Oracle ADF Real World Developer’s Guide

This is the "must have" book for ADF beginners.Strongly recommend it.

This is the same as reading Oracle's user guide

Hopefully if you are considering this book, you are already programming in java and you know what a Model-View-Controller [MVC] pattern is. Oracle has built its ADF to implement MVC at a high level of structure. The code packages are myriad and complex, but if you keep in mind the MVC diagram on page 10 and if you refer frequently to it while reading the rest of the text, then the latter can be far more comprehensible.The book starts with the building and running of an application that does not need you writing any java code. Don't take that too literally. Needless to say, this is rather artificial but still impressive. As a practical consideration, customising your company's business logic into ADF will almost surely necessitate custom java code.A major advantage of ADF is the use of declarative programming. This approach differs fundamentally from standard step by step coding in java [or C++ or C#]. When declarative programming becomes possible, as it is here in the Oracle framework, coding productivity tends to rise and bug rates tend to fall. The visual approach is far more intuitive to a non-programmer and maybe even to a programmer like yourself. It stuffs the complexity behind the declarations. The book goes into many pages about small details of ADF, but if you step back, the biggest advantage to ADF seems to me to be the declarative programming.Unsurprisingly, the book also has extensive coverage of how relational databases [ie. Oracle's 11g] can be used within ADF. In part, this is to explain how to use structures like the Entity object to model tables. But there are also prolonged explanations of the user facing side, with graphical constructs like the View object that you can code to help the user see the data. Oracle has invested a lot in these. So for example, the View object can write queried data results into XML format and it can do the inverse, of parsing XML documents.Another advantage of ADF is how it extends the capabilities of Java Server Faces for dealing with navigations betweeen web pages. While JSF is quite capable, the text points out that developers may need more functionality. The promise is that ADF provides this, as suggested by the code snippets furnished by the author.

I'm half way through my review of "Oracle ADF Real World Developer's Guide" by Jobinesh Purushothaman - unfortunately some work deadlines de-railed me from having completed my review by now but here goes. First thing, Jobinesh works in the Oracle Product Management team with me, so is a colleague. That declaration aside, its clear that this is someone who has done the "real world" side of ADF development and that comes out in the book. Having written and ADF Book myself, I'm aware of the challenge in documenting a huge development framework whilst trying to pitch it at a range of developers..In this book he addresses both the newbies and the experience developers alike. He introduces the ADF building blocks like entity objects and view obejcts, but also goes into some of the nitty gritty details as well. There is a pro and con to this approach; having only just learned about an entity or view object, you might then be blown away by some of the lower details of coding or lifecycle. In that respect, you might consider this a book which you could read 3 or 4 times; maybe skipping some elements in the first read but on the next read you have a better grounding to learn the more advanced topics.One of the key issues he addresses is breaking down what happens behind the scenes. At first, this may not seem important since you trust the framework to do everything for you - but having an understanding of what goes on is essential as you move through development. For example, page 58 he explains the full lifecycle of what happens when you execute a query. I think this is a great feature of his book. You see this elsewhere, for example he explains the full lifecycle of what goes on when a page is accessed : which files are involved,the JSF lifecycle etc.He also sprinkes the book with some best practices and advice which go beyond the standard features of ADF and really hits the mark in terms of "real world" advice.So in summary, this is a great ADF book, well written and covering a mass of information. If you are brand new to ADF its still valid given it does start with the basics although I'd be a little wary in giving this book to a complete newbie. Of course, you might want to read the book 2 or 3 times, skipping the advanced stuff on the first read. For those who have some basics already then its going to be an awesome way to cement your knowledge and take it to the next levels. And for the ADF experts, you are still going to pick up some great ADF nuggets.Advice: every ADF developer should have one!

Best book in ADF