Tuesday, May 19, 2015

JHeadstart

Generation of Complete Web Tier Using Oracle JHeadstart

As you'll learn throughout the rest of this guide, Oracle JDeveloper 11g and Oracle ADF give you a productive, visual environment for building richly functional, database-centric Java EE applications with a maximally declarative development experience. However, if you are used to working with tools like Oracle Designer that offer complete user interface generation based on a higher-level application structure definition, you may be looking for a similar facility for your Java EE development. If so, then the Oracle JHeadstart 11g application generator may be of interest to you. It is an additional extension for JDeveloper that uses Oracle ADF's built-in features to offer complete web-tier generation for your application modules. Starting with the data model you've designed for your ADF business service, you use the integrated editors that JHeadstart adds to the JDeveloper environment to iteratively refine a higher-level application structure definition. These editors controls the functionality and organization of the view objects' information in your generated web user interface. By checking boxes and choosing various options from dropdown lists, you describe a logical hierarchy of pages that can include multiple styles of search regions, list of values (LOVs) with validation, shuttle controls, nested tables, and other features. These declarative choices use terminology familiar to Oracle Forms and Designer users, further simplifying web development. Based on the application structure definition, you generate a complete web application that automatically implements the best practices described in this guide, easily leveraging the most sophisticated features that Oracle ADF and JSF have to offer.

Whenever you run the JHeadstart application generator, rather than generating code, it creates (or regenerates) all of the declarative view and controller layer artifacts of your Oracle ADF-based web application. These artifacts use the ADF Model layer and work with your ADF application module as their business service. The generated files are the same kinds you produce when using JDeveloper's built-in visual editors. The key difference is that JHeadstart creates them in bulk, based on a higher-level definition that you can iteratively refine until the generated pages match your end users' requirements as closely as possible. The generated files include:

    JSF Pages with databound ADF Faces UI components

    ADF Model page definition XML files describing each page's data bindings

    JSF navigation rules to handle page flow

    Resource files containing localizable UI strings

Once you've generated a maximal amount of your application's web user interface, you can spend your time using JDeveloper's productive environment to tailor the results or to concentrate your effort on additional showcase pages that need special attention. Once you've modified a generated page, you can adjust a setting to avoid regenerating that page on subsequent runs of the application generator. Of course, since both the generated pages and your custom designed ones leverage the same ADF Faces UI components, all of your pages automatically inherit a consistent look and feel. For more information on how to get a fully functional trial of JHeadstart for evaluation, including details on pricing, support, and additional services, see the JHeadstart page on the Oracle Technology Network at

No comments:

Post a Comment