Java Hair

Tomorrow morning I am off to Oracle Open World 2008.  This is the 5th year that we will be exhibiting there, and I believe this will be the most exciting year yet.  I’m sure that the show will be interesting, it usually is, and I get to hang out with some people that have become friends over the years via the show.  I believe their Appreciate event features Elvis Costello this year.  I don’t think that is going to compare to Billy Joel’s performance last year, or the sheer fact that you had to choose between Stevie Nicks, Lenny Kravitz and Billy Joel, but it should be fun nonetheless.

What I am really excited about this time around, however, is more business oriented.  This year we will be demoing our Evo forms conversion tool, as we always do, but this year we are converting forms to Oracle’s ADF 11g framework, both the ADF Business Components and the ADF Rich Faces layer.  I’m not going to tell you that these forms are being converted 100%, frankly, I don’t think that it’s possible in a practical way.  We are converting enough of the forms to show a fully functioning BC layer and a fully functioning UI layer, however, and that is, IMHO, pretty cool to see.

So if you are going to OOW this year, be sure to stop by Vgo Software’s booth and ask for a demo.  Be sure to check out the group discussion about creating an ADF Methodology that I will be participating in at the Unconference, stop by to see Andrejus Baranovski’s presentation and the other Unconference presentation Andrejus and I will be doing about using ADF 11g as a platform for forms conversions.  It will be similar to the talk I gave at ODTUG, but it will probably be a little more technical with Andrejus’s input.

Hope to see you there!

Lately we’ve been doing a lot of discussing about how to reuse components within an ADF application over on the ADF Methodogy Google Group. A lot of interesting comments have been made and Avrom even blogged about some in his post about SOA without the S.

A lot of clients we talk to are interested in modernizing their applications but they don’t always realize that in order to modernize a client/server application in a large enterprise environment AND take advantage of the technology they want to move to, a lot of work is involved. Not just in the actual development, but in the planning and designing of the new application.

Sure, the simplest approach is to just convert what you have and go with that, and in a lot of cases, that is a good first step, but it doesn’t make sense to just convert what you have to end up with the same exact application in a different technology stack, the only thing that is going to buy you is different support costs, probably along with a bunch of flack from the business who’s paying for the change.

Many large enterprises have already created a stockpile of available enterprise services that are meant to be re-used by new applications. Make sure that part of your modernization project is to take a step back and analyze what existing services already exist and how they can be used in your modernized version of the application you are migrating or converting.

After you have analyzed existing services, take the time to determine what this applicaiton that is being converted can offfer as far as services.  Does it make sense to provide some of this data as a service to the enterprise?  Are other applications going to be converted that will want to make use of the same data?

So though the application you are looking at may seem quite isolated, chances are, if it is part of a larger infrastructure, it really isn’t all that isolated at all, it’s just that the old technology couldn’t support it any other way.

Earlier this year Chris Muir came up with the idea to bring together a group of people interested in Oracle’s ADF technology and discuss a methodology for projects built using it.  Out of that discussion came the ADF Methodology Wiki page, the ADF Methodology Google Group, and the ADF Methodology Unconference Event at Oracle Open World this year.

The group has had some very interesting discussions regarding when to use ADF technology, best practices using the ADF framework, and even limitations of the framework.  Though the group is obviously very Oracle oriented and features Oracle employees as well as Oracle Aces and Oracle Ace Directors, anyone can join if they have an interest in the ADF framework.

The discussions are focused around ADF version 11g but experience in ADF 11g is not required in order to participate in the group or attend the unconference session.  If you have an interest in developing ADF applications, I strongly encourage you to register for the ADF Methodology Unconference Session at the wiki page.

See you there!