Oracle today launched the Fusion Middleware 11g suite. It represents the first major release of the Fusion middleware platform since the company closed the deal last year to buy application infrastructure vendor BEA Systems. Is it a big step for JavaServer Faces? Along with a new version of Oracle JDeveloper 11g IDE, Oracle released tools that support a Model View Controller (MVC) pattern supporting the JavaServer Faces Web application framework. The company's version of the developer framework is known as the Oracle Application Development Framework. Oracle said these moves make it easier for developers to create and deploy Java EE 5, Web 2.0 and Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (Ajax) and other Rich Internet Applications. Read more here

Is it a big step for JavaServer Faces?

To be fair the Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g release is way more bigger than just the JSF related features ;-) But to address the JSF perspective there are indeed a lot of innovations around JSF coming from Oracle in ADF. Specifically: ADF Taskflow *An extension of the JSF controller that allows you to navigate not just from page to page but also from/to methods. *Flows can also be used inside other flows. *You can create bounded flows that have their own transaction and memory scope. *These bounded flows can be used in other flows or even inside a region inside a JSF page. ADF Faces * Over a 150 Ajax enabled JSF components Including graphs, hierarchy viewer, calendars, maps, dashboard and more * A templating solution for JSF * Push from the server to the client And there is much more. A good starting point to learn about this is with this set of demos: http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/jdev/viewlets/viewlet.html

I just saw some of the demos. JSF components are just too good. Charts are amazing.. Are these JSF2 compliant? What is the possibility of integrating with Rich Faces 3.3.1? Great work.