Oracle Adf Real World Developer’s Guide is the latest book on ADF Framework developed by Oracle. ADF Framework provides declarative way to develop Java based Enterprise Applications. There are a few previous books on Oracle ADF which showed how to develop application declaratively and didn’t delve into details which an advanced programmer would like to know. Oracle Adf Real World Developer’s Guide takes forward from where those other books stop and has touched upon features and aspects which an advanced programmer would like to know. Not all real world applications can be developed using drag-drop and XML declarations. Lot of times you would want to take control of the code and hack around it in Java. I think none of the current books tell you how to do this, but here is this new book which exactly covers that part of ADF development.
Various topics covered include:
- Programmatically working and configuring Application Modules, View Objects, Entity Objects.
- Creating data bound UIs including Master-Detail elements.
- Understanding page definitions and different binding tags.
- Working on Taskflows and different aspect like passing parameters, using them as regions, using them inside popups.
- Validation and exception handling
- ADF best practices.
Structure of content:
- Each topic is covered in brief with simple code snippets. Reader would have to rely on the companion site to download the source code.
- Covers important gotchas which come from experienced folks working on ADF.
- Concise contents leading to lesser number of pages.
- No coverage on UI components- there are lot of other books which cover in depth.
- Doesn’t contain introductions for topics covered, the author jumps right into the topic expecting the reader to know what it stands for.
This book is targeted for people who have worked on ADF for quite sometime and are familiar with the declarative way of building applications. If you always wondered how to get out of the VO, EO XMLs and start hacking in Java this book shows you how to do the same. If you are learning ADF and what to use this book, stay away from this book. Its NOT meant for beginners in ADF.
ADF developers who are are following Jobinesh’s blog will find the examples and even some content similar. In short I found this book informative at places and I skimmed through other topics which I am not using right away. This book can also be used as a reference to read up on topics as and when it is required.
If you are excited to get out of XML based approach and hack around with Java then go buy it from Flipkart or Amazon.