1 Get Started with Oracle Fusion Applications

Oracle Fusion web applications are a set of business-related applications developed with the help of various technologies. This section describes the various technologies with which an Oracle Fusion web application developer works when developing the applications.

The following is a list of the various categories of technologies that, as an Oracle Fusion web application developer, you will encounter. This section does not go into the details about why the specified technologies have been chosen, the main intention is to give you an overview of the various technologies that are used to develop Oracle Fusion web applications.

• User interface (UI) technologies

• Model technologies

• Backend technologies

• Orchestration technologies

• Security

• Customization-related technologies

• Metadata services

• General middle-tier technologies

• Application server technologies

Technologies that are used to create user interfaces fall into this category. The technologies that must be used in Oracle Fusion to create these user interfaces are:

• ADF Faces Rich Client:

  The ADF Faces rich client technology is used to create browser-based user interfaces. It provides a set of UI components, which can be dragged and dropped to create UIs. Among these ADF components are other components called the data visualization tools, which are a set of rich interactive components that provide graphical and tabular capabilities for visualizing and analyzing data.

  For more information about ADF Faces, see the Oracle Fusion Middleware Developing Fusion Web Applications with Oracle Application Development Framework guide.

  For more information about ADF Faces rich client components, see the Oracle Fusion Middleware Developing Web User Interfaces with Oracle ADF Faces guide.

• ADF Desktop Integration:

  This technology is used to create interfaces accessed through Microsoft Excel.

  For more information about ADF Desktop Integration, see the Oracle Fusion Middleware Developing Applications with Oracle ADF Desktop Integration guide.

• ADF Mobile:

  Oracle ADF Mobile helps developers build and extend enterprise applications for iOS and Android from a single code base. Based on a hybrid mobile architecture, ADF Mobile supports access to native device services, enables offline applications and protects enterprise investments from future technology shifts.

  For more information about Oracle ADF Mobile, see the Oracle Fusion Middleware Developing Oracle ADF Mobile Browser Applications guide.

Technologies that are used to represent the business logic and the data on which the business logic is based fall into this category. The UI technologies discussed previously can be based on any model technology such as Enterprise JavaBeans (EJB), Oracle Toplink, and so on. In Oracle Fusion, ADF Business Components is the model technology that is used in all applications.

These technologies are the set of storage technologies that are used to store the transactional and relational data. The primary technologies used in Oracle Fusion to store and retrieve data are:

• Oracle Database: This is used to store and retrieve all transactional and reference data.

  For more information see the Oracle Database Administrator’s Guide.

• Oracle Enterprise Scheduler: This is used to manage multi-dimensional data. Essbase provides adaptable data storage mechanisms for specific types of analytic and performance management applications. It is used to manage multi-dimensional data.

These are the technologies that are used in the service-oriented architecture (SOA) world. The primary purpose of these technologies is to assemble various services together to provide comprehensive functionality.

In Oracle Fusion, many product applications provide their functionality in the form of web services. Oracle Application Server BPEL Process Manager is used to assemble these web services together to provide end-to-end functionality.

For more information about SOA, see the Developing SOA Applications with Oracle SOA Suite guide.

Security is an integral part of all of the technologies previously mentioned. The technology used to provide security for Oracle Fusion Applications is Oracle Platform Security Services (OPSS).

For more information about OPSS, see the Oracle Fusion Middleware Oracle Platform Security Services (OPSS) & Oracle Authorization Policy Manager (OAPM) Frequently Asked Questions.

Customization-related technologies give customers the tools they need to customize the artifacts that developers have created. For example, the customer requires more information on the Invoices Entry UI that the developer created. They want to customize the UI by adding this extra information. To perform this type of customization, Metadata Services (MDS) technology is used.

Another level of customization, which is used to customize the UI pages at runtime, is called Design Time at Runtime (DTRT) customization. This type of customization is performed using the WebCenter technologies. (This uses Oracle Metadata Services (MDS) internally.)

In addition to the technologies previously discussed, there are many others that Oracle Fusion web application developers may encounter. These include:

• Oracle Enterprise Scheduler Service: Oracle Enterprise Scheduler Service provides the ability to run different Job Types, including: Java, PL/SQL, and Binary Scripts, distributed across the nodes in an Oracle Application Server Cluster. Oracle Enterprise Scheduler Service runs these jobs securely, with high availability and scalability, with load balancing and provides monitoring and management through Oracle Enterprise Manager Fusion Middleware Control.

  For more information about Oracle Enterprise Scheduler Service, see the Developing Applications for Oracle Enterprise Scheduler guide.

• Oracle Enterprise Crawl and Search Framework (ECSF): ECSF helps expose application context information on business objects to enable full-text transactional search.

  For more information about Oracle Enterprise Crawl and Search Framework, see Getting Started with Oracle Enterprise Crawl and Search Framework.

• Oracle Business Rules (OBR): Oracle Business Rules enable dynamic decisions at runtime allowing you to automate policies, computations, and reasoning while separating rule logic from underlying application code. This allows more agile rule maintenance and empowers business analysts with the ability to modify rule logic without programmer assistance and without interrupting business processes.

  For more information about Oracle Business Rules, see the Designing Business Rules with Oracle Business Process Management guide.

• Oracle Data Integrator (ODI): Oracle Data Integrator is a comprehensive data integration platform that covers all data integration requirements - from high-volume, high-performance batches, to event-driven, trickle-feed integration processes, to SOA-enabled data services.

  For more information about Oracle Data Integrator, see the Oracle Fusion Middleware Developing Integration Projects with Oracle Data Integrator guide.