This chapter overviews the Java EE features available for your application development, and related components, tools and technologies provided in Oracle JDeveloper.
This chapter includes the following sections:
JDeveloper comes with a complete package of tools and features to create and edit your Java EE 6 application components. Use the wizards, built in source and visual editors, Component Palette and property inspector, and other features to create, assemble, and reuse your web tier and business components. You can build, test, and deploy powerful interactive, multitiered applications that perform well on a variety of different platforms, and are easy to maintain.
For more information on Java EE see the Oracle Technology Network (OTN) Java EE documentation at:
http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javaee/overview/index.html
For the web-tier part of your Java EE application, take advantage of the ADF Faces rich client framework (RCF), which offers a rich library of AJAX-enabled UI components for web applications built with JavaServer Faces (JSF).
The ADF layer enables a unified approach to bind any user interface to any business service, without need to write code. When you build a Java EE application, and/or an EJB project, you can assign ADF data controls on your individual session beans. This adds a data control file with the same name as the bean.
The data control contains all the functionality of the application module. You can then use the representation of the data control displayed in JDeveloper Data Controls panel to create UI components that are automatically bound to the application module.
Using the ADF data control business-tier layer to perform business service access for your EJB projects ensures that the view and the business service stay in sync. For example, you could bypass the model layer and call a method on an application module by class casting the data control reference to the application module instance and then calling the method directly, but this renders the business services unaware of any changes.
For more information, see the Oracle Fusion Middleware Java EE Developer's Guide for Oracle Application Development Framework.
JDeveloper provides you with a wide range of tools to develop the web tier, or frontend of your Java EE applications. You can use wizards to walk you through creating all your HTML, JSP and JavaServer Faces (JSF) /Facelet pages and related files.
In addition, JDeveloper provides web page tools and step-by-step instructions for many of the tasks you will use to develop your application web pages. You can build web-tier components using all of the supported Java EE web application technologies such as JSF / Facelets, JavaServer Pages (JSP), Java Servlet, HyperText Markup Language (HTML), and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Web components in a Java EE application contain presentation logic and run on the integrated server.
For more information, see Chapter 11, "Developing Applications Using Web Page Tools."
You can create EJB projects, entities, Java persistence units, session beans, and message-driven beans using wizards in the New Gallery. You can build entities from online or offline database table definitions and from application server data source connections.
To quickly get started with your EJB application:
Start by using the wizard (File > New > General > Applications) to create the framework for your Java EE application.
Use wizards to create entities that correspond to database tables (File > New >Business Tier > EJB).
Use a wizard to create session beans and facades and to build a persistence unit. (File > New > Business Tier > EJB). Oracle ADF provides components to enable data controls (File > New > Business Tier > ADF Business Components).
Use the JDeveloper integrated server capabilities to test your application. For more information on running and testing, see Chapter 7, "Running Applications."
For more information on EJBs, see Chapter 12, "Developing with EJB and JPA Components."
Oracle TopLink is an object-persistence and object-transformation framework that provides development tools and run-time capabilities that reduce development and maintenance efforts, and increase enterprise application functionality
Use TopLink to configure TopLink descriptors and map Java classes, EJBs, and JPA entities to different data sources, including relational databases, enterprise information systems (EIS), and XML schemas. With the TopLink Editor, you can create this information without writing Java code. The TopLink Editor supports multiple standards, including JPA, JAXB, and Java EE.
For more information, see Chapter 13, "Developing TopLink Mappings."
You can secure Java EE applications using only container-managed security or, for Fusion web applications, Oracle ADF Security. Fusion web applications are Java EE applications that you develop using the Oracle Application Development Framework (Oracle ADF).
The Oracle ADF Security framework is the preferred technology to provide authentication and authorization services to the Fusion web application. The Oracle ADF Security is built on top of the Oracle Platform Security Services (OPSS) architecture, which provides a critical security framework and is itself well-integrated with Oracle WebLogic Server.
For more information, see Chapter 14, "Developing Secure Applications."
JDeveloper provides you with the tools you need to work with the XML files in your application. There is an XML source editor, an XML validator, and tools for working with XML schemas. You can also use JDeveloper to create and edit your XSQL files.
You can create your schema documents from scratch, generate schemas from XML documents or vice-versa in JDeveloper. Once your schema is created, manage your elements using the XSD Visual Editor and the Component Palette.
For more information, see Chapter 15, "Developing Applications Using XML."
Web services in JDeveloper provides a set of messaging protocols and programming standards that expose business functions over the internet using open standards. A web service is a discrete, reusable software component that is accessed programmatically over the Internet to return a response. JDeveloper provides tools that help you discover and use existing web services, and develop and deploy new web services.
JDeveloper also supports a set of standard Java-to-XML type mappings. You can also create custom serializers for types of objects that are not automatically supported. For more information, see Section 16.2, "Using JDeveloper to Create and Use Web Services."
You can create web services from Java classes, the remote interface of EJBs, and an ADF Business Components service session bean wrapped as an EJB. The Web service creation wizards create the deployment files for you, so once you have created your web service the final step is to deploy it to application servers. For more information, see Section 16.5, "Creating SOAP Web Services (Bottom-Up)."
Alternatively, you can create a web service starting with a WSDL, as a top-down web service. For more information, see Section 16.6, "Creating SOAP Web Services from WSDL (Top Down)."
Finally, you can develop web services that are based on Representational State Transfer (REST). A RESTful web service is a simple interface that transmits data over a standardized interface (such as HTTP) without an additional messaging layer, such as SOAP. Section 16.7, "Creating RESTful Web Services."