Monday, April 16, 2012

Book Review: "Oracle JDeveloper 11gR2 Cookbook"

Developing an enterprise application using SOA (i.e., Service Oriented Architecture) is a challenging  task.  With appropriate supporting technologies and tools, it can save you a lot of effort.

The core technology covered in this book is Oracle ADF.  Oracle ADF is an end-to-end Java EE framework for building rich enterprise web and mobile applications based on Java EE services and SOA.  Oracle ADF implements the "plumbing" of your application and abstracts the complexities of Java EE development.   It also takes care of areas such as:
  • Object/Relational mapping
  • Caching
  • Persistence
  • User interface framework
  • Controller layer
  • Binding of business services to user interfaces. 
Unlike other Java frameworks the development experience with Oracle ADF is visual and declarative through the JDeveloper IDE.  From the book, you can find plenty of such examples.

What's Covered?

First, the author has discussed issues that you need to address in the early design and architectural phases of the project:
  • Modularize your application
    • Break up the application in multiple workspaces
    • Divide data model into appropriate application modules
    • Avoid circular dependencies use tools such as Dependency Finder 
  • Make your application easy to extend
    • For example, allow the ability to extend the framework's base classes early on in the development process
  • Set up logging with the right logging framework
    • Choose ODL (Oracle Diagnostics Logging) for its tight integration with WebLogic and JDeveloper
  • Use page template to ensure that pages throughout the application are consistent, and provide a familiar look and feel to the end user
  • Customize the exception error message for your application
  • Use a generic backing bean actions framework to encapsulate common functionality for common JSF page actions
After laying out the foundation, the author then expand the scope of discussion vertically and horizontally. 

Vertically, the book covers different layers of the ADF's MVC architecture and various components in each layer.  Horizontally, it discusses different supporting frameworks or technologies which are used to help you create a successful end-to-end enterprise application:
  • IDE: JDeveloper
  • Integration Framework: Hudson
  • Unit Testing Framework: JUnit
  • Deployment Framework: WebLogic Server
  • Application Monitoring: JRockit Mission Control

Conclusion

This book shows you how to use Oracle JDeveloper and ADF to develop enterprise applications using SOA.

In roughly 400 pages, it tries to cover topics that are usually covered by large volumes of documentation from the following areas:
However, the author has done a good job of presenting a complex subject in a coherent and easy-to-read manner.  He has also provides many useful recipes which can be eventually incorporated into your application implementations.  Overall, it provides a useful reference for all developers starting enterprise application development with Oracle ADF.

Besides the book, the author also writes on his blogs JDeveloper Frequently Asked Questions  and ADF Code Bits.

Reviewed Book


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