Oracle is pleased to announce the donation of ADF Faces, a rich set of UI components based on the JavaServer Faces specification, to the Apache Software Foundation. This donation will be licensed under the Apache 2.0 license. What this project will be called in the future will soon be determined by the Apache MyFaces community. By supporting JSF and MyFaces Oracle is hoping that more vendors are going to join and strengthen the Faces community.

Why should J2EE / Web application developers care?

This is going to give a boost to the JavaServer Faces technology as well as the MyFaces project. The donated code comes with great functionality out of the box such as: file upload support, client-side validation, partial rendering of a page (AJAX-style), data tables, hierarchical tables, color/date pickers, progress indicators, menu tabs/buttons, internationalization and accessibility. This donation starts with more than 100 components which have already been thoroughly tested and come with high quality documentation.

For more information visit:

• Oracle ADF Faces Components page
• An overview of Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF)
• otazi.blogspot.com

Something tells me that Tim Shadel does not give a flying chili bean ;-)

Oracle has done a really good job of developing a rich set of JSF components. However, Oracle's licensing policy for ADF used to be confusing at best. Open Sourcing ADF is great news because it is going to help create a library of components that is both rich in functionality and of commercial quality.

Is it possible for the vendors to make the emitted HTML code human readable? I believe vs.net does it much better than any JSF tools now.

Compact code makes the page smaller

Dmitry
Coldbeans

Is it possible for the vendors to make the emitted HTML code human readable? I believe vs.net does it much better than any JSF tools now.

MyFaces used to have a pretty print function, on component level, but it was mainly omitted and ignored in the recent past.

I dont know the current status of this, but I think it has been dropped, but having pretty print on component level is imho rather ugly and either is done better on a deeper level (servlet) or done by the browser (for instance the excellent code formatting plugin of Mozilla)

I think we once wrote a filter that does it. Was quite popular among our development teams to see their generated and debug their javascript...

It is not only ugly looking, it is also error prone.
The problem is that JavaScript developers and Java developers does not understand each other's areas and can't invent desirable interaction.

Is it possible for the vendors to make the emitted HTML code human readable? I believe vs.net does it much better than any JSF tools now.

I assume that you mean in context of ADF Faces. By default when you run a page using ADF Faces, ADF Faces generates the out put (in HTML) in an optimized fashion - compressing the HTML code to what you would call unreadable code. Setting the debug parameter to true on the <debug-output> tag (in adf-faces-config.xml) will make the runtime produce well formated and readable HTML.

  <debug-output>true</debug-output>

This will help you with the readable HTML out put, and to remove the content compression that by deafult look like this:

<td class="x10"> some text </td>

to:

<td class="af_selectInputText"> some text </td>

You set the following context parameter in your web.xml file:

<context-param>
  <param-name>
   oracle.adfinternal.view.faces.DISABLE_CONTENT_COMPRESSION
  </param-name>
  <param-value>true</param-value>
</context-param>

Cheers,
Jonas

It is a significant moment in the JSF history. The most advanced component library for now becomes Open Source. Let's see what happens next.

--
Sergey : jsfTutorials.net

I looked at ADF for a project recently - but the licensing immediately turned me away, and I made do with myface's tomahawk components.
("made do" is not really appropriate as the tomahawk components are excellent)

Avoiding lock-in (either at compile time or via licensing) is at the fore-front of people's decision making process these days.

anyway: thanks oracle

ps: has anyone used the facelets ADF support? does everything work?

There is some really handy looking components
(see the core component documentation)

My main question is about interoperability with other JSF components (i.e. tomahawk etc)

cheers.

There is some really handy looking components (see the core taglib documentation) My main question is about interoperability with other JSF components (i.e. tomahawk etc)cheers.

And what do you mean under interoperability for JSF components?

Dmitry

There is some really handy looking components (see the core taglib documentation) My main question is about interoperability with other JSF components (i.e. tomahawk etc)cheers.

And what do you mean under interoperability for JSF components?Dmitry

JSF components most of the times work together in a way that you can mix and blend them as you like, and all of them use the same infrastructure (events, backing beans, validators etc...)
but sometimes this does not work as expected due to bugs. There for instance used to be an issue between MyFaces Tomahawk and ADF which has been fixed recently.

There is some really handy looking components (see the core taglib documentation) My main question is about interoperability with other JSF components (i.e. tomahawk etc)cheers.

Bruno Baranda just yesterday to my knowledge fixed an issue with the interoperability between tomahawk and ADF, it should work now (no guarantee, I have not tested them yet, but there was an open issue which now is fixed in the trunk)

There is some really handy looking components (see the core taglib documentation) components

They may be good but they looks ugly. Does someone know if its possible to change their css without recoding?

There is some really handy looking components (see the core component documentation) components

They may be good but they looks ugly. Does someone know if its possible to change their css without recoding?

I checked the examples and they are skinnable with two themes integrated by default. And I agree the old oracle skin, which ADF still uses is somewhat, a matter of taste.
The other one looks way better. (never liked the old oracle Theme, thank god JDeveloper did not use it anymore)

One of the features of ADF Faces is support for skins.
So if you don't like the two skins that come out of the box you can just develop your own skin.
Here is a how-to to get you started
http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/jdev/101/howtos/adfskins/index.html

Avoiding lock-in (either at compile time or via licensing) is at the fore-front of people's decision making process these days.

On the forefront of my decision making are usually things like feature set, functionality and total cost and most important time-to-market and manageability. If it means buying a license or complying with a license that I do find "ethical challenging" I can bear that about as easy as relying on the open source community too take some of their codebase to, say, the next jvm version or the next j2ee stack.

Avoiding lock-in (either at compile time or via licensing) is at the fore-front of people's decision making process these days.

On the forefront of my decision making are usually things like feature set, functionality and total cost and most important time-to-market and manageability.

Avoiding lock-in is an important part of manageability with a sufficiently long-lived project.

Has anyone used ADF with portlets [JSR-168 portlets]?
Does it work with BEA Portal and/or WSRP?

I asked this question of Oracle Technical Support. (Actually I asked if their ADF Faces file upload worked in a JSR-168 Portlet.) Their response was that the latest version of Oracle Portal (10.1.4) does not support using ADF Faces in a JSR-168 Portlet.

Currently we're working on adding portal-like capabilities to ADF. This includes WSRP support (1.0, and when available 2.0), Oracle's PDK-Java support (if you wanted to use OmniPortlet, WebClipping, or any other PDK-Java portlet in the ADF world), Oracle's PL/SQL portlet support (if you wanted to re-use a PL/SQL portlet in an ADF application).
While JSR 168 and WSRP don't support inter-portlet communication, you'll be able to wire Faces components to PDK-Java portlets and drive portlets from any Faces component.

We're also working on exposing ADF Faces pages through WSRP, adding customization capabilities to ADF pages, as well as content integration capabilities.

Hope this sheds some light on the ADF-portal roadmap.

Peter Moskovits
Oracle Portal Product Management

I'm not sure what "portal-like capabilities" means.

I thought that I would be able to use ADF Faces to write a JSR-168 portlet the same way I can use Oracle's modified Struts library to write a (proprietary) Struts portlet.

I've found that it's better to write a standalone Struts application and invoke it in a Portlet through an iframe rather than live with the limitations of Oracle's Struts Portlets. The iframe makes integration with other portlets messy, but it can be done.

Is this going to be the situation with ADF Faces too, or will I be able to use ADF Faces in portlets?

Their response was that the latest version of Oracle Portal (10.1.4) does not support using ADF Faces in a JSR-168 Portlet.

I'm a bit surprised, since Oracle Portal (10.1.4) only consist of a database patch, which lets you specificy a WSRP provider as the portlet source. It is my understanding that you have to create a JSR-168 enabled portlet (for example using Tapestry 4.0) and deploy this portlet in a container that supports this standard. Oracle has an "JSR-168 portlet container" package which you can install on their Appserver (v9.0.4 or higher). So what I'm saying/thinking is that Oracle Portal 10.1.4 delivers WSRP. Support for JSR-168 is a different matter, and solved in the way I described earlier.

I'm pretty confused about the future of Oracle Portal and when it will support certain standards too. I thought 10.1.4 was going to support JSR-168 and WSRP portlets.

To further cloud things, Oracle support told me that the next major release of Oracle AS would break out Oracle Portal from the rest of their J2EE stack. It sounded like the installation would change. Now you have three installation options: Portal & Wireless, Infrastructure, and J2EE App. Server. Apparently Portal will be its own installation seperate from the J2EE stack and infrastructure. Making it more modular is a good thing. You can reuse an existing J2EE stack and Infrastructure for the Portal, if I understand them correctly.

This looks like really great stuff. Thanks Ora! :-)

This looks like really great stuff. Thanks Ora! :-)

Developers love free stuffs. They've been given free stuff and what do they do? Keep whinning and complaining. Have you guys forgotten the good manners you were thought(I hope) by your mom? Humble yourself and learn to say thank you.

Gavin, thanks for bringing color to this thread. And my thanks go to Oracle for such a nice product.

J

Looks like the best JSF component set is out !!! so what are we gonna do know... If we consider adf existing components, there is no more need to overload the component set... so lets use it, and move to another technology !

Stephan

Looks like the best JSF component set is out !!! so what are we gonna do know... If we consider adf existing components, there is no more need to overload the component set... so lets use it, and move to another technology ! Stephan

There is still lots to be done, even if there is a huge number of components out, more skins, better compatibility between the component sets, lots of work on the framework level.
There are still many new components which can be integrated, especially in the ajax arena the javascript guys of dojo and prototype are doing a great job.

And as well, the last word on the ADF donation is not spoken yet, it needs to go through an incubator project which will take a while (what is the status on that one?)

Werner,

We are going to post a proposal on the MyFaces mailing list first (most likely tomorrow - 1/26) to gather the necessary support and posted it a couple of days later on the incubator mailing list for approval. Stay tuned we're almost there.

First off, indeed, we owe Oracle. It is decisions like these that ultimately push adoption. Without components, JSF boils down to the same plummary as Struts. (well kinda, it's certainly equally annoying)
But... when is this feast going to happen? Forgive my asking but I've seen it being announced already on numerous occasions but NEVER with a date/timeframe. It was e.g. announced at JavaPolis beginning December 2005. We're almosty 2 months further and as of today I don't even see it in the incubator.
--> How long before we can really get to download & play with them? April? May?

Side issue: will Oracle be puttig any effort in Eclipse integration? (e.g. migration of their JDev JSF "plugin" into Eclipse WTP or to a separate plugin set?) If the aim is "mass adoption", I think this won't certainly harm given the % of Eclipse Users.

First off, indeed, we owe Oracle. It is decisions like these that ultimately push adoption. Without components, JSF boils down to the same plummary as Struts. (well kinda, it's certainly equally annoying)But... when is this feast going to happen? Forgive my asking but I've seen it being announced already on numerous occasions but NEVER with a date/timeframe. It was e.g. announced at JavaPolis beginning December 2005. We're almosty 2 months further and as of today I don't even see it in the incubator. --> How long before we can really get to download &amp; play with them? April? May? Side issue: will Oracle be puttig any effort in Eclipse integration? (e.g. migration of their JDev JSF "plugin" into Eclipse WTP or to a separate plugin set?) If the aim is "mass adoption", I think this won't certainly harm given the % of Eclipse Users.

Be patient, these things take time :) The source is already available for evaluation, and has been for quite some time. An Incubator proposal is currently being reviewed by the MyFaces community and as soon as everyone is happy it will be sent to the Apache Incubator PMCs. The proposal contains a link to the source - http://wiki.apache.org/myfaces/adfproposal.

Regarding adoption I totally agree that a good plug-in for Eclipse make sense, and there is already effort to solved this, and Oracle is leading the Eclipse JSF tools project (sub project of the WTP) - http://www.eclipse.org/webtools/jsf/index.html.

- Jonas
ADF Faces team

First off, indeed, we owe Oracle. It is decisions like these that ultimately push adoption. Without components, JSF boils down to the same plummary as Struts. (well kinda, it's certainly equally annoying)But... when is this feast going to happen? Forgive my asking but I've seen it being announced already on numerous occasions but NEVER with a date/timeframe. It was e.g. announced at JavaPolis beginning December 2005. We're almosty 2 months further and as of today I don't even see it in the incubator. --> How long before we can really get to download &amp; play with them? April? May? Side issue: will Oracle be puttig any effort in Eclipse integration? (e.g. migration of their JDev JSF "plugin" into Eclipse WTP or to a separate plugin set?) If the aim is "mass adoption", I think this won't certainly harm given the % of Eclipse Users.

Let me address your questions:

- When is ADF Faces going to be available?

The Apache MyFaces community is reviewing the source code as we speak. It is available under:
http://people.apache.org/~bdudney/apache-drop.zip
Feel free to play with it and provide feedback through the MyFaces mailing lists. Also we are going to submit an incubation proposal to the incubator PMC within a week. So keep your ear on the ground.

- Will Oracle be putting any effort in Eclipse integration?

Absolutely, in case you haven't seen this yet, Oracle is leading 3 Eclipse projects including the JSF project:
http://www.eclipse.org/webtools/jsf/index.html
We are also going to make sure that the Eclipse plug-in exposes the ADF Faces components just like JDeveloper does.

This is great news - a set of quality components like these released as open source should certainly help takeup of JSF.

I look forward to working with Oracle ADF components. Thanks.

I am currently using Tomahawk, which is good but lacks documentation.

Has anyone used both Tomahawk and Oracle ADF components who can compare/contrast the approach/experience/quality?

There is a lot of overlap between the two.

I look forward to working with Oracle ADF components. Thanks.I am currently using Tomahawk, which is good but lacks documentation. Has anyone used both Tomahawk and Oracle ADF components who can compare/contrast the approach/experience/quality?There is a lot of overlap between the two.

Cannot speak for ADF, but Tomahawk is more a set of components than anything else, (no framework layer underneath except some shared code and the resource handling)

the best documentation for Tomahawk, as sad as it is (due to lack of time on the hands of most devs) probably are the example webapps.
There are most tags described in the site builds however so expect them to be documented better once the maven stuff is full through and a new site layout is online (which people work on as we speak)
Also additional component documentation can be found in the MyFaces wiki.

Most components are very easy to use.
Tomahawk sort of is a mix of components by various authors which slowly has grown over time.
The code itself uses or shares many things, but each component more or less is self contained and basically shares the foundations of resource loading and some other base things with with the others (to save code on the raw JSF API)

Generally it is rather sad that the documentation is in a state as it shouldn´t be due to the lack of time of most developers involved, but things have been improving tremendously in the last year, the MyFaces wiki really makes a difference, and probably the moving from ANT+Forrest as main documentation and build tool towards Maven2 will give it another boost. And if someone wants to donate documentation, every helping hand is welcome.

But the documentation problem is somewhat an inherent problem generally with JSF, all the info basically is there, but scattered over multiple articles (many of them again can be found in jsftutorials.net), and there is the specs.
But what would be needed would be a really good free starters book on the net. One cornerstone of javas popularity was that Sun early at the beginning dropped a full introductional book onto the net which basically gave everyone a free and very good ride into the language. Something like that is really missing in JSF, the books availabe generally are good, but a free very good introductory book on the net would be heavens sent.

I am a big fan of ADF but I haven't used it any real project just because of licencing issue.
thank you Oracle.

Using ADF Faces in a NON-ADF application (using Tiles+Spring+Hibernate) and it works like a champ...just two extra JARs and a little more configuration and whamo! 100+ JSF components.

...almost...

there was some custom development required, for example with <af:table/>, to support sorting in the DB when not binding to BC4J (now called ADF Business Components).