Oracle ADF data controls provide an abstraction of the business service's data model. The ADF data controls provide a consistent mechanism for clients and web application controllers to access data and actions defined by these diverse data-provider technologies:
For most of these, the data controls are implemented by a thin layer of adapter classes. The exception is ADF Business Components technology, which implements the data controls directly in the component classes.
Oracle ADF data controls are represented on the Data Control Palette, where they can be added to the view as UI controls or to the controller as operations.
The remainder of this section provides an overview of the base features of the data controls provided and the following definitions apply:
java.util.Collection,
java.util.Iterator, or java array, or a single business
object that is treated as a collection of one.
The business object access services include built-in ADF framework support for binding to data collections and business objects using a business service or a business object. The business object access services are:
Business collection iteration services
ADF data controls provides an Iterator pattern implementation that may be used with any business collection. The application developer may use built-in operations on this iterator binding implementation to display or iterate business objects. Examples of operations include first, next, previous, and last.
Find and refresh services
The ADF model provides features for defining search parameters for a page model or an ADF model layer iterator. An application developer may use built-in operations to toggle the ADF model find mode for defining search parameters and to refresh the ADF model layer iterator bindings.
Business object property services
The ADF model provides features for accessing JavaBeans-style
properties of business objects. An application developer may use
built-in operations to bind to business object properties. A special
class of business object properties includes properties whose
accessor methods (like Customer.getOrders()) access
business collections. These properties are referred to as
accessor attribute properties or accessor attributes.
Method invocation services
The ADF model provides features for invoking business object and business service methods. An application developer may use built-in operations to invoke methods and to bind iterators to the results of operations.
The transaction services include built-in ADF model layer support for mutating business objects. Please note that the ADF model transaction services do not provide a transaction system itself. Instead, the ADF model transaction services provide a notification system that individual ADF data controls integrate with. The presence of a notification system allows custom Oracle ADF data controls to be created that can integrate a model transaction service with the Oracle ADF model layer. The transaction services are:
Business object services
The ADF model provides features for adding business objects to a collection, for removing business objects from a collection, and for mutating the JavaBeans-style properties of business objects. The application developer may use built-in operations to invoke these services, and the ADF model layer will automatically notify the ADF data control of create, remove, and update event.
Transaction demarcation services
The ADF model provides features for committing and rolling back transactions. The application developer may use built-in operations to notify the ADF data control to commit or roll back transaction changes.
The state management services include built-in ADF model layer support for managing ADF data control user state. The state management services are:
DataControl lifecycle notifications
The ADF model provides ADF data control lifecycle notifications to the ADF data control. The individual data controls implement these notifications to passivate or activate the business service user state.
State distribution services
The ADF model provides features to distribute state or to fail over state to other tiers.
For information about the specific data controls available for different business service technologies, see the following topics:
For further details about the design time for working with the Oracle ADF model layer and the code generated by the design time, see the related topics list below.
To read about data binding in Oracle ADF model layer:
To understand how the design time works with Oracle ADF data controls:
Copyright © 1997, 2004, Oracle. All rights reserved.