info.

Ok so I have been working with ADF for 8 months now (have worked with SOA suite before) and here are a couple of rants and findings:

Development speed etc:
  • The initial learning curve in VERY steep.
  • Get help - we had an adf expert help us out - invaluable.
  • Get the adf source code - it will help you.
  • Like any framework you need to write a bit of framework extension code
  • It is NOT just drag and drop dev if you want anything custom.
  • Try to get things right from the start or you will end up redoing a lot and it is not very "refactoring" friendly.
  • Forms devs will have to get a LOT of training to use this. (they will have to learn java and ADF unless you run a sweat shop dev process)
  • Hire a very very compentant java dev before switching over from forms.
  • Having a lot of logic in pl\sql with this framework may not be a bad thing.
  • Try to do as little custom stuff as possible
  • Once you have a good set of patterns and framework in place dev speeds up CONSIDERABLEY (+- 6 months for a fresh team with no ADF experience)
Comparision with other frameworks:
Getting your forms team to learn java would be less of a learning curve unless you structure you teams very well.

I would love to have a project that uses EJB3 with ADF's (fabulous JSF components) jsf stuff. Not overly fond of BC right now.

At the moment I find the ADF framework more difficult to use than other JEE frameworks because of the size of it and it does a lot of stuff "for free" so it is difficult to debug if it goes wrong. (Note I have worked with the following (Maven, Maven2, Ant, glassfish, DB2, postgres, mysql, EJB3, EJB2, Hibernate, trinidad, myfaces, struts, jsp, IBM RAD, eclipse etc) so I am not speaking out of my ass)

Wish list:
  • Maven2 Intergration
  • Proper SVN and CI intergration
  • JDev startup times improved
  • JDev is crap so use eclispe (wishful thinking)
  • OJDeploy compile times
  • JDev (shortcuts are anti intuitive, Ctrl - across open projects, speed of rendering of Design view etc etc)
Final thoughs: ADF given time will mature into an awesome framework that will speed up dev time and allow developers to focus on solving business problems. It is not a silver bullet and the answer to all you problems though and takes time to learn.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

ADF sort of generic screen for tables with the same structure

We have a couple (about a hundred) of tables with the same structure (Code, Description, Create Date, Update Date). So I wanted to do something simple so that I did not have to create all these screens 1) EO   I created the EO based on one of the tables I had that had the above columns. I then Added a transient attribute called table name to my EO based on a groovy expression. (the expression needs to change as I am reading web tier stuff from the model layer but I will fix this later) I then generated a java class for my EO. And added the following overriden method to my newly created java class. protected StringBuffer buildDMLStatement(int i, AttributeDefImpl[] attributeDefImpl,   AttributeDefImpl[] attributeDefImpl2, AttributeDefImpl[] attributeDefImpl3, boolean b) {   StringBuffer statement = super.buildDMLStatement(   i, attributeDefImpl, attributeDefImpl2, attributeDefImpl3, b); return new StringBuffer(StringUtils.replace(statement.to...

OJDeploy: Documentation for the tool

Real DOCS:  http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E26098_01/user.1112/e17455/deploying_apps.htm#OJDUG645 OJDeploy Documentation if you run it from the command line - I keep looking for this so I though I would post it here so I remeber. Oracle JDeveloper Deploy 11.1.2.1.0.6081 Copyright (c) 2003, 2010, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Usage:   ojdeploy -profile <name> -workspace <jws> [ -project <name> ] [ <options> ]   ojdeploy -buildfile <ojbuild.xml> [ <options> ]   ojdeploy -buildfileschema Arguments:   -profile               the name of the Profile to deploy   -workspace      full path to the JDeveloper Workspace file(.jws)   -project              name of the JDeveloper Project within the .jws where the Profile can be...

Util code

public static MethodExpression getMethodExpression( String expr, Class returnType, Class[] argTypes){ FacesContext fc = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance(); ELContext elctx = fc.getELContext(); ExpressionFactory elFactory = fc.getApplication().getExpressionFactory(); return elFactory.createMethodExpression( elctx, expr, returnType, argTypes); } public static javax.faces.el.MethodBinding getMethodBinding( String expr, Class[] argTypes){ FacesContext fc = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance(); ELContext elctx = fc.getELContext(); return fc.getApplication().createMethodBinding(expr, argTypes); } SetPropertyListener listener = new SetPropertyListener( ActionEvent.class.getName()); listener.setFrom(link.getRoute()); listener.setValueExpression("to", JSFUtils.getValueExpression("#{pageFlowScope.route}", String.class)); action.addActionListener(listener); AdfFacesContext.getCurrentInstance().getPageFlowScope() .put("route", lin...