The Future of ADF and Jdeveloper

Stuart Fleming

We are starting to use ADF (Jdeveloper) as a replacement of an Oracle Legacy product.  However, the recent events of Oracle getting rid of Java has led my manager to reconsider using ADF.  There is also an industry shift towards web-based development tools.

He has interpreted the statement of direction that they will be working mostly on javascript solutions, and will not be updating functionality in the future.  He has also commented that Oracle has not updated the statement of direction for ADF since the Java outsource, leaving their clients in the dark about it.

I contended that I thought Jdeveloper is now a mature technology, therefore did not need massive upgrades especially since many upgrades require significant resources.   Jdeveloper does just about everything, so it doesn't need much, except tweaks.

What is the future direction given all the changes?  Our development window is 20 years.  We need something that will be around that long.

Thank you,

Stuart

Shay Shmeltzer-Oracle

HI Stuart,

If you know someone that can tell us exactly what would be the status of various technologies in 20 years from now, we would love to hire them. ;-)

Oracle didn't "get rid" of Java - rather we are looking for a better ways to work with the community on it and open source communities seem to be the right direction. You might want to watch the replays of keynote from JavaOne to get more info on that.

This doesn't have an influence on ADF though.

ADF is not part of what we contribute to open source, but rather a framework that we developed (and are continuing to develop) internally.

As you mentioned - ADF is a mature technology with lots of capabilities, and while we are continuing to develop and enhance it (see latest 12.2.1.3 release two weeks ago) - you shouldn't expect major changes in architecture going forward - Oracle ADF was and will continue to be a server side Java EE based framework. We are mostly focused on enhancing current functionality focusing on areas such as more advanced REST functionality in the ADF BC layer, and performance tweaks in the ADF Faces layer (leveraging more client capabilities).

Another thing to keep in mind is that internally, Oracle is a heavy users of Oracle ADF with major parts of our business relying on it. Oracle SaaS applications such as HCM, CRM, ERP and others are all written and continue to be developed with Oracle ADF. There are various other Oracle products and systems built with ADF (such as the http://support.oracle.com system), not to mention the many customers that are using this technology to develop their systems.

Your manager is correct however that there is an industry trends toward leveraging more client centric technologies in the UI layer - specifically HTML5/JavaScript - as a replacement for server generated UIs. These new technologies, just like any other technology, have some good and some challenging aspects. And we leave it up to our customers to decide if they need to switch their UI technology architecture to meet new business needs.

If you decide that you want to leverage an HTML5/JavaScript based UI for your new project - have a look at Oracle JET - which is Oracle's open source offering in this space. We use it to create the UI in many of our cloud services.

One thing to note though is that while Oracle JET and other JavaScript/HTML focused frameworks provide a solution for UI development, they rely on having a set of backend services that access data and implement business logic exposing REST services.

These UI frameworks don't provide that layer!

The nice thing about ADF BC is that it does provide that layer. In fact you can take existing ADF BC business object you created and with a click of a button expose them as REST services with a full set of functionality that includes : pagination, query by example, sorting, relationship management and security all without coding !

So if you are interested in picking up a new UI technology, you might still want to leverage ADF as a way to build your backend services.

Stuart Fleming

Shay,

As always, thank you for your input.

Best Regards,

Stuart

Vladimir Zhilyaev

Thanks for your full answer, Shay.

Could you tell what future will be for next releases of Oracle BPM ?

Is UI for BPM still ADF ? Or you plan implement native support for Oracle JET ? (I mean BPM Workspace and auto-generated forms)

Vladimir

Shay Shmeltzer-Oracle

This question will be better answered on the BPM forum.

As far as I know there is no plan to change the UI for the BPM product.

In fact if you look at the new Process Cloud Service interface - it is also based on Oracle ADF:

https://cloud.oracle.com/process

Vladimir Zhilyaev

I think I will not get answer on this question in BPM forum.

As far as I know all active BPM forum members don't work in Oracle and likely haven't any insider info.

Vladimir

Stuart Fleming

Shay,

In a recent meeting my manager had the Oracle "higher ups" were surprised that we would be starting new development with ADF.  They recommended Oracle Jet, but that isn't and end-to-end solution.  If you reach out to me privately, I can provide you their names.

I don't think Oracle has a clear message -- and that is going to drive customers away to a vendor who doesn't just abandon their platform, but works with it....that was what ADF was supposed to do, but it looks like that might not be the case any more.

Stuart

Shay Shmeltzer-Oracle

Stuart, as I indicated above - Oracle JET is indeed a great solution for a more client centric UI layer - which is what many customers choose to focus on when developing new apps.

However, if ADF provides you with a UI experience you are happy with there is no reason not to use it.

As for the comment about "just abandon their platform" , I'm not sure what this is based on - we released a new ADF version a couple of months back, we are still developing new features, and the product still works great for us and for other customers.