Oracle has stripped down their Application Developer Framework to a core set of utilities and are releasing it to the community as a 'free of cost' offering called Oracle ADF Essentials.

So, what exactly are we looking at here? First, we're getting about 150 web components based on JavaServer Faces, along with a feature enhanced JSF controller known as the ADF controller. We're also getting a collection of ADF Binding and ADF Business components to help connect UIs to business components and business components to various back-end business services.

Here’s how Oracle trumped it all up in the September 24th press release:

· Oracle ADF Essentials enables the global developer community to leverage the core capabilities of Oracle Application Development Framework free of cost.

· Oracle ADF Essentials is standards-based and deploys on GlassFish Server Open Source Edition, giving developers the ability to adopt and extend Oracle ADF functionality to new environments.

· To simplify the developer experience and deliver rich functionality, Oracle JDeveloper provides visual and declarative development capabilities for Oracle ADF Essentials.

· Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse is intended to support Oracle ADF Essentials in a future release.

Of course, it's nice to know that a developer who has worked on these components in an Oracle-only environment can now transfer his skills and experience anywhere, regardless of whether a future employer has paid any Oracle licensing fees. But still, these types of components should never have been fee based in the first place. Developing user interfaces with Java has always been a pain, and the learning curve around JSF has scared off more than a few Java professionals. Perhaps if Oracle had embraced more of a 'freeware' based approach from the start with these feature enhanced JavaServer Faces components, the community wouldn't have seen so many JSF defectors.

But assuming the horse hasn't already left the barn, it is nice to witness Oracle finally sharing their ADF components, license free, with the greater Java community.

The other good news that comes along with the ADF Essentials announcement is the fact that Oracle's JDeveloper is also being made available as part of the package. JDeveloper is actually a pretty fun development environment to work in, and version 11g is lightning fast given the way it was built using OSGi technology.

So all in all, it's good news from Oracle, and it's an indication that the people that are pulling the strings behind the scenes are looking out for the Java community's best interests. It's just sad that an announcement like this didn't happen a year or two sooner.

In other news, JBoss' RichFaces continues to rock.

Oracle ADF Essentials

Similar story was of Toplink, by the time it became eclipse link majority market share was captured by Hibernate. ADF is a different framework, as far as I think there's not any open source framework like ADF out there in the market, so it'll be good to try it out now.

Thanks for sharing.

For Web based application development, JSF provides  a great framework.

However, the JSF component market only has one sensible choice, open source Primefaces. Check out the community's excitement and experince the joy with Primefaces powered JSF development! 

It's nice to see Oracle offer ADF for free, this must really help corporate developing shops, perhaps some SUN shine is flickering within the corridors of Oracle's matrix... 

Superb news.

Just the other day, I showed a collegue of mine ADF Faces and it was impressive. However it quickly turned to is it free? And I informed him that it was not.

Seeing now that it has been made free is really good news. I agree that at least a part of the components and framework should have been free from beginning.

Hopefully some of Sun's Open Source effect is rubbing on Oracle!

Regards,

Padmarag

http://blog.padmarag.com

Good news. But according to Oracle it supports only WebLogic, WebSphere and GlassFish and if you want to build highly available solution (i.e. if you need clustering) you have to pay for the full ADF licence. Are there any plans to support JBoss or Tomcat?

Oracle is looking into certification of ADF Essentials on other server as well in future releases.

Note that "not certified" doesn't mean it doesn't work - it just means that Oracle didn't had time to test these combinations.

For example see this blog about deployment on Tomcat:

https://blogs.oracle.com/adfthoughts/entry/running_adf_essentials_in_tomcat

Is it the easiest way of getting popular is just becoming an Oracle/Sun basher?

I don't see the point there. If you don't like it, don't use it.

I think it's fair enough to be fee based when ADF was launched. Though I am no fan of JSP technologies, Oracle ADF was there when there JSF components weren't that mature. When it was launched, it was ranked among the best ones. That time open source JSF from Apache was like a sissy. And it was there to replace Oracle Forms, and also provided with good form designer. So some of your arguments isn't valid, except when you only use today's landscape.

+1

I was planning on being less polite, but your message nicely sums up what I wanted to say.

T