White Paper

E-Business Suite Application Development using Oracle

Application Framework (OAF) and Application Development
Framework (ADF)

Version 0.1 (Draft)

March 2011

Sasidhar Rachuri
Sasidhar.rachuri@gmail.com
 TABLE OF CONTENTS
Introduction..........................................................................................................................3
Oracle Application Framework (OAF)................................................................................3
Application Development Framework (ADF).....................................................................4
3.1 Key Features and Benefits of ADF................................................................................5
3.2 ADF Faces.....................................................................................................................5
Integration between EBS and ADF......................................................................................6
Recommendations................................................................................................................7
References............................................................................................................................7
Introduction
The purpose of this document is to give a brief introduction on Oracle OAF (Oracle
Application Framework) and ADF (Application Development Framework) technology
stacks and identify the similarities, differences and overlaps between OAF and ADF
frameworks to give reader a better understanding on picking right technology stack for
the extensions being built.

Oracle Application Framework (OAF)

Latest version of OAF is OAF R12 which is shipped along with Oracle E-Business Suite
R12, and latest version of ADF is ADF 11G.
From R12, most of the pages which were in Forms earlier are converted to Self-Service
pages (HTML/JSP pages). And these pages are developed using OAF. So for any
customization of Oracle R12 Out of the box self service pages, OAF is the right
framework to use.
OAF is MVC architecture based J2EE framework customized for use in Oracle
Applications development. It is tailor made for use in the development, customization of
Oracle Apps pages and any custom application development to be hosted, integrated in
Oracle Apps. OAF is fully oriented towards E-Business suite application development.
OAF has built in support for features like session management, AOL/J_Security,
connection pooling etc. OAF also provides classes for standard web widgets seen on self
service pages like LOV, Text Field, Table, Grid, and Button.
OAF is purely vendor/technology specific framework and you can use this only for
developing/customizing OAF pages in Oracle R12 or earlier versions.
 OAF Stack is comprised of underlying technologies like UIX and BC4J, that
respectively from the core of view and model layers. It includes AOL that provides
common E-Business suite artifacts menus, functions, messages, profiles, flex fields and
attachments, and common services like function and data security. MDS is used for
metadata management.

Application Development Framework (ADF)

Oracle ADF is an end-to-end development framework, built on top of the Enterprise Java
platform, offering unparalleled productivity to application developers. The framework
provides integrated infrastructure solutions for the various layers of the application and
an easy way to develop on top of them.
The ADF stack allows users to select among several choices of UI and business services
technologies and hence received good appreciation from developer, architect community.
ADF has gained popularity as choice of framework for generic J2EE based applications
development.

The ADF stack is primarily comprised of ADF Faces (which is based on industry
standard JSF technology), ADFm (m for model - the data control layer that implements
JSR-227) and ADFbc (bc for business components – formerly BC4J). Early releases of
ADF contained UIX. Oracle then developed the ADF Faces set of components, based on
UIX functionality, but conforming to the JSF standard. The ADF Faces components now
replace UIX as the preferred view technology for ADF applications.
Best scenario for picking ADF is where you have to develop completely stand alone
application which just uses Oracle Apps data but is not required to integrate with Oracle
 E Business Suite. For any extension/customizations of Oracle E Business suite apps OAF
is the right framework to use.

3.1 Key Features and Benefits of ADF

• Powerful Components for REA/RIA
• Page Flow 2.0
• Declarative Data Binding
• Declarative Business Services
• Multi-Channel Client Support
• Declarative End-to-End Security
• Declarative Application Customization
• Reusability
• Developer Productivity
• Ease of Use

3.2 ADF Faces

OAF as well as ADF 10G use UIX for view layer, which is custom technology of Oracle
and UI is also not very extensive, Where as ADF 11G uses ADF Faces built on top of
JSF which is a Suns standard specification and is capable of integrating UI’s from other
technologies like popular Flex, Flash etc.
ADF Faces Components is a set of over a 150 Ajax-enabled JSF components that let you
build a richer user interface for your Java EE applications. Oracle ADF Faces also
includes many of the framework features most needed by JSF. ADF Faces run on any
implementation of JSF1.2 specification or later.
Features and Benefits of ADF Faces:
• Over 150+ AJAX-enabled components
• Extensive data visualization components
• JSF 1.2 Support
• Complete JavaScript API
• Drag and Drop Framework
• Dialog and Popup Framework
• Navigation Menu Framework
• Internationalization and Accessibility support
• Declarative Partial Page Rendering
• Support for Skinning
 • Support for Page templates, reusable page regions, and declarative components
• Integration with ADFc to support TaskFlows and bookmarking
• Integration with ADFm to support data bindings.
• Oracle ADF Security Support

Integration between EBS and ADF

There are multiple ways that ADF external applications can be integrated with Oracle E-
Business Suite:
1. "Back-end-only integration" to Oracle E-Business Suite data and services. For
example, this may include using the Oracle SOA Suite on the back end, with Oracle
Application Development Framework 11g (ADF 11g) on the front end. There is no user
interface integration at all (that is, a user cannot go back and forth between the ADF UI
and the Oracle E-Business Suite OA Framework UI). This type of integration typically
uses the AppsDataSource feature but no other parts of the Oracle E-Business Suite
Software Development Kit for Java. E Business Suite stored procedures can also be
accessed using AppsDataSource.
2. "Launch from Oracle E-Business Suite integration" may include back-end
integration as above, but in this case, the Oracle ADF user interface is launched from the
Oracle E-Business Suite home page. There is no further user interface interaction with
Oracle E-Business Suite (users cannot return to the OA Framework home page, for
example). [Release 12.1.3 and up only]
 3. "Full user interface and back-end integration" allows users to move back and
forth between the ADF user interface and the Oracle E-Business Suite user interface. For
example, a user could go to an ADF page from an OA Framework page and back again,
or ADF components could be embedded into an OAF page. This requires some context
being shared between OAF and ADF, as well as session management between the two
systems. This third type of integration is not yet supported.

Recommendations
Use OAF for below scenarios:
1. Customizing Oracle R12 EBS applications.
2. Developing new application which has to be tightly integrated with Oracle R12 EBS
(EBS Session Management, Functional Security etc).

Use ADF for below scenarios:

1. Custom applications which needs only data layer integration with Oracle EBS
(AppsDataSource/SOA) and does not need to be tightly integrated with EBS applications.
2. For enterprise application development using J2EE: You can embrace ADF with out
needing J2EE experts; remove as much as low level programming as possible.

References
• FAQ for Integration of Oracle E-Business Suite and Oracle Application
Development Framework (ADF) Applications [ID 1296491.1]
• Using Oracle Application Framework (OAF) and Application Development
Framework (ADF) [563047.1]
• Oracle Application Development Framework Overview: Oracle White Paper
• Oracle ADF 11G Primer Introduction to Building Blocks of a Fusion Web
application: Oracle White Paper