OOW & JavaOne 2012: Wednesday

Sunday - Monday - Tuesday - Wednesday - Thursday

 

CON2425 Do It Yourself: Custom JavaFX Controls

It is always a good idea to start your day with an impressive demo of a "cool" technology.  Again an hour of impressive demo's.  One thing is sure, I really need to start getting into it.
The speaker talked about the different ways of creating your own JavaFX controls.  Looking at the result, it is really worthwhile.
Ending the hour with some very good tips:

1. Use cache and cachehint
2. Tricky effects: set the animation on the group, not on the shape
3. Visualizations
4. Read-only properties
5. Use Scenic View: a separate tool for debugging your code and the JavaFX Components
6. Use FxExperience tools: easy tool, allowing you to visually create your own styelsheet or to inspect an existing stylesheet.
7. Get the source of the components.  
8. JFXtras project: good resource for examples and a place where you can share your components with the community.
9. Use FXML for design, not for animations

CON3870 What's New in JSF: A Complete Tour of JSF 2.2

Nice to hear that JSF was already present on the JavaOne2001 and that today it is used everywhere on the world, even Antarctica.
This new version tries to restate the scope of the features on JSF, between the server side and the client side.
They do not foresee any big releases anymore, like happened with the 2.0 release.  Off course, who can look into the future :-).
A small overview of the different new features:

• HTML5 friendly markup support
• Faces Flows: are like modules of pages.  Being an ADF developer, this sounds very familiar.  The need thing here is the fact that you can declare this flow in java or in xml.
• Cross site request forgery protection
• Load facelets via resourcehandlers
• FileUpload component
• Multi-templating

A bit strange to look at in the beginning, is the combination of writing pure HTML5 code and embed JSF attributes in them.  So you can do things like : <input type="color" jsf:value="#{requestScope.MyBean.colorValue}".  Once you are using this kind of construct, the standard input-component will be transformed into a JSF component.
Another cool concept is the ClientWindow, it maps to the browsers view and covers multiple view node (=pages).
Another feature is the viewactions.  You can declare an action and define when it should be executed, like after loading a page or during load or before load.  Really something that could be helpful in the ADF solution also.

CON9013 Best Practices for Extending Oracle Applications with Oracle WebCenter Portal

Nice to have again a typical Igor Polyakov session: a lot of very interesting information, even for seasoned webcenter  people.
WebCenter Portal is mostly used for application dashboarding and self-service environments.  These kind of applications rely heavily on integration.  Here are the different integration possibilities:

• Markup Integration: this means integration on the glass.  It has a quick ROI and very little development effort.  Possible markup integration methods are:
• WSRP Portlets
• ADF Taskflows
• Pagelet Producer: this a product of the WebCenter stack allowing you to extend existing applications or render existing applications as pagelets that can be used in portal environments.
• Data Integration: here we are not integration UI, but the data sources themselves.  This means that you will need to create a new UI on top of the existing data sources.  Also here we have different possibilites:
• Through API's: you are using web services or connect directly to different data sources.  On top of these you will need to create your UI, this can be done by ADF Taskflows, portlets or business mashups.
• BI Integration: instead of going directly to the database, you can use the BI Presentation Services to deliver you pre-calculated information.  This can be done through BiReports and Dashboards.
• BPM Integration: you can make use of the BPM Process Portal, which is integrated in your WebCenter Portal solution.  You can also make use of the BPM Human Tasks integration points.
• Service Access Layer: is a new product which is going to be released in PS7 somewhere next year.  It is a solution that allows for separation of data gathering and data visualization, very comparable with the setup you do for a BiPublisher Report 11g.  How to work with this product:
• Domain experts will need to address the applications integration challenges and will need to create the necessary SQL, WS or REST artifacts.
• With these artifacts, one can create reusable data provider.
• There will be OOTB data providers and you will be able to create your own.
• These data providers will be exposed as REST endpoints, allowing different technologies to make use of them.
• Now business users can use the new Data Presenter, which is a wizard driven development tool allowing users to create rich ui's based on the data providers.  All @runtime!!

CON9440 Mobile Enablement of Oracle Fusion Applications with Oracle Fusion Mobile Development

Welcome to the new buzz-word for Fusion Applications: TAP.  The name is not an abbreviation, but simply referring to the way one works with a tablet; through tapping on the device.
It has become a nice clean app with simple and consistent UI's.  For the application world, this is really a game changer, the technology world was already aware of these capabilities.
For Oracle mobility is all about true flexibility, getting things done.  It is not the purpose to recreate CRM on the tablet.  This application should really fit in the way you live and work.  Meaning when and where you can work and what kind of actions you perform the most.  It should increase your organization's velocity, not slowing momentum down.

What are the key capabilities of this TAP product:

• Because it is available on a tablet, the application is always on. You don't need to wait for it.
• There is a TAP composer, allowing you to define the layout of the tap application.
• It has off-line capabilities, allowing you to work wherever there is no internet connection.  The way this works, is by caching everything you touch will you are on-line.  So once you are off-line, the same information is still available.
• Possible deployments:
• Cloud apps for mobile web browsers: not yet there, but soon :-)
• Cloud apps for tablets: native apps
• Cloud apps for smartphones: there are more focused on single applications. Not integration of different applications, like with TAP
• It tries to give you the functionality you need depending on your role in the company
• Productivity amplified: Live - Work - Connect: which is the key principal!
• It is only available for cloud based solutions.  So you can not connect to your Fusion Applications running on-premise, for the moment.
• You can download it right now from the Apple Store and play with.  When you open the application, you have the possibility to login or to use test data.  Use the latter if you just want to play around and you do not have a Fusion Application SAAS service running.
• The whole idea is to combine different Fusion Applications into one single tablet app: TAP. No matter from which domain the information needs to come, it will be shown in the same app with the same UI controls.
• It is designed for business users, who can access business information with it and transact on it.
• License: you need a Fusion Cloud application license, this include the use of the TAP application.
• They are still looking for early adapters.  So if you are interested, let them know.

CON8952 BPM: An Extension Strategy for Enterprise Applications

A good overview on the possible integration points between the Oracle Enterprise applications, like Siebel, eBusiness Suite, PeopleSoft, ... and the Oracle BPM product.  For best practices, visit their best practices page on http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/topics/index-096924.html.
Nice to see is that there is already a Belgium reference case: FN Herstal.  Who are using Oracle BPM for their Order2Cash Project, together with the Oracle Business Rules product.