Discussion about Oracle ADF future

[Mos'ab Abolila]

Dears, 

 I really thinking a lot last days of how enterprises think on Oracle ADF that they trying to avoid it , when I ask them why they said its too complex to used and people around the world use another technologies , and we go on a big discussion about how powerful and fast ADF is giving us and they should use it but I fail to confess them , they said it does not have a good marketing or not globally known .... how can I confess these enterprises even though I told them how fast we developed applications on oracle ADF ? any help please   

[Jean-Marc Desvaux]

Agree. This is because high class is niche :)

I made an ADF presentation at a conference with about 200 young developers and there was a concurrent session of some JS "Wow" framework, there was less than 20 attendants in my session and more than 180 in the JS Framework session.

Back to your question : how to convince that ADF is a good/better choice for Enterprise Dev ?

You can have two types of people in front of you :-

1/. Those choosing what's best for the developer at development time

2/. Those choosing what's best for the Enterprise from design to development to production to maintenance & upgrades of the developed application.

Some Developers (many) think of the fun they can have using some new sparkling framework and never think a second of the Enterprise as the owner of this App and of its maintenance on the long run.

The problem with them is they don't want to face the Enterprise constraints and integrate these constraints in their choice.

I always compared these two positions with choosing a wife for your life and choosing a girl for the night. The problem nowadays is very few are taking weddings seriously :)

This is my feeling. 

With this in mind, I think you have to first convince the Enterprise on the necessity of having mature enough developers that can give weight to Enterprise requirements and choose the technology based on more criteria than just their fun. Forcing developers on ADF is not an option. Second, you could challenge the developers to build a small but "real" enterprise application (ie with security, with CRUD etc..) with their preferred JS framework versus the same App built with ADF.

Good luck,

Jean-Marc

[sashank pappu]

Even I had the same issue multiple times with the client few of them even went back to Angular JS . Can anyone say the future scope and marketing scope and push for ADF into UI World.

Thank you,

Sashank P.

Thank you,

Sashank P.

On Wed, Jan 20, 2016 at 7:05 PM, Mos'ab Abolila <mr.ab...@gmail.com> wrote:

Dears, 

 I really thinking a lot last days of how enterprises think on Oracle ADF that they trying to avoid it , when I ask them why they said its too complex to used and people around the world use another technologies , and we go on a big discussion about how powerful and fast ADF is giving us and they should use it but I fail to confess them , they said it does not have a good marketing or not globally known .... how can I confess these enterprises even though I told them how fast we developed applications on oracle ADF ? any help please   

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[Grant Ronald]

I'd have thought AngularJS and ADF were potential solutions to different use cases.  AngularJS has a sweet spot, as does ADF but I'd still say they were  distinct.

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[Kims Mail]

I love the ADF ORM...i.e ADF BC. I have never encountered an ORM with which I can create the DB layer and controller with such ease. When it comes to the UI it really really sucks with a capital S.

Every time i start an ADF application i have the DB layer up and running i no time. I'm extremely productive....I lose the head start when i have to create the UI.

Please release a lot more samples on how to build UI. Having consulted the Alta UI site I see plenty of beautiful forms and layout...But I don’t know how to get there myself. And why do I have to spend time guessing and trying when the templates already exists.

I know of the Work Better app but i don’t consider it a real life application. I doesn’t contains any forms - as far as i remember. that's not realistic plus more complicated workflows would be nice to see.

For a beginner its overly complex....i'm not a beginner but i still find it overly complex. Release some simple examples that explains a core subject...and build upon that. I remember when i learned ADF way too many years ago. I found a lot of good tutorial on how to build apps from scratch. I don’t see that now. Just a couple of videos explaing a very isolated subject. Nothing to build upon.

I my opinion the weak spot for ADF is the documentation and samples. I know about the technical doc. But who wants to read 4000 pages to get started? It's not exactly good tutorial material.

If I want to make an angularJS application i can find tons of samples and good examples. No wonder people go down that road. I'm going there myself....but miss ADF BC....a lot.

My bet is that if samples and tutorials were as abundant for ADF as for angular it would be easier for people to learn. Taking into account that ADF is 482 times bigger and more complex than AngularJS to learn....the documentation is not up to the task if you ask me.

If you want ADF to survive....get samples and documentation to the people.

Kim Gabrielsen

[Mos'ab Abolila]

I strongly agree with you Mr Kims , you have what I'm asking for and what I really think in my mind , why Oracle do that to it self if it has a good documentation and a good simple samples it would be great to return very fast to market ... I did a lot of projects also with 12c its great but you feel that there is something missing , something you need to know it more .I hope oracle change that for the great better they need to do a lot more work to help us confessing people , with these great products but it need more samples and a good marketing.

[Grant Ronald]

Kim, whilst I don't take issue with your comment on your experiences with ADF BC and ADF Faces, I really don't think ADF is short of material to learn from ,certainly not developed from within Oracle.

As you point out, there is the very extensive doc.
If you don't want to read all the doc to get started, that is the reason I developed the Quick Start Guide to ADF, you could then progress to Duncan Mills book and then the Fusion Developer guide by Frank Nimphius and Lynn Munsinger, then finish with Jobinesh's book.  And there are about 20+ other books covering ADF at different levels.
80+ videos on technical tips and tricks on the ADFInsiderEssentials channel.
80+ videos and end-to-end architectural design of ADF applications
2 ADF Oracle University Courses
ADF Certification exam
Last time I looked about 90+ tutorials
100+ samples developed on ADF code corner

Add in to that the incredibly active OTN forums, and hundreds of user groups and webcasts, some great blogs from the community plus
40+ MAF videos (end to end online course)
MAF Academy (end to end interactive course)

Of course, if none of these fit the exact requirements you need, or ultimately if there is a complexity "hump" that you just have to work over, then that is of course unfortunate, but I think we've certainly covered beginner, advanced, end-to-end, standalone, white papers, videos, samples, demos, live classes and events.

Thanks

[Florin Marcus]

Kim,

Not sure what experience you have with other web frameworks, but ADF stands out head and shoulders above Java competitors on documentation side. Despite that, ADF remains one of the most misused frameworks I have ever encountered, the amount of ADF bad code is staggering.

This partly can be explained by the number of Oracle Forms developers encountering Java and Web technologies for the first time.

[Kims Mail]

I'm not talking about me. I've been through said books...Which are all by the way from 2010 and covering - now - old versions og ADF. v 11.1 as far as i recall.

A lot has happened since then. Why don't we see updated versions covering later version of the framework and tools? 

I'm talking about getting new developers on board.  Its no good flashing old books and a lot of samples from 2010-12. I know of new samples of course but i don't see an overwhelming number.

What i struggle with is the GUI stuff. Again...i don't see many samples for that except either some very simple and basic stuff or some more complex one as work better.

University courses, certifications and other high level stuff is not at all relevant when you sit down and start to evaluate a new technology. It's relevant when the technology has proven its worth.

Kim

[Srikant Vaidya]

That is problem with Oracle. Its documentation is below standard. For a novice it is hard to capture and learn following oracle documentation. It is not only with ADF product, but also with the other product like BPM.

Srikant Vaidya
713-409-2796

“Your task is not to seek for love, 

but merely to seek and find all the 

barriers within yourself that you 

have built against it.”  -- Rumi

[Florin Marcus]

Srikant,
Can you point us to any frameworks you used in the past with a better documentation than the one provided by Oracle?

[John Flack]

I have to agree with Florin – compared to documentation for other frameworks, ADF’s documentation, videos, and tutorials are ABOVE standard, not below.  I’ve looked at Play, Groovy on Grails, Ruby on Rails, and the aforementioned AngularJS, and these don’t have anywhere near the amount of help as ADF.

 

There are some places where I would love a little more sample code, but not many.

 

But I also have to agree with Florin that despite the help available, I’ve seen some BAD ADF applications.  Oddly enough, I’m suspecting that there is so MUCH help, and JDeveloper does so much coding for you with a simple drag and drop, that junior developers get a bit overwhelmed and don’t know where to look first when they have to go beyond what it does out of the box.  What I always say is to look at the ADF Architecture TV and ADF Insider videos.

 

As for UI, the place to start is the great component demo application. Unfortunately, the last URL I had for this isn’t working right now.  But you can download it and install it on your WebLogic Server too.

[Kims Mail]

Again, I'm not talking about raw documentation. I know of the technical documentation. It's superb. When you have the experience to use it well.

Are there any samples that show - from the bottom up - how to design a nice and welcoming UI in ADF faces?

Please point me to it. If you use boot strap and Angular you have it right away. Sorry guys, but it sells...

I know of a very old ADF guide - something like from Forms to ADF. Is it still available? It's updated off course...:-)

Basically, if you come from Forms (I've been there myself) and going to Java i don't think ADF is the best way to start.

/

Kim

[Rahul Ganesh]

Being an Oracle framework, its more common and frequently used for development by Oracle middleware customers. I feel it stands out with its ability for Rapid development and bindings framework that reduces code writing. I have seen lot of developers scratching their heads when they mix a lot java and backing bean codes and messing up configuration files. That said, ADF indeed has a higher learning curve and its documentation is not as straight forward. However so is the case with many other frameworks. When I first start with Spring , I had same notion but spring improved and has bigger community.

ADF has lots of benefits though it comes with few overheads (AM pooling passivation/activation issues). I feel comparing it to more client side MVC frameworks is just not right without actually taking a use case and implementing it in Angular.js lets say vs pure ADF - Bindings/BC4J or POJO Data controls. 

 Also, as world shifts towards light weight easy scalable microservices and stateless architectures, ADF's core capability of BC4J and Jdeveloper based development  are actually resulting in neglecting its taskflow capabilities. Infact ADF actually fits in the new paradigm of microservices with self contained task flow concepts that can interact with light weight REST or SOAP services. Its just so easy with ADF actually (as long as you are aware of statelessness without BC4J and bindings to an SQL based DB)

However since this is a JSF based framework, its more server side oriented development as opposed to client MVC. But it does have  features that can help build applications fast, as self contained end to end entities. One needs to compare by taking a business use case and the total opportunity cost of building and maintaining with with any framework viz a viz ADF.

Also remember its the best framework i have worked so far when it comes to showcasing rapid prototyping. With many features its just hard to know all and leaves some gaps that I hope oracle can fill with better documentation and examples.

[Florin Marcus]

On Wed, Jan 20, 2016 at 8:07 PM, Kims Mail <kimg...@gmail.com> wrote:

if you come from Forms 

I have been working with ADF 11g since  2008 on daily basis, I've been part of teams across all continents, but every single ADF Expert I've meet came from a Java background.

Sorry about being blunt, but you can't master ADF without a strong understanding of underlying technologies. 

For those with Oracle Forms background I would suggest  a Java certification as the best way to move forward in understanding ADF.

[Kims Mail]

I don't know anything about Microsoft .Net...but how does it compare to Adf regarding, tutorials, samples and up-to-date books?

It seems to attract a lot of people. When i read job ad's here in denmark is see plenty of ads for .Net. ADF? None at all which is why i don’t use it much anymore.
/

kim

2016-01-20 21:40 GMT+01:00 Kims Mail <kimg...@gmail.com>:

that's what i'm saying.

[Kims Mail]

that's what i'm saying.

[Kims Mail]

If Oracle ADF is so superb (i know it is...I have worked with it for 10 years on and off...lately most off)...why is the usage so low?

Talking about usecase...yes...but here are so many ways to get the job done. And today in this agile world a lot of people skip the architecture part. I've seen it a lot of times. Lets code....and off they go.

Take a look at this superb tutorial (not adf and i don't hope i break any rules posting this link. and i haven’t notified the author):

https://avaldes.com/build-realtime-angularjs-dashboard-with-angularjs-and-bootstrap-ui-part-3/

it does a great job of showing the topic at hand. Why is the workbetter app not documented this way? Someone did the job of building it from the ground up...i guess it's documented...or?

funny thing is, most of the stuff in this tutorial can be done in less than 30 min with adf....but people doesn't know it.

Kim

[John Flack]

Excuse me - but I see a bunch of code, not a tutorial.  Maybe I'm not looking at the right thing?

Sure, I can look at the code and the little bit of explanatory text, and MAYBE, if I know enough HTML, CSS and Javascript, I can figure it out.  I wouldn't call this "superb".  At least the ADF tutorials lead you step by step with plenty of places to "run it - it should look like this".  And in no place in this tutorial do they show you the way to wire it up to a database.

[Grant Ronald]

"Basically, if you come from Forms (I've been there myself) and going to Java i don't think ADF is the best way to start"

So you are telling me that raw Java development, or Spring, or Hibernate would be a better place place to start???? If you come from Forms and are going to Java, what framework or route would you recommend?

ADF is not "the new Forms". I agree with Florin, you have to know Java (anyone who knows ADF and will tell you this) however what ADF does do is map many of the concepts and ideas you get in Forms (or typical transactional database applications) and so those can be implemented out of the box quickly.  I'm keen to hear your recommendations for those who "come form Forms and are going to Java" if you don't think ADF is the place to start.

Sent from my iPad

[Shay Shmeltzer]

As far as updated ADF tutorials that cover Alta.
Last week we published this tutorial that focuses on using Alta UI and some of the new layout components in 12.2.1 last week:
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E53569_01/tutorials/tut_rich_web_app/tut_rich_web_app.html
And we also updated the basic ADF tutorial a while back to use an Alta style UI:
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E53569_01/tutorials/tut_rich_app_alta/tut_rich_app_alta_1.html

In addition the workbetter sample application is provided with the full source code and shows many design patterns used in Alta. http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/jdev/learnmore/index-098948.html#alta

Many people in the community have also created how-to's on specific Alta techniques see this list:
https://pinboard.in/search/u:OracleADF?query=Alta

If there is a specific Alta UI pattern that people are struggling to implement with ADF, let us know and maybe us or someone else in the expert community can help with a tutorial for that pattern.

Shay

[Shay Shmeltzer]

In order to be able to convince your customers to use ADF, We'll need to know what objections they have to ADF.

So far you mentioned that they think it is complex, but are they confusing comprehensive with complex?
ADF covers a much broader scope than many "simpler" frameworks - OR mapping, stateful data, binding, advanced controller, UI, customization, security and more. So of course it seems more complex when you first look at its scope.
But without specific technical objections - all I can assume is that they haven't actually did a technical evaluation of the framework.
If this is how they make strategic decisions on their development platform then there isn't much we can do.

[Kims Mail]

I'm obviously not the only one who have this point of view am I?

I have followed some forms projects and forms developers over time.

Regarding the projects most stay with forms or go to either JEE/Spring or .Net. I don't see anyone contemplating ADF.

Regarding the developers they either stay with Forms, looked a little on ADF but did not bite, become DBAs or retire...

In my opinion there’s no straight line between forms and ADF. It's an entirely new ball game. It takes a completely new skills set.

/

Kim

[Bharat K]

The insider tutorials some how in my view gives an impression initially that it is a drag and drop tool which does most of the work for the developers and they need not be

a Java expert to start with.

1. I think it need to be communicated strong that ADF needs the below pre requisites and it is not like an OBIEE tool where u only drag and drop.

 I found that it would have been an easier transition if I had few hours of experience using all of the below concepts 

 coming from the forms / oracle pl/sql background ::

 core java expertise along with knowledge of servlets , Object Relational Mapping , Connection Pooling and Java persistence API

 2. Also I would like videos of just using Java , J2EE in building a particular screen and then use ADF in building the same screen to understand

 the abstraction and the automation that is done by ADF to enable rapid application development. It also helps in bug fixing and understanding the ADF life cycle much better

 3. Also the forms people should also understand the ADF faces and the component life cycle etc to understand the actions and the listeners.

Just making the drag and drop along with the properties facet in the jdeveloper will not help the forms guys to find confidence using it.

 4. Also found that knowing CSS was must to make the look and feel in sync with the brand of the business.

I can be more up to the point if I had put more thought before typing this email but hope my general observation carries through.

Thanks!

[Alejandro Tovar Lanz]

ADF is a great framework but a very comprehensive one. I guess that some companies understand that although the framework is excellent, they may struggle to actually find a good team of developers. When I say 'good' I mean specialized ADF people.

My experience tells me that when you put someone with other background, even java, and null experience in ADF, the first couple of years are to stumble around the framework. Doing stuff the wrong way. Java when is not needed. Reinventing the wheel. Etc. To be honest we all have been there.

I know some project managers that hate ADF only because the developers they one time had did not perform as expected, thus propagating a false perception of ADF being too difficult, complex, you name it.

[manageequity .]

I agree with Kim that there is a very little tutorials out there for latest ALTA UI or JET or other new ADF features. I am a technical developer, but have to spend days together to get the basic understanding of how components work, then only applying those for our requirements.

ADF is great, but how quickly getting acquainted with it is still an issue.

--

thanks

MK.

[Bharat K]

I support KIM , i have been using ADF 11 and then 12 for the past 2 - 3 yrs. 

(1 .Apart from Jdeveloper and Weblogic taking huge loads of RAM despite increasing the space in .conf files

and  page definition file conflict mess when trying to merge in SVN

 2. ADF checkbox issues)

.

We have been able to release a full fledged ADF application using ADF faces as the UI 

and had a lot of learning to do (still do not feel super confident)

There is documentation in fact loads of it but it is not well structured.

Most of the examples discussed say workaround etc (I do not like the term workaround in a framework) 

The examples are simple to understand but not often flexible to incorporate them in a catchy User Interface that the designers come up.

May be alta UI has the answers (have'nt used it though).

Also there is a need for better speakers for some of the ADF insider tutorials (agree they are tech experts ,

but I wish they were clearer to understand and more engaging to listen).

ADF is a powerful framework but somehow i feel I invested my energy on a framework which is not grabbing more eyeballs. 

and is facing the heat of JS frameworks.

Also 

[Girish]

I'm not an ADF developer but I think that there is a general perception in the user community that ADF somehow locks you into Oracle and that it is not truly free or open. I reckon It is one of the reasons it doesn't even make it to the shortlist for evaluation.

Is there any truth to it?

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Regards,
Girish Lakshmanan

[Kims Mail]

Shay,

I don't know why people don’t jump on the ADF train.

Since the release of ADF essentials i don't see many reasons to stay with JEE...the benefits you reap from ADF are so much better.

Whenever I work on a JEE project i usually suggest going the ADF way. But people just stare back at me with empty eyes....mumbling Spring....or JEE..

Or a mix of a lot of different technologies that not exactly make the technological landscape any clearer.

/

Kim

[amir hosein khanof]

Hi,

With more than 10 years experience in ADF/BPM field and team manager for more than 30 projects, I think if you want to go with ADF and be happy with it, you must have an Architecture.

You can not face ADF like any other frameworks  (JS or JAVA) if you have a big project and you want to be ease with all the complexity of the Technology choose ADF because Oracle would help you in future he will add all the expecting features and solve any integration problems for you, so you are in the safe side and would have more time to focus on the business other than focusing on the IT challenges,

If you have a complete architecture for your ADF application so you do not need very expert ADF Developers because the path is determined and your developer do not need any creativity or searching the web all the time to find the way to solve the issue, they only need to obey the path that is specified in the Architecture.

In the first years of coaching the ADF-team that was my problem, every developer search the web to find the way to overcome the issue (that is so complex) but the last 3 years I only work on the architecture and now, believe me the cost(time-money) of doing the project with ADF/BPM is very less that other technologies.

To me, if you leave your ADF developer with internet and ask him to find the solution to a problem, he will came with the most complex one and un-standard way of solving "Thanks to many ADF Blog with lots of UN-Standard way of solving the issue, many of these bloggers only want to show their extra ability to solve the complexity, they do not want to show the ease of ADF"

Sometimes when I see these Advanced Blogs I ask myself if they came to these degree of complexity with ADF why they choose the ADF?!, of course for these kind of complexities, low level framework (like java or .net) are so much better... I think the key is that, they forget that ADF is a 4GL framework, if you do not have an Architecture, if you want to make lots of extra change to this framework, why you choose a 4GL framework?

ADF is for a TPS(Transaction processing system) software, like old Oracle Form Builder , that is a rule... I do not think that if somebody choose ADF for his website... in the TPS software worlds nothing can compete with ADF, how you want to face the Transaction Management in JS worlds, that is a piece of cake in ADF.

If you want to develop a TPS system first analyze the system and determine  features that it wants, then build your architecture and the result would be a win ( a win in time and cost) if you choose ADF.

To me ADF is a mature framework compare to other frameworks and has a very strong back-end in Oracle corporation and  it has a modular and extensible pattern, it is very easy to make an architecture for developing the systems with ADF thanks to its patterns.

The Meta-Driven in ADF is a magic which can not be ignored, I do not see other frameworks to be as mature as ADF in this regards,

For example with 4 developers with only 40 hours of training and 1 expert to coach the team, we developed a huge system (around 30 sub-systems 270 view/page,70 TF) in less than 6 months (analyze is not included) and the system is working like a charm.

At last, ADF is not complex if you have an architecture for it, otherwise you face a World that for each single task you find at least 10 blogs each with 100 line of codes to solve that task :) and hopefully everyone of them has their own way of solving the issue, that's the nature of IT and IT-MAN

Amir

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Amir Khanof
Senior Oracle MiddleWare Developer

09122124673

[John Flack]

In reply to Girish, I've encountered the "locks you into Oracle" argument too.  Hard to combat any of the arguments against using ADF because once people form such an opinion, even the facts won't change their minds.  The facts about "locks you into Oracle":

1. ADF works fine with non-Oracle databases, as long as you have the right JDBC driver.
2. JDeveloper is free to use and ADF is free to develop.
3. It is true that the FULL capabilities of ADF require deployment to Oracle WebLogic Server - but the ADF libraries are included in your WLS license.
4. However, a very capable subset of ADF is available in ADF Essentials.  This includes ADF libraries that you can install on many JEE compliant application servers.  I've tried it with no problem on Glassfish, and there is a good tutorial for this.  I know people who have deployed to Apache Tomcat.
5. You CAN develop ADF applications in Eclipse if you prefer.  However, you'll need to use JPA (EclipseLink) for your Model.
6. Because ADF is a very standards-based framework, much of what you learn to write ADF applications is transferable to other JEE and JSF frameworks.  Frankly, I'd rather take a developer who knows JSF and teach him/her ADF than to train a Form developer.
7. ADF is NOT open source.  There are pros and cons to using or not using open source products.  A pro is that is you are on support for WLS, you can get ADF support.  Open source support depends heavily on the development team for that project, who may have other jobs. Some are excellent, some terrible - take your pick and take your chances.

On Thursday, January 21, 2016 at 8:09:21 AM UTC-5, girish.la wrote:

I'm not an ADF developer but I think that there is a general perception in the user community that ADF somehow locks you into Oracle and that it is not truly free or open. I reckon It is one of the reasons it doesn't even make it to the shortlist for evaluation.

Is there any truth to it?

Regards,
Girish Lakshmanan

[Venkat Krishnappa]

I feel that the reason ADF has low adoption is because the UX is not 2016. It feels very 2000 ish to use an ADF app built with default skins. Under the hood, I wouldn't trade ADF BC and ADFc for anything in the market. However my non tech manager doesn't care about such technicalities. If the users of ADF app don't get excited about it, then the next app definitely isn't ADF one. 

--

[Grant Ronald]

Just be be 100% clear - I agree ADF Is a new ball game to Forms although there are building blocks of common concepts. However, you said "Basically, if you come from Forms (I've been there myself) and going to Java i don't think ADF is the best way to start."

So my question is, if you come from Forms and moving to Java, what, in your experience, is the best way to start?

[Grant Ronald]

I agree that people somethings THINK this, but do you think that is true in reality?  Look at the massive investment Oracle does in UX (its discussed at every keynote) and the effort that goes into the Alta patterns.  And all of that UX effort is baked into ADF.  Of course, you can still take those components and build something which is c**p, but I think modern looking UIs are absolutely possible.  (don't know if attachment will come come through but look at the below screenshot).

[Luc Bors]

+1 for that. ALTA UI is a great effort which is fully supported by ADF.

[John Flack]

So don't use the default skins - create your own.  We have our custom skins and templates in an ADF library - any application can switch to a newer version of the library and immediately get a new look.
We have a group using Play, which builds pages out of HTML, CSS and Javascript.  The applications look great and have some nice dynamic capabilities, but they work a lot harder than I do to get that look and feel.  And I can duplicate almost anything they can do.  I even know people who have built some JQuery into their ADF applications.
For what I can't duplicate, I've used some other JSF libraries, like gmaps4jsf (Google Maps) and Tomahawk.  I've also used <f:verbatim> to add my own HTML.
But the coolest thing that I haven't tried yet is the ability of JSF 2.2 to embed HTML into your page or JSF into your HTML page - see http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/articles/java/enterprise-html5-2227136.html.  This ought to work in 12.1.3 or 12.2.1 - but again - I haven't tried it - yet.

[Kims Mail]

The really cool feature with ADF is that it abstracts away a lot of nitty gritty stuff. But i still believe its hard for a forms developer to grasp.

When i started working with ADF i already had a lot of experience with J(2)EE. EJB, JPA, JTA and JSF. And i know what the MVC pattern was. It was fairly easy for me to understand all the extra you get with ADF.

If I had to convert a Forms developer to ADF i think that would be the way I would teach him. Show the different layers. How you interact with them, where they are placed in the stack and their function. And then when he's comfortable with the concepts go to ADF. The ADF docs talks abour JSF, JSF and so on. If you haven't any experience with it it makes no sense.

But we all learn differently..and that worked for me.

/

Kim

[Kims Mail]

Exactly Venkat,

It still looks like forms. But managers like nice colours...not something greyish. And that's why i don't understand why its so difficult to create nice UIs.

It's my main concern. I love ADF BC and ADFc.

Would it be possible for Oracle to release some nicer skins? and still...release some examples from the ALTA site.

/

Kim

[Sashankp]

I really accept with Venkat . The main reason why clients are not able to use  or migrate to other frameworks is because of UI . I am not sure about ALTA UI but I can give an example of one of my client who invested almost 5 resources for 3months and later trashed it and moved to JS. It's not about the experts as 3of them are ADF architects from past 8 years .  

Sent from my iPhone

Warm Regards ,

Sashank P

[Grant Ronald]

If you built it to look like Forms thats hardly our fault.  Does the image below look like Forms?  Timeline components in Forms?  Swipe gestures in Forms? Info tiles in Forms? Touchable UI Chrome?

--

Grant Ronald, Director of Product Management
Oracle Mobility and Development Tools
Building 520, Oracle Parkway, Reading, Berkshire. RG6 1RA
+44 (0)1189 249124, +44 (0)7767 884635

Author of the Quick Start Guide to Fusion Development: JDeveloper and Oracle ADF

[Kims Mail]

I'm not a webdesigner.

I can spend a lot of time doing 'skin-jobs' and it still looks awful. So, no i cant do that. It's not an option.

Look at primefaces. You can buy nice skins and layouts.

Same goes for bootstrap. It's easy to change. And i don't have to fiddle around with CSS or stuff like that.

/

Kim

[Kims Mail]

No,

it looks really nice. Is that the default skin?

/

Kim

[Mos'ab Abolila]

Thanks for you all , I worked for 3 years on oracle ADF also using 11g to 12c and MAF I used alta ui it was very good , specially the changing in using html5 and css3 on the 12c ,but "the most important how can I deals smoothly with ADF" ,  even they knows about the ADF BC how fast we deal with it but there is a vague matter that we don't know something missing that feeling keep you away from oracle adf , is it a problem with oracle , developers , managers or we need a good view about ORACLE ADF ....???

[José Rodrigues]

Hi all,

After reading through all comments, and discussing a bit internally, I subscribe Amir's post completely.

I would like, however, to point out a few more things that, in my view, are important to get acceptance from customers:

1. Don't leave it to the developers to design the applications. Get a frigging designer! Which leads to point #2
2. Train your designers in the AltaUI patterns and components. Don't let them run wild.
1. If they present something to your customer that will result in "fighting the framework" all the time, things will go bad, and you'll deliver c**p.
2. Remember that AltaUI is not a skin. It's a collection of UI patterns that control all aspects of how your UI should work.
3. There's extensive documentation on the AltaUI that the designer can and should read prior to produce as much as a hand sketch of the final interface
3. Take the Pepsi Challenge with it! ADF will knockout almost anything for Enterprise Application Development.
1. One of our customers setup a test of building given small Enterprise Application, against a RAD (Rapid Application Development) tool. The ADF won on development speed (and all the rest) :)
2. Unless... you don't believe it yourself.
4. Don't let untrained ADF resources run rogue! Setup your "How to build ADF Applications Bible" and do audit what's done inside the project!
1. And Always have a senior ADF resource conducting the orchestra!
2. If you don't have one in your ranks, hire one!
5. Use all the tools available. Seeded Customizations, for instance, are so powerful and still not widely used in projects
6. Again...You're a Developer, so stick with development. Pay a designer to do the design and enforce him the AltaUI pattern.
1. You don't want the hospital janitor to perform surgery on you, just because he sees "E.R".

Now, don't get me wrong. ADF is not the Holy Grail for all development needs. And yes, we're also evaluating the use of a "fashion" JS framework (React.JS in our case).

With the advent of microservice based applications, new JS frameworks may also be good to use, and ADF may loose a bit of its edge over these.

But ADF it's a very good fit most of the times and saves us a lot of time.

José Rodrigues

Oracle ACE Associate

Link Consulting's Business Manager BPM and ECM

[John Flack]

I'm not a web designer either - and Jose is right - get a designer.  One of the reasons the group using Play can get nice UIs is not the tool - it's the fact that they have a UX guy.  I can build nice UI too - IF someone gives me a wireframe of what it should look like.  Still, I built our templates and skin, and it isn't too bad considering that I don't know what the heck I'm doing.  But the client had some standards and I just followed them.

About the Primefaces themes:  Yes those are nice looking, and I do wish that we had something like that in ADF.  But notice that you have to buy them - they are not free.  I think it would be possible to do such things in ADF Faces.  The question is, is there a market for them?  Can you bring in enough income to pay some good designers to design them, and some developers to put them into some ADF Libraries?

[hasim syed]

Grant,

ADF growth as a Framework was very slow which I think is main reason for reduced growth. For example the beautiful chart which you have printed above

came few months back , Moreover customer has to use 12c to develop it. I see most of customer still stuck to 11.1.1.7 or 8 because It took time for Oracle 

to align FMW to 12c and If I am not wrong still many component are still on 11G stack , so it gives reason to customer to not move to 12c until all the remaining

products of FMW are available on that revision.

One of real example when I was working for client which need this cool charts for dashboard applications , But they bought licenses for 11.1.1.7 which did not had

such charts ,so we ended up wiring REST , JSON and Javascript in ADF Framework which was cumbersome given the super high licensing cost we spend on housing this 

framework. Now due to bad experience customer feel hesitant to do future work on ADF. Other biggest problem is JSF lifecycle which kills the performance of 

ADF Framework. One need to have 64 GB RAM to run ADF application to service 4k to 5K users compare to 500K users which can be served using same infra if application

is develop in JSON , REST , Java Script.

Thanks,

[Rosivaldo Ramalho]

Hi there!

It's not the UI design nor the lack of documentation. The point is that the developers (specially young ones) doesn't like Oracle products. That's my point of view. At least is what I can feel around the Brazilian developers.

One of the best aspects that I like to work with Oracle is the total commitment with rich documentation, justo go to Oracle Learning Library and you're free to start learning *ANYTHING* from Oracle, and it's free!

Do you remember the UIX framework? If you do, you can point out the evolution of the new Alta UI. That thing is gorgeous, congrats to all involved at the project! 

If you can sell the idea of using ADF to the main architect or the CIO, I'm sure he'll buy the idea. Developers are not supposed to define the future of a development, since they are driven by the new things (and that's they're job!), they're always looking for new frameworks, new languages, etc. When you think on a long term enterprise IT system, you must have something solid to work with.

Regards

--

Rosivaldo Azevedo Ramalho <rosi...@gmail.com>
Oracle Database & Fusion Middlerware Consultant

OCP DB 10g | OCP DB 11g | OCE RAC 11g | OCE PT 11g

OCP OAS 10g | OCE WLS 10g

http://about.me/rosivaldo

[hasim syed]

Biggest disruption for Oracle ADF is Oracle JET which is creating some confusion about the choice between two.

[Shay Shmeltzer]

>> Biggest disruption for Oracle ADF is Oracle JET which is creating some confusion about the choice between two.

I wrote this blog post to try and clarify any "confusion" about ADF and JET

https://blogs.oracle.com/jdeveloperpm/entry/oracle_adf_and_oracle_jet

As several people in this thread have mentioned, some organizations opt to go with a stateless REST/JavaScript based UI layer.

The choice to go with that architecture sometimes has real technical reasons, and sometimes it just has to do with the developers that are there driving the decision and looking for "the latest cool factor".

Oracle JET is basically a great solution for customers looking for a framework that supports this type of architecture.

Both Oracle JET and ADF supports the new Oracle Alta UI/Skin out of the box - which should give you the ability to build UIs that are very modern.

Oracle is using these UIs all over our cloud products and applications and we are getting lots of great feedback on it.

[Tiago Braz]

I'd like to add that I share the same feeling Rosivaldo described. The acceptance on the developer community towards ADF is really not that great, to say the least. And I'd say that should be a major concern for the product road-map. 

Unfortunately, it is pretty common to ear stories of tragic past experiences and aborted ADF projects. Expressions like "i'm never working with that again" are pretty common and it gets really frustrating for us, the ones convinced and defenders of its capabilities and place on the market.

Why is this the general feeling? - I'll try go give my view on that:

I totally agree with Amir's description of how an ADF project can fail without a defined architecture, the "developer vs the web", having no expert guidance, and the "we'll get a new developer, he'll figure it out". Of course this applies to all frameworks, but ADF due to its complexity and steep curve takes the cake and gets exceptionally easy to fail on those conditions. And guess what, that is what's really happening out there. Projects being made cowboy style are a reality. And they're most the norm than the exception, at least that's the reality I get from my experience. 

I'd say it's those kinds of experiences that end up increasing such negative feedback both on developers, managers and clients.

Tiago Braz

[David....@callista.com.au]

Here's another opinion from an experienced ADF developer of 8 years.

I've found many developers don't come to grips with the framework once they move beyond simple out of the box pages.  This may be due to lack of familiarity with Java but then the ones who do (like myself) become the 'experts' and are given the increasingly complex pages to develop.  Any sufficiently complex page becomes and exercise in massaging the framework with java until it does what you need, and I often find that when I get one workaround sorted it breaks something else.  Usually around the refreshing of bindings, or loosing transient variables or many other issues for which there are usually specific code workarounds (thanks Steve Muench and others).  However those workarounds quickly add up and start to interact in weird ways that anything but a 'full' understanding of the framework renders as a black box, where you change things and hope.

Further there are areas of broken functionality which my organisation has come up against (we are stalled at 11.1.1.7 at the moment) in MDS and ADS that hurt important projects that got a long way down the path of some cool features before running into a dead end and having to backtrack to a less 'cool' solution.  There is a general feeling that ADF coding is difficult and time consuming for all but a few developers.

Regards,

David

[Jernej Kaše]

Ex .Net expert checking in.

I used Microsoft stack extensively in the past. Then I got introduced to ADF through Oracle channel manager; it was right at the time when I started developing a cloud based project management solution (it was in the times of ADF 11g preview versions). I really had 0 background in JSF, but I gave ADF a go, and funny thing, we developed a POC side by side in .Net and ADF and completed the ADF one much faster. Got hooked to ADF, the rest is history.

Looking back, the most problematic area for us was AM pooling, had some nasty bugs in there since we didn’t understand it well.

Anyway, Java is not required for ADF. I think anybody who did 3-tier app development could get a grip on ADF. C# is Java clone anyway, so transitioning between them is not that hard. Forms developers lack experience in this area; understanding that data is not really changed in the DB until the AM is committed and that they should absolutely not use DB session state (unless they really understand AMs and initialise the session properly) is what gets them.

Cheers

Yerney

Am 20 Jan 2016 um 21:32 schrieb Florin Marcus <florin...@gmail.com>:

On Wed, Jan 20, 2016 at 8:07 PM, Kims Mail <kimg...@gmail.com> wrote:

if you come from Forms 

I have been working with ADF 11g since  2008 on daily basis, I've been part of teams across all continents, but every single ADF Expert I've meet came from a Java background.

Sorry about being blunt, but you can't master ADF without a strong understanding of underlying technologies. 

For those with Oracle Forms background I would suggest  a Java certification as the best way to move forward in understanding ADF.

[Noor Ottallah]

Ok,

So on that note I lost the battle to stick with ADF in my organization.

While I created a pretty ALta Proof of concept my coworker used an open framework called VAADIN which is a full Java framework that generates your code into fast JS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaadin

Here is why I lost:

1- Vaadin components are just sooooo much faster at rendering the same exact data on screen compared to ADF elements.

2- Vaadin is 100% Java. If you know JPA then its super simple to build your backend

2b. Vaadin website has a very nice component demo along with code and how to use it page. If I need a filter in a grid table then all I do is click the show code under component and copy and paste.....etc

3- Vaadin is open source and constantly getting updated unlike ADF where we see a release 1 time a year these days.

3b- Vaadin is responsive ready backed into all components by default what runs on desk top easy converts on mobile....

4- Vaadin is Open Framework == Free, It runs on anything other than WEBLOGIC- say tomcat which is free

5- Vaadin store has a huge repo of pre custom components made by everyday devs that put new components out there and share their work to the community

6- We found a bug with a custom component, contacted the dev and within a Day a new version was released unlike ADF that has this huge cluster F*** of what they call support and bug Ids and GOD knows when they will fix it because you have to wait on the next release.

7- Vaadin has zero uncontrollable magic, developer deals with configuring everything- While ADF does a lot of Magic for developers its a pain in the ass to identify whats wrong when its one of those ---GO READ DOCUMENTATION about Appmodule Pooling for example to see why your record is not getting there......etc this is an issue for newbies--- where the Hell do they start.......

8- Having been an ADF dev for 6 years now its super hard for me to get jobs at places where they have already herd bad things about ADF- they think Im not a strong Backend developer any longer because of ADF BC which is true since my JPA skills have been dormant because of the Nice wizards JDEV uses.....Of course my SQL skills are great but they look at the whole picture.

9- Im in New Orleans and believe it or not only GOV agencies here use ADF and the reason I was told we selected it was because the "Oracle Rep had a great RACK!!!!"

Im not trying to sell Vaadin ......I LOVE ADF because its easy and quick to get things running ADF BC makes creating Backend a super simple task because Oracle knows Databases and tables and the Wizards do a great Job where as in JPA you need to define the POJO and its 1 to many relationships etc.....

But it usually take us 2-3 months to train JAVA devs on how to use ADF especially when they came from a JPA background.

And if you guys have not noticed the amount of blogs about ADF are becoming smaller and smaller because there is nothing to blog about with so many little features being released......

I think Oracle is losing the battle to open source frameworks that just deliver faster and better and easy maintainable sites

Oracle needs to change the documentation methodology for devs and do it to where Devs can get what they need instantly and not worry about printing 400 pages and take home to read......

look at Swift,Android and now Microsoft open software.

Why did 12,2.1 ship with out MAF why do I have to go back to 12.1.3

Why do we have to wait a year for a new release

Why cant there be more insight on what Oracle is working on

Why is it that We eat what Oracle Gives us and MUST LOVE IT

WHY is ADF SLOW??? UI speaking even with ALTA

ADF Black box needs to become an OPEN BOX we want to know how the MAGIC works and change it there and then not worry about custom solutions that might break other working things

 its these things that Lead devs start to look at when they compare other frameworks and this is why ADF loses......

Excuse me while I go convert 6 years of perfectly fine and working ADF applications to open source so we can save a ton of money

Thanks.

--

[Florin Marcus]

Hi Noor,

I think you made some good points above, I would like to make few comments:

Try to use Vaadin/JPA on complex input forms scenarios, where you have a multi-step wizard and also a strong  , do changes across screens and save at the end. See if that's more productive than ADF.

@ADF is a Black box

Never really understand why people think that. If you have a licence, you get fill in a source code request with Oracle and you get your code within one hour. There is no difference from an open source project, as far as you don't plan changing the code.

Checking Oracle sources is something I find very useful and it helps me a lot when it comes to complex ADF design.

@WHY is ADF SLOW

Not sure what exactly you see slow you see slower with ADF.

It can't be BC Layer since it fires same queries over JDBC same as JPA does. Are you referring maybe to ADF Rich Faces layer, where more often than not server round trips happen unnecessarily (and I will clarify this in a separate thread soon).

Thanks,

Florin

 

 

 

[manageequity .]

An another problem with Oracle these days, it want to sell everything, even to its own Oracle Developer(who actually promote these technologies along with making living out of it), not necessary to big clients, I am an Oracle Developer 11+ years in EBS, ADF, SOA and other fusion middleware.

When I am trying to learn ADF 12c / SOA 12c, very limited free learning articles out there, they ask for Partner N/W (not working for Oracle Partner based Company anymore).

I think Oracle is making Developer's life also tough.

--

MK.

[robin singh]

Hi Florin,

One of the biggest problem with ADF is you don't have expert in markets. There are people who knows how to build the application but expertise is very very less. The main problem is documentation. There are hardly any tutorial available which which will give you complete picture. Why oracle charges so heavily for their training where as other competitors(Pega) gives wealth of tutorials for free. can't oracle make their training and tutorial free, so that people on their own can master the technology. The reason for ADf being black box after so many years of its existence you hardly find any one who is really expert.

Regards
Robin Singh

[Saif Kamaal]

Hi,

In my opinion the main reason for Oracle is to see how they can help in performance of ADF applications.  Just going by documents which mention nothing but try and find the best possible values for ADF BC is definitely not helping. 

Another stepping stone should be the seamless integration with UI frameworks.  Let's give the developers the option to use any UI framework with the model and BC layer.

R,
Saif K
sent from LG

[Shay Shmeltzer]

For those complaining about documentation - can you provide examples of things that you can't find proper explanation for?

There is plenty of self-paced training on ADF provided from Oracle.

Tutorials - to get you started

Recorded Training - on each one of the layers of ADF

 ADF Architecture TV , ADF Architecture Square - For deep architectural concepts

ADF Code Samples - Code samples you can download

and then many many blogs and code samples on every conceivable aspect - https://pinboard.in/u:OracleADF

And all of those are completely FREE!

[Shay Shmeltzer]

Seif - for AM Pooling parameter - we recorded deep training here - 

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAHRwp0XMMCkMe6K3kOgwqNU7rj3JBz_I

You can definitely use different UI frameworks on top of ADF BC - especially now with the ability to expose ABCS through REST services - you can plug in your favorite JavaScript framework on top of ADF backend.

Shay

[Noor Ottallah]

So I let me clarify so notes:

I LOVE ADF............

@Shay I will def try to expose some rest services in BC and try to tie it to VAADIN or Angular lets see how that goes....alas its too late for us but it will be an easier transition to do that instead of rewriting EOs into POJOs

@ Florin: Wizard pages and flows work great with ADF but in my organization that is really not a requirement or standard we build. 

Once my co worker built the same screen I built in ADF in VAADIN the customer (GOV) loved the speed and presentation of the out of the box components it offers - and its price.

I know why its faster but again maybe we can shift ADF declarative components in that way??

BUT YOU ARE CORRECT Transaction management using JPA is a nightmare but if setup correctly at start of project its becomes manageable and easy to debug THAT is SOMETHING ADF EXCELS AT :)

While there is a way to support open source Icons like FontAwesome 

, I think shay blogged about it I think it would be better to integrate it by default in the next release of ADF 

Winning Contracts for government means putting forward a nice price they like. These days taking out licence fees is a big winner now that the government is accepting Open source frameworks.

But to all the Bloggers out there especially Andrejus, I did not mean it that you guys are abandoning ADF hence the amount of blogs that are coming out I meant that the amount of new features that are coming out from ORACLE have been little except for JET, thus everything has been covered and not a lot of blogs.

sorry if I offended anyone.

[Saurabh Mehta]

Thanks Shay for sharing the difference between ADF and JET.

A lot of talk is going on about increased use of JET for enterprise applications (oracle's MCS is built into JET). Also people are talking about use of JET islands into an ADF application. Since JET is client side framework, it will have better animation, responsive layout and can be used of some client side interactions.

With respect to this particular thread what is Oracle's plan about use of JET islands into ADF application for some client side interactions (like Camera, client side LOVs) ?

Kindly suggest.

Thanks,

Saurabh

[Shay Shmeltzer]

Saurabh,

A couple of points:

MCS is not built into JET - MCS UI is built with JET.

Also, MCS is not an enterprise application - MCS is a cloud product. 

MCS is not about doing CRUD transactions with a database - which is what an enterprise app usually does- it is about interacting with a Node.JS (JavaScript) backend - this should explain why it opted to go with JET.

As far as integration of JET ui inside an ADF Faces page - while you could do this today (see Andrejus various posts on this) - the real question is why would you want to go that route?

ADF doesn't need JET to get client side animation and other behaviors - we have it built into the ADF Faces components.

See the animations you can do with the deck component, or the transition effects you get with a panelDrawer, or the animation in all the DVT components.

Same with responsive UI - we do this with native ADF tags today and your ADF app can responsive without issues.

We continue to enhance the ADF Faces UI components and to add capabilities on both the client and server side (client side LOV is an example of something we are looking into).

Shay

[Saurabh Mehta]

Thanks Shay for sharing the important info (your blog ans everything - https://blogs.oracle.com/jdeveloperpm/entry/oracle_adf_and_oracle_jet :).

Since JET is javascript based framework, people think it will be better for client side interactions/animations but ideally it should not be mixed with ADF application.

I certainly agree we can achieve responsive layout using mediaQuery CSS and matchMediaBehavior tag (available in 12.2.1), components like panelDrawer, conveyorBelt, masonryLayout and all DVT gives good animation too.

Thanks,

Saurabh

[Leon Dorfling]

Hi Shay,

Unfortunately the tutorials referred too cover very simple use cases. 

When it comes to more complex use cases it is very difficult to find tutorials that actually provide guidance. So for example, I am busy designing a new solution and would like to use some of the patterns as described on the Alta UI site. Specifically the use of a Data Grid as depicted by this example, http://www.oracle.com/webfolder/ux/middleware/alta/gallery/gallery.html#browser-list-view, specifically the "Cloud Services List View. I am particularly interested to know how the pagination control has been added to this list view. I have spent a while trying to get a tutorial or sample code that can assist me to understand how this can be done. I have read and re-read the Alta UI Data Grid pattern alone and with colleagues and still we cannot see how the examples in the pattern are achieved. So if Oracle can please provide source code demos on how these patterns and layouts can be achieved that would go a long way to helping the ADF Faces community.

Regards.

Leon

On Thursday, January 21, 2016 at 12:56:43 AM UTC+2, Shay Shmeltzer wrote:

As far as updated ADF tutorials that cover Alta.
Last week we published this tutorial that focuses on using Alta UI and some of the new layout components in 12.2.1 last week:
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E53569_01/tutorials/tut_rich_web_app/tut_rich_web_app.html
And we also updated the basic ADF tutorial a while back to use an Alta style UI:
http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E53569_01/tutorials/tut_rich_app_alta/tut_rich_app_alta_1.html

In addition the workbetter sample application is provided with the full source code and shows many design patterns used in Alta. http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/developer-tools/jdev/learnmore/index-098948.html#alta

Many people in the community have also created how-to's on specific Alta techniques see this list:
https://pinboard.in/search/u:OracleADF?query=Alta

If there is a specific Alta UI pattern that people are struggling to implement with ADF, let us know and maybe us or someone else in the expert community can help with a tutorial for that pattern.

Shay

On 1/20/2016 12:37 PM, Kims Mail wrote:

If Oracle ADF is so superb (i know it is...I have worked with it for 10 years on and off...lately most off)...why is the usage so low?

Talking about usecase...yes...but here are so many ways to get the job done. And today in this agile world a lot of people skip the architecture part. I've seen it a lot of times. Lets code....and off they go.

Take a look at this superb tutorial (not adf and i don't hope i break any rules posting this link. and i haven’t notified the author):

https://avaldes.com/build-realtime-angularjs-dashboard-with-angularjs-and-bootstrap-ui-part-3/

it does a great job of showing the topic at hand. Why is the workbetter app not documented this way? Someone did the job of building it from the ground up...i guess it's documented...or?

funny thing is, most of the stuff in this tutorial can be done in less than 30 min with adf....but people doesn't know it.

Kim

2016-01-20 21:19 GMT+01:00 Rahul Ganesh <ganes...@gmail.com>:

Being an Oracle framework, its more common and frequently used for development by Oracle middleware customers. I feel it stands out with its ability for Rapid development and bindings framework that reduces code writing. I have seen lot of developers scratching their heads when they mix a lot java and backing bean codes and messing up configuration files. That said, ADF indeed has a higher learning curve and its documentation is not as straight forward. However so is the case with many other frameworks. When I first start with Spring , I had same notion but spring improved and has bigger community.

ADF has lots of benefits though it comes with few overheads (AM pooling passivation/activation issues). I feel comparing it to more client side MVC frameworks is just not right without actually taking a use case and implementing it in Angular.js lets say vs pure ADF - Bindings/BC4J or POJO Data controls. 

 Also, as world shifts towards light weight easy scalable microservices and stateless architectures, ADF's core capability of BC4J and Jdeveloper based development  are actually resulting in neglecting its taskflow capabilities. Infact ADF actually fits in the new paradigm of microservices with self contained task flow concepts that can interact with light weight REST or SOAP services. Its just so easy with ADF actually (as long as you are aware of statelessness without BC4J and bindings to an SQL based DB)

However since this is a JSF based framework, its more server side oriented development as opposed to client MVC. But it does have  features that can help build applications fast, as self contained end to end entities. One needs to compare by taking a business use case and the total opportunity cost of building and maintaining with with any framework viz a viz ADF.

Also remember its the best framework i have worked so far when it comes to showcasing rapid prototyping. With many features its just hard to know all and leaves some gaps that I hope oracle can fill with better documentation and examples.

On Wed, Jan 20, 2016 at 2:52 PM, Kims Mail <kimg...@gmail.com> wrote:

I'm not talking about me. I've been through said books...Which are all by the way from 2010 and covering - now - old versions og ADF. v 11.1 as far as i recall.

A lot has happened since then. Why don't we see updated versions covering later version of the framework and tools? 

I'm talking about getting new developers on board.  Its no good flashing old books and a lot of samples from 2010-12. I know of new samples of course but i don't see an overwhelming number.

What i struggle with is the GUI stuff. Again...i don't see many samples for that except either some very simple and basic stuff or some more complex one as work better.

University courses, certifications and other high level stuff is not at all relevant when you sit down and start to evaluate a new technology. It's relevant when the technology has proven its worth.

Kim

2016-01-20 20:13 GMT+01:00 Grant Ronald <grant....@oracle.com>:

Kim, whilst I don't take issue with your comment on your experiences with ADF BC and ADF Faces, I really don't think ADF is short of material to learn from ,certainly not developed from within Oracle.

As you point out, there is the very extensive doc.
If you don't want to read all the doc to get started, that is the reason I developed the Quick Start Guide to ADF, you could then progress to Duncan Mills book and then the Fusion Developer guide by Frank Nimphius and Lynn Munsinger, then finish with Jobinesh's book.  And there are about 20+ other books covering ADF at different levels.
80+ videos on technical tips and tricks on the ADFInsiderEssentials channel.
80+ videos and end-to-end architectural design of ADF applications
2 ADF Oracle University Courses
ADF Certification exam
Last time I looked about 90+ tutorials
100+ samples developed on ADF code corner

Add in to that the incredibly active OTN forums, and hundreds of user groups and webcasts, some great blogs from the community plus
40+ MAF videos (end to end online course)
MAF Academy (end to end interactive course)

Of course, if none of these fit the exact requirements you need, or ultimately if there is a complexity "hump" that you just have to work over, then that is of course unfortunate, but I think we've certainly covered beginner, advanced, end-to-end, standalone, white papers, videos, samples, demos, live classes and events.

Thanks

On 20/01/2016 18:17, Kims Mail wrote:

I love the ADF ORM...i.e ADF BC. I have never encountered an ORM with which I can create the DB layer and controller with such ease. When it comes to the UI it really really sucks with a capital S.

Every time i start an ADF application i have the DB layer up and running i no time. I'm extremely productive....I lose the head start when i have to create the UI.

Please release a lot more samples on how to build UI. Having consulted the Alta UI site I see plenty of beautiful forms and layout...But I don’t know how to get there myself. And why do I have to spend time guessing and trying when the templates already exists.

I know of the Work Better app but i don’t consider it a real life application. I doesn’t contains any forms - as far as i remember. that's not realistic plus more complicated workflows would be nice to see.

For a beginner its overly complex....i'm not a beginner but i still find it overly complex. Release some simple examples that explains a core subject...and build upon that. I remember when i learned ADF way too many years ago. I found a lot of good tutorial on how to build apps from scratch. I don’t see that now. Just a couple of videos explaing a very isolated subject. Nothing to build upon.

I my opinion the weak spot for ADF is the documentation and samples. I know about the technical doc. But who wants to read 4000 pages to get started? It's not exactly good tutorial material.

If I want to make an angularJS application i can find tons of samples and good examples. No wonder people go down that road. I'm going there myself....but miss ADF BC....a lot.

My bet is that if samples and tutorials were as abundant for ADF as for angular it would be easier for people to learn. Taking into account that ADF is 482 times bigger and more complex than AngularJS to learn....the documentation is not up to the task if you ask me.

If you want ADF to survive....get samples and documentation to the people.

Kim Gabrielsen

2016-01-20 17:35 GMT+01:00 Grant Ronald <grant....@oracle.com>:

I'd have thought AngularJS and ADF were potential solutions to different use cases.  AngularJS has a sweet spot, as does ADF but I'd still say they were  distinct.

On 20/01/2016 15:17, sashank pappu wrote:

Even I had the same issue multiple times with the client few of them even went back to Angular JS . Can anyone say the future scope and marketing scope and push for ADF into UI World.

Thank you,

Sashank P.

Thank you,

Sashank P.

On Wed, Jan 20, 2016 at 7:05 PM, Mos'ab Abolila <mr.ab...@gmail.com> wrote:

Dears, 

 I really thinking a lot last days of how enterprises think on Oracle ADF that they trying to avoid it , when I ask them why they said its too complex to used and people around the world use another technologies , and we go on a big discussion about how powerful and fast ADF is giving us and they should use it but I fail to confess them , they said it does not have a good marketing or not globally known .... how can I confess these enterprises even though I told them how fast we developed applications on oracle ADF ? any help please   

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[Kims Mail]

I second this statement. Please release the screens with sources. Not overly complicated as workbetter which clutter a lot up. but these simple designs. Then we are a long way and - I at least - would learn a lot.

Kim

[Shay Shmeltzer]

Leon,

I'm not sure that the component you are looking at in that specific sample is an ADF listView - since there is no built in pagination for that component.

One thing to point out about the Alta UI samples is that some of them are ADF pages and some are JET - so it might be that you are actually looking at a JET based page there.

That being said, I think you will be able to create that type of UI with an af:iterator - and a custom pagination toolbar you can build for it.

A code sample for something like this is here - https://blogs.oracle.com/imc/entry/pagination_with_iterator_tag_in

Then you just need to work out to make the interface nicer.

That being said, I agree that the more samples of how to implement specific UIs out there the better. We can try and do some work on the Oracle side on this, but it would also be great if members of the ADF community share their samples on blogs.

Alta UI code samples is definitely a ripe area for new blog entries...

Shay

[Leon Dorfling]

Shay,

If that were the case, then can I suggest that the Alta UI team tag the page with JET / ADF Faces implementation as to avoid confusion. It also still does deter from the fact that Oracle should make an improved attempt, and more specifically with UI layouts, to provide at least the source.

If I can also refer to this page and specifically the top left layout, it seems as if that is a table component that has been skinned to look like a list component. Is my assumption correct? Once again, can the source and skin not be made available to the community?

Referring to your statement;

"That being said, I agree that the more samples of how to implement specific UIs out there the better. We can try and do some work on the Oracle side on this, but it would also be great if members of the ADF community share their samples on blogs."

Having been using ADF for 7 years, my experience is that samples tend to be extremely simple. We do not have the luxury of having a committed R&D team to work out complex implementations, so in my opinion that is something Oracle should seriously consider paying more attention too. Speaking from experience, one of the biggest resistance to ADF is the lack of complex examples.

Regards.

Leon. 

[hasim syed]

Thanks Shay for being proactive from last few days explaining various ADF and JET selection criteria.

EMG has being so far very beneficial to ADF developers.  I was studying about scope of ADF in Fusion

Applications which complement future of ADF , I took recent classes of using ADF in extending Fusion Apps

and Unfortunately It is allowed for On Premise Installation of Fusion App ,But not Cloud based Installation.

Thanks,

[fakhri.kharrat]

I started using ADF 5 years ago, before i used Oracle forms and I found a lot of ADF blogs sharing many use case specially Shay that I would like to thanks him for all his efforts to help us.

[Eric van Mourik]

Those interested in examples of ADF pages and UI patterns leveraging - among others - the Alta concepts and skin might take a look at the Cloud User Experience Kit.

http://www.oracle.com/webfolder/ux/applications/successStories/oracleApplicationsCloudRDK.html

It comes with a comprehensive set of documentation and an ADF workspace containing templates, examples and more.

http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/indexes/samplecode/app-cloud-accelerators-2882163.html

Regards,

Eric

______________________________________________________
Eric van Mourik  | Senior Consultant | Darwin IT-Professionals          
email: eric.va...@darwin-it.nl | telefoon: 06-27654726
Beeklaan 444 | 2562 BK Den Haag | KVK: 27283780
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[Luc Bors]

+1 You beat me to it Eric. I totally agree with you. The latest version of the RDK was releases recently. It really helps you to het some more insight in how to code ALTA UI patterns.

Luc

Op 9 feb. 2016 23:26 schreef "Eric van Mourik" <eric.va...@darwin-it.nl>:

[Shay Shmeltzer]

>> It is allowed for On Premise Installation of Fusion App ,But not Cloud based Installation.

Are you sure you understood this correctly?

There is nothing that prevents you from building ADF apps that extend SaaS applications that are in the cloud.

Oracle actually has specific Java Cloud Service instances for this - Java Cloud Service–SaaS Extension
See the FAQ here: https://cloud.oracle.com/java?tabname=LearnMoreInfo&lmResID=1383678929772

That says: 

If you are building extensions to one of the Oracle Software as a Service offerings like Oracle Sales Cloud, Oracle Service Cloud, Oracle Marketing Cloud, and so on, Java Cloud Service–SaaS Extensions is the best choice

Shay

[Sudipto Desmukh]

I know this is a pretty late reply, but was pending. Great discussion and points presented in this thread - 

I have noticed in my experience that most people, even so called Architects donot understand/leverage the powerful features of Oracle ADF. This results in them bad-mouthing ADF. People use ADF like another J2EE framework with tons of code which is not always needed. If you like to compltely understand a framework, reading the Dev Guide is a must. Why only reply on examples created by Shay, Grant and Frank; why not do it yourself :)

Here's a perfect example : UI-Aware Data Model manifested by using ADF BC but not available if you use POJO Based DataControls :-

http://ptotech.blogspot.com/2014/07/adf-webcenter-pojo-data-control-doesnot.html

Thanks

Sudipto

[Leon Dorfling]

Shay,

Can you please assist with explaining how to achieve the toolbar as shown. I would like to achieve this using ADF Faces and ADF BC and specifically the "Sort by" functionality please?

Regards.

Leon.

[sashank pappu]

HI Shay, 

I have 2 questions on Fusion Cloud Apps which can be deployed on Java Cloud Service: 

 1)  We have SaaS for Fusion Cloud Applications like Fusion HCM which i am currently working on . But what I see is the usability of apps seems to be very less when compared with On Premise or Custom ADF Implementations . 

  Can you please give more insight on Fusion Cloud Market Place .

2) I found that in Market place or Cloud we more often use REST or SOAP Webservices and the usability of ADF BCs seems to be reducing . Can you also put more light on this area.

Thank you,

Sashank P.

Thank you,

Sashank P.

[Shay Shmeltzer]

I'm guessing the sort will have a static list of fields in the VO.
Then you pick a field from the list, and use a VO method that does a vo.setOrderByClause() call and re-execute the query.

In terms of achieving the UI for this - see the workbetter app -> people page.

Shay

[Saif Kamaal]

Hi All,

Continuing on the future of adf,  maf 2.3 is released today for jdev 12.2.1. I see there is an option to deploy maf application on Windows x86 architecture.  In this case then we can now have enterprise applications created as maf application and now run on Android,  iOS,  Windows.
IMHO this surely will be the death of adf and birth of maf as the future.

R,
Saif K
sent from LG

[John Flack]

Not really - ADF is aimed at standard browsers on any platform - Windows, Mac, Linux, as well as IOS, Windows, or Android tablets and phones.  If I need a connection to use an application, i.e. it has no unconnected, local capabilities, I might even prefer to use an ADF application from my browser, rather than install an app written in MAF.

[Grant Ronald]

I disagree (apart from the reason I KNOW that MAF is not replacing ADF) but, for example, look at the support ADF has for the business service development (e.g. ADF BC) - that doesn't exist in MAF (and won't).

Regards

--

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Oracle Mobility and Development Tools
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[Alexis Lopez]

In my opinion ADF is more alive than ever, it just got upgraded to JDK 8, Java EE 7 and a bunch of new features like the REST support for your ADF BC model. I do have to say that, in my opinion, JSF (which includes ADF Faces) is losing the battle for the preferred View layer technology in Java Web applications, so I'm visualizing a future where ADF will be the backend (ADF BC + Rest) of "view layer" technologies such as Oracle JET,  bootstrap/angular... and even MAF.

Regards,

--
Alexis López

http://www.java-n-me.com

http://www.acelopez.com

http://www.clojug.org/

[Shay Shmeltzer]

I'm not sure I understand your questions.
1) Can you be specific about what you see as "less usability"?
2) ADF BC is how SaaS exposes the REST and SOAP services. You can consume these services in ADF with the Web Service data control.

Shay