Andrej Koelewijn

I just downloaded Jdeveloper 10.1.3 Early Access 1 to see what ADF improvements have been implemented. The list of new ADF features is pretty big. ADF data binding is now supported for ADF Faces (JSF), control hints can be specified for all data models, whereas previously you could only do this for data models based on Business Components, and many more improvements.

On the project I’m currently working on (dutch) we’re using ADF data bindings to bind a POJO data model to a Swing GUI so I’m especially interested in any improvement in this area. The current production version of ADF has some serious limitations when you use it in combination with a POJO data model. For example, you can’t easily disable a JComboBox. If you disable it, ADF will automatically enable it, because the underlying datacontrol is editable. And this is something you can’t change in the current ADF release: POJO data controls are always editable. This is one of the things which has been improved in the new version of ADF (see Control hints).

After running JDeveloper 10.1.3-EA1 for only a couple of minutes it’s pretty obvious ADF has changed quite extensively. Data controls have a lot more properties where you can specify label text, visibility, etc. I’ve made some screenshots to show the enhancements. First a screenshot displaying the properties of a POJO based data control attribute:

When you double click the attribute in the data control structure view the following dialog is displayed. Here you can edit control hints, validation rules (more later), and custom properties:

The following screenshot shows the rule editor. This has been available for Business Components for a long time, but now you can create rules for POJO attributes. Very nice, actually better than i expected.

The rule is stored in the xml file created for the data control. Also new is the fact that you can store messages and labels in a resource bundle. Again, this functionality previously was only available for Business Components. The following screenshot shows the project files, including the generated resource bundle:

One last screenshot, showing a data control in the structure view. You can see that the rule is also displayed in the structure view. You can edit the rule in the property editor.

So it looks like the next release of ADF will be a great improvement, and ADF finally supports data model frameworks other than Business Components. This also means that many of the current benefits of Business Components over Toplink (business rules, display controls) will also be available in Toplink (and other data models).

My only complaint is that Oracle should release production versions more often. I had expected Oracle to release a production version this week, but instead we get another preview/early access. Is Oracle going for a Google strategy, forever releasing beta’s?