Real-World ADF Development with Eclipse (OEPE)

[Andreas Koop]

There is quite some time passed since the last update of OEPE 12 with improved ADF Development Support. After playing around in the last couple of days with OEPE 12.1.1.2 I find there are many shortcomings compared to ADF Development in JDeveloper. Especially the support for developing JSF Pages is significantly different. No visual editing, no automatic IDs for Faces Components, No Facets are generated, and so on... Quite tedious!

q1) So I am wondering: Is there anybody from the EMG members using OEPE for ADF Development beyond building Evaluation Samples, Tutorials? 

q2) The Packaging as EAR is done without using ojdeploy as far as I can see. What is the preferred way of building ADF EARs on CI Server from an OEPE based ADF Project setup? 

q3) Can the ojdeploy-free Packaging mechanism be used for "classic" ADF Projects developed in JDeveloper?

q4) Would anyone recommend a mixed development environment. Some with JDev, some with OEPE? (I would not)

q5) Is anyone seriously planning to do an ADF project with OEPE? 

Curious about your experiences,

Andreas Koop

www.enpit-consulting.com

PS: Join the JDeveloper & ADF Google Plus Community https://plus.google.com/communities/113990885678873525746 (Owned by Chris Muir, ADF PM @Oracle)

[Raghunathan Srinivasan]

Hi Andreas,

 

Thanks for the feedback on the ADF support in OEPE.  We are working to address some of the usability issues with editing JSP files, such as better support for facets. If there are other items you would like us to consider, please let us know. We are planning a release in 2013.  The 12.1.12 release should generate ID’s for the tags.  It is also possible to generate ID’s for tags in a page by using the context menu on the source page, Source->Fix ADF Component ID’s.

 

Thanks

Raghu

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[fnimphiu]

q1) So I am wondering: Is there anybody from the EMG members using OEPE for ADF Development beyond building Evaluation Samples, Tutorials?

Andreas, I think you ask too early because ADF in OEPE hasn't yet broken grounds and so I don't think that there are projects today that are pure OEPE / ADF projects.

There are 3 things I read out of your question though:

i) We (Oracle) need to work on the message that describes the role and responsibility of OEPE with ADF and the long term strategy and goals.

ii) ADF in OEPE has a "chicken and egg" problem if everyone waits for OEPE to support the full big ADF before signing up for it.

iii) OEPE is meant to get new blood on board for ADF development, which in fact it doesn't if it only attracts developers who use ADF with JDeveloper
today, which doesn't promise any gain we get by providing Eclipse support

q3) Can the ojdeploy-free Packaging mechanism be used for "classic" ADF Projects developed in JDeveloper?

JDeveloper is required for deploying ADF applications with ojdeploy.

q4) Would anyone recommend a mixed development environment. Some with JDev, some with OEPE? (I would not)

I do.

q5) Is anyone seriously planning to do an ADF project with OEPE?

May I turn the question around? Is anyone interested enough in developing ADF with Eclipse to use it and report problems and ERs ?

Frank

[Andreas Koop]

Thank you Frank for that clear statements.

About some certain points I would like to follow up:

Am Mittwoch, 9. Januar 2013 08:47:22 UTC+1 schrieb fnimphiu:

q3) Can the ojdeploy-free Packaging mechanism be used for "classic" ADF Projects developed in JDeveloper?

JDeveloper is required for deploying ADF applications with ojdeploy.

Well, since the EAR packaging in OEPE is done without ojdeploy, the intention of my question is if that packaging mechanism can be reused to JDeveloper based ADF project setups. For me ojdeploy is great. If used properly, no dependency struggles and so on....But there are many development teams which still ask for a ojdeploy-free packaging mechanism so I my thought was "Maybe the that particular mechanism from OEPE for building an EAR" could be reused for ADF Projects on a CI Server.

Anyway, from your answer I conclude that this approach - if the idea should work  - is not recommended.

 

q4) Would anyone recommend a mixed development environment. Some with JDev, some with OEPE? (I would not)

I do.

Interesting. To be honest, not the answer I have expected or maybe there is a different understanding of "mixed development environment".

- scenario a: One Source Code base for an ADF Application. Developer A develops with JDeveloper, Dev B with OEPE. Because of different project layouts and btw different defaults for Web content folder, build output, some configuration files and especially the EAR project I still do not think it is a good idea. => Makes the overall project complex without a real benefit.

- scenario b: One big Application cutted into different subsystems which can be developed independently. In that case it is OK to develop one subsystem with OEPE, the other with JDeveloper. Integration happens on ADF Library Level. => Possible, but from an IT strategy perspective not a good practice I guess.

 

q5) Is anyone seriously planning to do an ADF project with OEPE?

May I turn the question around? Is anyone interested enough in developing ADF with Eclipse to use it and report problems and ERs ?

@EMG Members: Feel free to answer ;)

Regards,

Andreas

www.enpit-consulting.com

 

[Mark Robinson]

On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 11:47 PM, fnimphiu <frank.n...@googlemail.com> wrote:

q1) So I am wondering: Is there anybody from the EMG members using OEPE for ADF Development beyond building Evaluation Samples, Tutorials?

We are.  We moved from using pure JDeveloper to using OEPE.  I have found that the system tends to be quite fragile and is prone to odd problems which can kill a few hours of productivity at random.  On the other hand, you can get all the fun Eclipse plugins that you love.
 

q3) Can the ojdeploy-free Packaging mechanism be used for "classic" ADF Projects developed in JDeveloper?

I managed to hack together a way to build 'ADF' compatible EARs using maven.  Double plus not fun, but re-usuable in a CI server.
 

q4) Would anyone recommend a mixed development environment. Some with JDev, some with OEPE? (I would not)

I do but the only thing I really use in the Skin Editor from JDev, so it's not really mixed.

[Raghunathan Srinivasan]

Hi Mark,

 

I would appreciate if you could share the issues you see with using OEPE for building ADF applications.  You can report them in this forum or in the OEPE forum .  We have multiple releases planed in 2013 and could address the issues in one of them.

 

We are also working towards adding support for Maven-centric development in the upcoming release. We also have the capability to generate a Maven POM for an ADF application that you could use in a CI server.

 

Hope this helps.

 

Thanks

Raghu

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[Andreas Koop]

Hello Mark,

thanks for sharing your experiences on ADF with OEPE. Great to hear someone is using it for realworld project development.

Maybe you can elaborate a bit more about the whole stack, e.g. which tech beneath ADF Binding Layer + pain and improvement points - on a blog or so ;)

Thanks,

Andreas

[Juan Camilo Ruiz]

Hi Guys,

Thanks for sharing this information with with the group. Similar to the ADF EMG Bug and ER discussion that already exists, I would like to kick an idea for creating an ADF EMG "do it" in OEPE discussion, with the purpose of identifying those areas where ADF developers interested on using Eclipse would like to have improvements or fixes based on their experience with the product. If this sounds like a good idea I will proceed to open it up and certainly would love to have Mark's feedback as the starter post.

Juan C.

[Jan Vervecken]

hi Juan C.

FYI ... the discussion you refer to [1] (started January 28, 2011) has since been "upgraded" by the announcement in another discussion thread [2] (started April 2, 2012),
see also http://java.net/jira/browse/ADFEMG (via http://java.net/projects/adfemg )

- [1] "The official ADF EMG "bug" and "ER" thread"
at https://groups.google.com/d/topic/adf-methodology/2qMsm330g38/discussion
- [2] "ADF community defect tracker - a new service for ADF EMG members"
at https://groups.google.com/d/topic/adf-methodology/fndeSzhYrLw/discussion

regards
Jan Vervecken