Last Updated: August 28, 2003

Oracle JDeveloper
What Is Next?
Oracle Application Development Framework
Productivity with Choice
Oracle ADF Features
Other New Features
Availability
Summary

In the fall of 2001, Oracle introduced Oracle9i JDeveloper, a completely rewritten and 100% pure Java version of the product. JDeveloper has since become an award-winning Java development tool, offering a complete and integrated experience for Java developers. Several product releases in 2002 and 2003 have further improved the overall development experience and added numerous features, such as Web services and Struts support.

In a single development environment, JDeveloper provides all the tools needed to design, develop, test, debug, tune, deploy, and version J2EE applications and Web services. Furthermore, JDeveloper is a complete SQL and PL/SQL development environment, enabling developers to work on all tiers of their applications.

J2EE has proven itself as a robust and scalable platform for business application development and deployment. While the benefits of standards and portability are clear, the complexity of Java programming and the lack of rapid application development tools have prevented many IT shops from adopting Java.

While modern Java IDEs, such as Oracle9i JDeveloper, offer many developer productivity features, they are still mainly targeted at code driven developers. For example, smart editors can automatically complete code, but developers still need to be able to write and understand the code.

Oracle JDeveloper 10g will provide a visual and declarative approach to Java development. This new approach will offer the ease and productivity previously associated with 4GL tools in an open and standard Java IDE, both improving the development experience for existing Java developers, as well as simplifying the transition to the Java environment for new developers.

Oracle's solution to the ever-increasing complexity of the J2EE platform is the Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF). Oracle ADF makes J2EE development accessible to the broader application development community, much like Windows development became accessible to most developers with the introduction of frameworks like Oracle Forms, PowerBuilder, and Visual Basic.

Based on the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architecture, Oracle ADF lets application developers focus on the business domain rather than on the underlying technologies. By using visual, declarative, and guided-coding techniques, the framework allows application developers who are not necessarily J2EE experts to quickly become productive.

The framework is based on industry-standard J2EE design patterns. Developers manipulate the application's metadata using productive visual tools, while the framework executes the application in the most efficient manner, using these proven patterns.

JDeveloper offers the following visual tools for the framework:

• UML tools to model and generate business logic
• Visual editors to lay out client user interfaces
• Page Flow modeling to define and control navigation between pages
• Drag and drop data binding into user interfaces

Oracle will deliver on its vision of simplifying Java development by evolving proven Oracle technologies such as Business Components for Java, UIX, JClient, and Oracle's MVC Framework. These technologies will be consolidated into one comprehensive and powerful framework, with a consistent user interface that will speak to application developers. Existing BC4J, UIX, and JClient users will be able to take their applications forward with Oracle ADF.

Moving forward, JDeveloper and ADF will embrace JavaServer Faces - an upcoming J2EE standard (JSR-127) that defines a component model for thin client applications. Application developers will then be able to build JavaServer Faces applications using a visual and declarative development environment and a rich set of JavaServer Faces components.

Oracle JDeveloper 10g allows developers to build J2EE applications and Web services either from scratch or by using a J2EE framework (such as Oracle ADF). Whatever implementation is chosen, JDeveloper offers all the productivity tools needed to get the job done, including UML modelers, visual editors, wizards, dialogs, and code editors.

In contrast to traditional development frameworks, Oracle ADF not only makes application development easier and more productive, it is also more flexible, extensible, and based on industry standards.

Oracle ADF offers pluggable technologies for the model, view, and controller, allowing developers to make implementation choices at the various layers of the architecture. With a unique combination of productivity and flexibility, developers can make these technology choices or simply get started with a default set of technologies and not worry about all the available options. Once a technology choice has been made for a project, the environment will adapt itself to show only the relevant options in future user interactions. Developers can extend their applications through custom code, and customize or add to the behavior of the framework using XML metadata and Java code. Finally, the framework is completely based on industry standards. Not only can ADF applications be deployed to any J2EE server, and connect to any SQL database, the framework itself uses standard J2EE APIs, design patterns, code and metadata.

This flexibility is a big improvement over the traditional development frameworks, where developers were forced into a proprietary application model, with little or no possibility to work outside of the environment.

Oracle ADF Features

• Application Navigator
  The new application navigator helps developers see all of their application sources in a simplified organization, showing only relevant components while not presenting implementation files and deployment descriptors. This reduces clutter and improves usability for large application projects.

• Technology Scopes and Application Templates
  Technology Scopes greatly reduce the complexity that developers need to deal with by persisting project technology choices and helping the environment tailor its dialogs to present only the options that are relevant to a given project.
  
  Application Templates simplify the creation of new applications and provide a way to partition applications into tiered projects with associated technology scopes. Instead of manually building each project, developers can now quickly generate a complete foundation along with subprojects and technology scopes.
  


• Drag and Drop Databinding
  The ADF framework provides a consistent drag and drop databinding experience for many different server-side technologies, including ADF Business Components, Oracle9iAS TopLink, Enterprise JavaBeans, Web services, and Plain Old Java Objects (POJOs), through the usage of standard Expression Language (EL) syntax.

• New Visual Editors
  The new visual editor for HTML, JSP, and UIX lets developers design Web pages interactively. The WYSIWYG visual editor is tightly integrated and synchronized with the property inspector, code editor, and structure window, providing an overall superior visual editing experience.

• Visual Page Flow Modeling
  The new visual Page Flow Modeler for Jakarta Struts lets developers build new pages and actions and connect them visually to design the flow of a web user interface.

• Improved IDE Interface
  Optimal usage of screen real estate is critical to developer productivity. The new window management capabilities optimize editor usage, provide editor splitting, manage multiple editor windows, and offer better window docking. Developers can easily switch between different views of their code (eg. switch between code editor and visual editor) as well as split the screen to watch multiple views of the application at the same time.

• Improved Code Editor
  JDeveloper continues to improve coding productivity for hard-core Java programmers. This release includes capabilities to surround code with common coding constructs (if, for, try catch, etc.), quickly access Javadoc with Javadoc popups, highlight syntax and semantic errors, and assist with adding import statements.

• XML Schema Editor
  Brand new in Oracle JDeveloper 10g, the XML Schema Editor displays the structure, contents, and semantics of XML Schemas. The Schema Editor is fully integrated with the Structure Window, Component Palette, and Property Inspector to support the creation and editing of XML Schemas using simple drag-and-drop operations. At the same time, this visual editor is completely synchronized with the XML Schema Definition (XSD) code. The environment allows for simultaneously viewing the code and the visual editor.

• UML Modeling
  Oracle JDeveloper 10g now supports platform independent UML modelers (UML Class, UML Use Case, UML Activity) to capture analysis and requirements, and platform dependent UML profile modelers that are two-way synchronized with the implementation (Java, Enterprise JavaBeans, ADF Business Components, Web services, Database, and Page Flow). An MDA style transformation is supported between UML Class models and Java or ADF Business Components models.
  
  Release 10g introduces Database Schema, Use Case and Page Flow modelers, while the Business Components modeler now includes support for Application Modules and View Objects.
  
  Finally, many usability and scalability enhancements have been implemented for the modelers, including fast autolayout of diagrams, a thumbnail overview, the publication of diagrams in Javadoc format, and the ability to insert links to other diagrams, external files, and generic URLs.

• J2EE and Web Services
  Oracle JDeveloper 10g supports the latest standards in J2EE and Web services, and provides easy-to-use visual tools for developing JavaServer Pages, servlets, Enterprise JavaBeans, and Web services. JDeveloper now also supports the generation of J2EE design patterns such as Data Transfer Object and Session Facade.
  
  The new administration tool for the embedded J2EE server helps manage datasources, JAZN, and other settings for J2EE applications. With the latest release, developers can deploy J2EE applications with a single click to Oracle Application Server, BEA WebLogic, JBoss, and Tomcat.
  
  JDeveloper's Web services support has been improved to handle WS-I Basic Profile compliance testing, UML modeling and visualization of Web services, one-click Web service creation from Java classes, and the creation of complex PL/SQL Web services.

• Integrated OracleAS TopLink Mapping Editor
  JDeveloper has new integrated support for OracleAS TopLink persistence mapping. TopLink developers can now fully customize mappings for Java objects and Enterprise JavaBeans to relational databases, directly inside the JDeveloper IDE.

• Database Development
  The new Database Schema modeler allows developers to capture, create and modify database schema objects using a visual diagram. The definitions of database objects can be included in projects for offline editing. From the diagram or offline objects, JDeveloper generates SQL CREATE or ALTER statements to create new objects or reconcile changes with existing objects.
  
  The Connection Navigator has been improved and now supports materialized views (snapshots) and view logs. In addition, users can create custom filters to restrict the contents displayed in the Connection Navigator.
  
• Audit and Metrics Tools
  JDeveloper's new static code analysis tools help developers write better code. The new audit tools help detect coding convention violations as well as other common coding problems, while the new metrics tools help measure and report on code complexity. Both tools are fully configurable and customizable to work with company or team specific coding standards.

• Improved Team Development
  JDeveloper offers improved source control support for Oracle SCM, CVS, ClearCase, and WebDAV, as well as an improved extension API to support other source control tools. The Compare, Version Tree, History, and Merge tools have been redesigned to simplify the management of large application development projects.

Availability

A Preview Release of Oracle JDeveloper 10g (with Oracle ADF) is available on the Oracle Technology Network. Oracle JDeveloper 10g is planned to go production at the beginning of 2004, after incorporating user feedback from the Preview Release.

JDeveloper will continue to enhance its Java coding capabilities, while at the same time introducing a more visual and declarative development environment. Oracle JDeveloper 10g will provide a single tool that both Java programmers and application developers can utilize to build J2EE applications and Web services better, faster, and at a lower cost.

For more information about Oracle JDeveloper 10g and Oracle ADF, check out Oracle Technology Network.