About the Design Time for Oracle ADF

JDeveloper provides the design time tools that application developers can use to quickly and efficiently assemble J2EE applications for either the Web or for standalone Java clients. Together the tools allow client developers to work in a WYSIWYG development environment that facilitates creating, inspecting, and editing databound web pages and Java client forms.

Note: The design time in JDeveloper provides equal support for creating web application and Java client front ends. In either case, client developers create databound front ends though drag-and-drop operations using a common set of design time tools.

Overview

In JDeveloper, application developers who design the user interface can benefit from these features:

Choose from a wide range of UI components appropriate to their chosen view technology, such as, HTML elements, Oracle ADF UIX components, or Swing components.
Visualize diverse business services that provide actions and data to the UI components. These business services may originate from Oracle ADF Business Components, JavaBeans, Enterprise JavaBeans, and web services.
Select databound UI components from a single palette and arrange the UI in an open document as desired.
Edit data bindings to modify the behavior of the databound UI component.

Design Time Tools

The following key design time tools address the visualization requirements of J2EE application developers while providing full support for the separation of model, view, and controller layers:

UML diagrammer for modeling, creating, and visualizing the business services in your application's model layer project
Page flow diagram (for Struts-based web applications) for ordering and visualizing the controller layer pages and events that execute in the Struts web controller
Visual Editors for arranging and editing the elements of the View layer whether JSP pages, ADF UIX pages, or Oracle ADF JClient panels for Swing controls

Note: Each view technology is supported by its own editors. For example, the UIX Visual Editor specifically supports XML-based component pages derived from the Oracle ADF UIX web presentation framework.
Data Control Palette for dragging UI elements onto the page or panel and binding the UI elements to data and actions that your business services define

Note: When you use the Data Control Palette to create J2EE applications in JDeveloper, your application automatically benefits from the data abstraction layer known as the Oracle ADF model layer. For more information about the role of data controls, see About Oracle ADF Data Controls.

Additionally, these standard features of JDeveloper maintain easy access to the design elements of your application:

Component Palette: lets you drag presentation elements into your JSP page, UIX pages, and Swing panels. For example, the palette for JSP pages includes the full JavaServer Pages Standard Tag Libraries (JSTL), as well as the standard HTML elements and a variety of custom JSP tag libraries.

Note: Context-sensitive Help is available for many elements on the Component Palette and may be accessed by right-clicking the element name or from the Help button displayed in the element's attribute editor.
Structure window: lets you visualize the structure of any web page or Swing panel opened in your project. For example, the structure for JSP pages includes its HTML elements, JSP tags, and JavaScript code. The UI Model tab of the Structure window helps you to visualize the bindings defined for your UI components and customize them through binding-specific design time editors.
Property Inspector: lets you edit the attributes of the UI elements and their data bindings. For example, the inspector for JSP pages displays the attributes of the currently selected HTML element, JSP tag, or data binding.
Code Editor: lets you edit the source for your business service, JSP or UIX pages, JClient panels or forms, and Struts actions. For example, you can write event handlers or access data bindings through code insight with Expression Language.

And, these wizards available in the JDeveloper New Gallery that can reduce the amount of coding needed to create components in your Model and client projects:

Business Tier wizards: help you to generate and maintain Oracle ADF Business Components, EJB components, TopLink Mappings, and web services. Additionally, the Oracle ADF Business Components has its own design-time editors to manage editing these business services in your model project.
Client Tier wizards: help you to generate Oracle ADF JClient panels and forms for Swing controls.

Design Time Process

Using these tools in JDeveloper, client developers can quickly lay out databound web pages and Swing panels without having to write code for the UI components to access its data.

A simplified description of the web page design process with Struts controller integration (for Model 2-style web applications) in JDeveloper involves these steps:

Create the application workspace using the "Web Application (Default)" application template.
Create the business services in the model project.
Use the Struts Page Flow Diagram to define the flow of your JSP pages and Struts actions (updates the struts-config.xml file).
Use the Struts Page Flow Diagram to customize the Struts actions.
Create a JSP for each of your Struts actions and open the page in the HTML/JSP Visual Editor.
Use the Data Control Palette to select specific data controls and insert the databound UI components into the page you are editing.
Use the Structure window to browse the page elements and edit their bindings.
Use the Visual Editor to refine the user interface for the components you added.
Use the Property Inspector to modify any attribute of the page elements and their data bindings.
Use the Code Editor to edit the source code of a JSP with Expression Language Code Insight.

In the case of a web application without a Struts controller (Model 1-style web applications), the major difference is that you will not create a page flow diagram and must handle the actions through code you supply. A simplified description of the web page design process without a Struts controller in JDeveloper involves these steps:

Create the application workspace using the "Web Application (Default - no controller)" application template.
Create the business services in the model project.
Create a JSP and open the page in the HTML/JSP Visual Editor.
Use the Data Control Palette to select specific data controls and insert the databound UI components into the page you are editing.
Use the Structure window to browse the page elements and edit their bindings.
Use the Visual Editor to refine the user interface for the components you added.
Use the Property Inspector to modify any attribute of the page elements and their data bindings.
Use the Code Editor to edit the source code of a JSP with Expression Language Code Insight.
Use the Create Java Class dialog to subclass the oracle.adf.controller.lifecycle.PageLifecycle class and create the event handler for your pages actions.
Use the Property Inspector to set the custom lifecycle class for the <adf:uimodelreference> tag in the page that needs to handle the event.

For complete details about how to get started with Oracle ADF and databound web applications, see the related topics below.