Oracle Mobile Application Framework (MAF) enables you to create an application that can house different types of content that runs on mobile devices powered by Apple iOS platforms or Android devices.
This section of the tutorial walks you through configuring your environment so that you can develop and test Oracle MAF applications using OEPE and an iOS environment.In this section you configure an environment to use OEPE and an iOS Simulator on which you will deploy your MAF application. Although we are configuring the environment to use a simulator, you can also deploy to an actual device.

If you are interested in the setup and deployment to an Android emulator start with Part 2: Setup and Configure an Android Environment.

Oracle Mobile Application Framework (MAF)enables you to create an application that can house different types of content that will run on mobile devices powered by Apple iOS or Android devices. Within the framework of the application, the contained content areas are referred to as features and represent a specific piece of the application’s functionality. End users can access features from either the navigation bar or the springboard. The icons that represent the application features can be grouped together by functionality and aligned by permissions, as well as implementation considerations.

The following types of application features can coexist within the same Mobile Application Framework based application:
- Local MAF XML file—although you are not required to develop the application features that reside within the MAF application, this implementation approach allows you to define an application feature that utilizes many of the device's functionality through embedded components, with the metadata represented by an XML file. This application feature implementation, which is generated into HTML or JavaScript on a mobile device and which uses MAF data bindings, is developed declaratively using a set of MAF-specific components in OEPE.
- Local HTML files or remote URL—this implementation approach allows you to employ an HTML file that embeds existing technologies, such as JavaScript and Java. Or you can simply point to a resource on the Web by specifying a URL end point. You can use OEPE and MAF to implement this type of feature.

A MAF mobile application enables integration of its features with such native device utilities as phone, camera, GPS, and so on. You can define the contract for accessing and controlling each feature, as well as supply constraints to determine the display of a feature at run time (such as, for example, Role, OS, Version). The mobile device utilities can be accessed from the local HTML, local MAF Mobile XML, Java, and remote Web applications.