The following topics introduce the new and changed features of Oracle JDeveloper and Oracle Application Development Framework (Oracle ADF) and other significant changes, which are described in this guide. This document in previous JDeveloper releases had been titled Fusion Developer's Guide for Oracle Application Development Framework.
Oracle Fusion Middleware Release 12c (12.2.1) of Oracle JDeveloper and Oracle Application Development Framework (Oracle ADF) includes the following new and changed development features, which are described in this guide.
ADF Business Components
You can now expose ADF REST resources based on view instances of application modules that you create in the ADF Business Components project when you want to support RESTful web services to interact with backend data sources. For more information, see Creating RESTful Web Services with Application Modules.
You can now expose ADF REST data controls to enable the Fusion web application developer to develop a client web application based on RESTful web services. For more information, see Consuming RESTful Web Services Using ADF REST Data Controls.
You can now enable the web service developer to expose ADF REST resources for consumption by RESTful web service clients through a Web API built on top of ADF Business Components. For more information, see Consuming RESTful Web Services Using the ADF REST Framework.
ADF Task Flows
You can now specify a URL alias for a view activity so that end users see a URL with a more meaningful name at runtime. For more information, see Specifying URL Aliases for View Activities.
You can now create a remote region by invoking a task flow from a Fusion web application (the producer application) in a page of another Fusion web application (the consumer application). For more information, see Creating Remote Regions in a Fusion Web Application.
You now use the QuickTrace mechanism to configure the number of events that ADF Controller sends to the Diagnostic Framework if an incident occurs in your application. For more information, see Reporting Incidents to the Diagnostic Framework.
ADF Security
You can now configure protection provided by the ADF authentication servlet init-param element disable_url_param to block the usage of success_url and end_url on the browser URL Request that may be exploited by a malicious user. For more information, see What Happens When You Enable ADF Security and How to Redirect a User After Authentication.
ADF Data Visualization Components
A new chart component, the ADF DVT funnel chart, is now available. The client-side funnel chart represents data related to steps in a process. Use to compare actual versus target values or to compare values in a sequence of steps. For more information, see How to Create Databound Funnel Charts.
A new data visualization component, the ADF DVT NBox, is now available. The NBox is an interactive data visualization tool that allows users to view data displayed in a grid across two dimensions, each dimension representing a range of data. Customizable nodes representing data items are displayed in the cells formed by the intersection of the two dimensions. For more information, see Creating Databound NBox Components.
A new data visualization component, the ADF DVT diagram, is now available. The diagram produces an interactive component that you can use to model, represent, and visualize information using a shape called a node to represent data and links to represent relationships between the nodes. Use diagrams when you want to highlight both the data objects and the relationship between them. For more information, see Creating Databound Diagram Components.
For Release 12c (12.2.1), this document has been updated in several ways. Following are the sections that have been added or changed.
Part I Getting Started with Fusion Web Applications
Revised a section to describe new samples added to the Summit ADF standalone samples application to demonstrate ADF features, including row finders, find operations on service data objects (SDO) exposed as SOAP web services, programmatic validation of attributes, and remote task flows. See revised section Overview of the Summit ADF Standalone Sample Applications.
Part II Building Your Business Services
Added a new section to describe how to invoke find methods exposed by ADF SDO in a consuming application. See revised section Working with the Find Method Filter Model in the Consuming Application.
Revised a section to describe JDeveloper support for validating Groovy script expressions in ADF business components. See revised section Using Groovy Scripting Language With Business Components.
Part III Using the Model Layer
Revised a section to describe best practice for creating view objects using declarative SQL mode when you want to expose them as ADF REST resources. See section About RESTful Web Services and ADF Business Components.
Added a new section to describe using primary key finders in the ADF REST framework to filter a resource collection. See section Filtering a Resource Collection with Primary Key Values.
Part V Creating a Databound Web User Interface
Added a new section to describe how to configure the desired table scrolling behavior using the table iterator binding RowCountThreshold attribute. See section What You May Need to Know About Table Scrolling Behavior and Row Count.
Added a new section to describe how to configure an inputComboboxListOfValues component to support Null values at runtime. See section What You May Need to Know About InputComboboxListOfValues and Null Values.
Revised a section to describe the properties that control turning off automatic regions refresh while consuming a contextual event. See section About Creating Contextual Events.
Revised a section to describe how to publish events for remote consumers, such as a remote region. See section How to Publish Contextual Events.
Added a new section to describe how to programmatically create contextual event definitions, register the event producer and even trigger the contextual event (this is an alternative to relying on data controls to perform the binding). See section How to Dynamically Create and Handle Contextual Events Using Managed Beans.
Part VI Completing Your Application
Revised a section to describe how to get current user data from the ADF Security Context when the user is prompted to login after visiting public pages. See revised section What You May Need to Know About ADF Authentication.
Added a new section to describe how to configure the connections.xml file to globally define ADF Security redirect destination pages for user login and logout. See section How to Ensure That the Redirect Destination Page is Available.
Revised a section to describe a workaround for the Active Data Service when the user attempts to close the browser window to navigate away from the page with active data components. See revised section Limitations of the Active Data Service Framework.
Revised sections to remove best practice recommendations from previous releases that had favored server environments where RAM was a limitation and the ADF Business Components passivation/activation cycle was used to reduce memory usage. See revised sections throughout Using State Management in a Fusion Web Application and Tuning Application Module Pools.
For a discussion about the importance of minimizing application module passivation/activation in today’s systems, see Managing When Passivation and Activation Occurs and Pool Behavior Parameters.
Added a section that describes how the ADF application module pool configuration parameters can be set at design time to affect the behavior of the application module pool, see What You May Need to Know About Application Module Pool Configuration Parameters.
Removed sections that described the ADF application module pool configuration parameters in Using State Management in a Fusion Web Application.
Note that these parameters are now exclusively described in the "Tuning Oracle Application Development Framework" chapter of Tuning Performance as mentioned in How to Set Configuration Properties Declaratively.
Removed sections that described ADF database connection pool configuration parameters in Tuning Application Module Pools.
Note that these parameters are no longer described in Developing Fusion Web Applications with Oracle Application Development Framework because these parameters do not support the preferred connection type for ADF Business Component Model projects (data source connections). If your application defines a JDBC URL connection type (legacy only), refer to the 11g (11.1.1.9.0) release version of this guide to obtain documentation on the ADF database connection pool configuration parameters.