Thursday, July 9, 2009

Oracle ADF – I am beginner, from where I can start

There are many fellow developers who are just entering into the world of ADF and Jdeveloper. They do struggle a bit as from where to start from in ADF. Regardless of whether you are starting up with ADF 11g or 10g, in this post I will try to explain what all is required to start with Oracle ADF.
As ADF is a J2EE application framework, you first have to learn Java and OOB concepts. Though the in depth knowledge of Java is not required, nor are the advance concepts like threads need to be skilled, but you do need basic java concepts like class, object, inheritance, wrapper classes etc. A good java book that can help you is “SCJP Sun Certified Programmer for Java” by Bert Bates, Kathy sierra or Head first Java by same authors. As every thing in the ADF is metadata driven, means objects are constructed are at run time using metadata which is stored in the form of XML. So you have to learn XML also. A good link to learn the same is at
http://www.w3schools.com/XML/xml_whatis.asp.
The if you are starting up with ADF 11g, then get the overview of the same at
http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/adf/pdf/ADF_11_overview.pdf or
If you are starting up with ADF 10g then at
http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/jdev/collateral/papers/1013/adf_10.1.3_overview.pdf .
After getting the overview, start with the step by step tutorial, for ADF 10g at
http://www.oracle.com/technology/obe/ADF_tutorial_1013/index.htm
And for ADF 11g at
http://kohlivikram.blogspot.com/2009/03/oracle-adf-11g-sample-application.html
Most of the times when we do the tutorial, we get carried away with the steps given in the tutorial and try to finish it as soon as possible, rather then concentrating on the concepts given in the steps, so go slow and don’t worry if you are not able to finish it up, start it once again when you get time, but do finish it. If you are not able to understand the concept given in tutorial, try to refer the same topic in the ADF developer guide. Read developer guide in your free time; go through blogs written by Frank, Andrejus, and Steve. List of good ADF blogs are given here:-
http://wiki.oracle.com/page/ADF+Blogs
One more very good article on how to start with ADF is here
In the coming post I will try to explain the ADF concepts components wise. Hope that I will get enough time :) for that.