Why ADF is impportant

Oracle ADF(Application Development Framework) framework is a complete Java EE framework that simplifies next generation enterprise application development by providing out-of-the-box infrastructure services, and a visual and declarative development experience. . It supports rapid application development based on ready-to-use design patterns, metadata-driven and visual tools.

Oracle ADF Major Benefits from developer point of view  are:

1.   Visual and Declarative Java EE Development

Visual and declarative tools, which are integrated into the JDeveloper IDE, benefit Java developers even if they don‘t use the runtime features of Oracle ADF.

2.   Business Services Development

Oracle ADF Business Components is a framework focused on creating objects, which implement the Business Services layer on top of a data source, in a more declarative way. It provides out-of-the-box services such as transaction management, resource pooling, locking, declarative validation rules, translation, and object-relational mapping.

3.   User Interface Development

-ADF Faces – a large set of over a 150+ in build UI components built on top of the standard JSF APIs that leverage the latest technologies — including partial page rendering and Ajax — to provide a rich, interactive user interface.

-A page flow modeler for the ADF controller and the standard JSF framework page flow, providing visual page flow modeling using simple drag and drop of components onto a diagram.

-A visual editor for JSP, JSF, HTML, Swing, and Wireless based user interfaces, allowing WYSIWYG development for all types of components.

-Declarative development tools for adding components to the user interface, including the creation of declarative components, a property inspector, extensible component palette, and data control palette.

-Reusability features – several features for maximizing reusability, including the creation of task flows, ADF Libraries, and declarative components.

4.   Binding Business Services Components to the User Interface

Oracle JDeveloper provides a very easy way to bind components from the Business Services layer to your Controller and View layers using an innovative binding layer approach. The Data Control Palette provides a view into the Business Services layer.

5.    Technology choice

Oracle ADF lets the developer choose multiple technologies for each of the layers of the application and does not enforce a specific technology or a specific development style on the developer.

The other important features of Oracle ADF over Other Frameworks which makes it unique among other Java EE frameworks are:

1.     End-to-End Solution – Oracle ADF doesn’t focus on just one layer of the Java EE architecture. ADF provides an integrated and complete solution for every Java EE layer from the view layer and data-bindings, through the business services and data access; as well as support for every development life-cycle phase from inception through support.

2.     Development Environment – Many of the other Java EE frameworks lack strong integrated support by development tools. Oracle JDeveloper provides visual aids and a declarative approach to minimize the need to write framework code, making it a perfect tool for building Oracle ADFbased applications. This declarative development approach also reduces the learning curve for developers familiar with 4GL-style tools. Developers who wish to use another IDE, such as Eclipse, are able to do so with built-in features provided in Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipsepackaging and relying on ADF’s support for the Java EE standards.

3.     Platform Independence – Other frameworks lock developers into a specific software vendor. The Oracle ADF runtime, however, can be installed on various Java EE compliant application servers and business services can connect to any SQL-92 compliant database.

4.     Metadata-Driven – All layers of the Oracle ADF framework offer declarative options for development, configured from XML metadata, while accommodating custom coding wherever necessary. You can choose to use all or part of the framework in the applications you build, making the application components much more reusable and flexible. The use of metadata also enables rules for data bound fields to be specified at the model layer. Labels, validation, and tooltip properties can be specified in the metadata for ADF data bindings - those properties are utilized independent of the user interface implementation. 

5.     Improved developer productivity: The declarative nature of ADF improves the developer's productivity, allowing users to focus on the business logic of the application, rather than focusing on technology complexity.

6.     Rich Internet Application (RIA) and Web 2.0 enablement: ADF Rich Client has over 150 rich user interface components, including various graphs and charts, enabled with Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX). These are model aware components, which can be easily wired to your business data and make your web pages production ready.

7.     Technology choice: Oracle ADF lets the developer choose multiple technologies for each of the layers of the application and does not enforce a specific technology or a specific development style on the developer.

8.     Technology Commitment - It is important to note that Oracle ADF is the technology choice for the Oracle next generation set of enterprise applications – Oracle Fusion Applications – and is in continuous use for internal development purposes. The product is used to develop Portal applications, wireless applications, and web applications, and therefore provides a committed, supported, and consistent technology stack.

9.     Reference architecture: The enterprise applications built using ADF inherit the layered architecture of the underlying ADF stack, without leaving a chance for you to go wrong on choosing the right architecture.

10.   Scalable architecture: ADF is shipped with a lot of tuning options to meet the increased load of application in production. You are free to override the default tuning parameters based on the usage pattern of the application.

11.   Modular architecture: The Oracle ADF framework supports modular architecture for enterprise scale applications. Multiple modules can be bundled together to build a complete composite ADF application. 

                These modules are also reusable across multiple ADF applications.