If the business wants to hide a field in the seeded page, you can do it by personalizing the page and set Rendered property to false. But this solution will not help you if the field is marked as mandatory by the seeded page.
The reasons are Mandatory Validations are usually done at the EO level. Hence even if you hide the mandatory field, the validation would still happen at the server. If the column has not null constraint in the table, it will throw a database error.
Can I extend the VO or EO and remove the mandatory property? No, you cannot change the mandatory property through extension.
How to fix this? You can fix this by setting a default value for the mandatory field.
Should I extend the VO/EO and set the default value? Do not extend the VO/EO for the defaulting logic. Because extensions are applied at the site level and the Oracle seeded pages share the same VO/EO all over the Applications.
Where to default the value?
Extend the controller and set the value in the processRequest(){} method. This is the safest way to default the value to the mandatory field.
After defaulting the mandatory variable, personalize the page and set the rendered property to false.
Following are the most frequently asked questions in the OAF forums by new OAF Developers
What is OAF?
What are the prerequisites for learning OAF?
I am a forms developer and I want to learn a web technology, should I go for OAF or ADF?
Where to get the jdeveloper for OA Framework?
How to learn OAF and where to find step by step tutorial?
Can I practice OAF in home?
In this article I am going to explain what the developer should do if he is new to OA framework technology.
What is OAF? OAF is web development framework based on MVC architecture for developing HTML pages and customizations in the Oracle Applications 11i/R12.
What are the prerequisites for learning OA framework? You need the basic level knowledge in J2EE, good level of knowledge in Java and Oracle database (very important). Especially in java you should have good knowledge of inheritence, overriding, exception handling and collections etc.
I am a forms developer and I want to learn a web technology, should I go for OAF or ADF? It depends on the purpose of learning the web technology. If you are an ebiz developer and want to do customization and extensions for the HTML based pages in the Oracle applications 11i/R12 then you should go for OA framework. This statment holds well till the release of fusion applications because ADF is well integrated with fusion apps. Also remember learning OAF is not going to be wasted, because ADF uses same bc4j in the name of ADF bc (of course, with good improvements over bc4j), so OAF developers can easily learn ADF in minimal duration.
If you're a forms developer, you're not working in Oracle Applications and you want to develop a new web application for your business, then you should go for ADF 11g. For more information about difference between OAF and ADF follow this link
Where to get the jdeveloper for OA Framework? The jdeveloper available in the otn.oracle.com is meant for j2ee developers. So it cannot be used for OAF development. There are different set of jdeveloper versions available in the metalink corresponding to the OAF version of your Oracle Applications. First you need to identify the version of OA Framework available in the Oracle Application instance.
To know that
Open any OAF page
Select the "About this Page" link located at the bottom of the page.
Choose the technology components tab
There you can find the versions of OAF and all technology components of the Oracle application.
And you need a Metalink login to view the above link and to download the jdeveloper zip file.
How to learn OA framework and where to find step by step tutorial? The best way to learn OA framework is to start with toolbox tutorials. If you have any doubts in the tutorial you can refer the Developers guide and Personalization Guide. If you want to refer the documentation for OAF java methods like setForwardURL() etc. you can see it in Java Doc available in the index.htm page.
To See the tutorial index
Go to jdevDoc folder in the path where you unziped your jdeveloper.zip file.
Open the index.htm
There you can find Oracle Application Framework Toolbox Tutorials link.
There are around 15 topics in this tutorial to illustrate the basic and advanced topics of the OA framework. It will take 5-10 days to complete all the lessons in this tutorial. These tutorial lessons include almost everything you might need in the OA framework development and customization.
How to practice it in Home? Running a OAF page from the jdeveloper needs a Oracle Applications Instance up and running. So should have the whole Oracle Applications instance installed in your laptop/desktop or you should have network connection to Oracle Applications instance.
If you want to call pl/sql from the controller then get the application module from the pageContext. And then get the db transaction from the application module OADBTransaction txn = pageContext.getApplicationModule(webBean).getOADBTransaction();
How to Call a Concurrent Program from OA framework
OA Framework provides the ConcurrentRequest class to call the concurrent program from the page. The submitRequest() method in the ConcurrentRequest class takes 6 parameters and returns request id of the submitted concurrent request:
ProgramApplication -Application Short name of application under which the program is registered. ProgramName - Concurrent Program Name for which the request has to be submitted ProgramDescription - Concurrent Program Description StartTime - Time at which the request has to start running. SubRequest - Set to TRUE if the request is submitted from another running request and has to be treated as a sub request. Parameters - Parameters of the concurrent Request
Here is the example for calling a concurrent program from a OA framework page.
public int submitCPRequest(Number headerId) { try { OADBTransaction tx = (OADBTransaction)getDBTransaction(); java.sql.Connection pConncection = tx.getJdbcConnection(); ConcurrentRequest cr = new ConcurrentRequest(pConncection); String applnName = "PO"; //Application that contains the concurrent program String cpName = "POXXXX"; //Concurrent program name String cpDesc = "Concurrent Program Description"; // concurrent Program description // Pass the Arguments using vector // Here i have added my parameter headerId to the vector and passed the vector to the concurrent program Vector cpArgs = new Vector(); cpArgs.addElement(headerId.stringValue()); // Calling the Concurrent Program int requestId = cr.submitRequest(applnName, cpName, cpDesc, null, false, cpArgs); tx.commit(); return requestId; } catch (RequestSubmissionException e) { OAException oe = new OAException(e.getMessage()); oe.setApplicationModule(this); throw oe; } }
How to monitor the submitted concurrent request OA Framework
The Request Monitoring user interface provides the ability to search for a current user's requests. It allows the user to specify criteria to search for a request based on a specific request ID, requests for a specific program or a range of scheduled requests. Using the search results list, a user can select a request to see the details of that request or view its output file. From the Details page for a request, a user can place a hold on a pending request, cancel a pending request or view the request's log file.
You can call the Request Monitoring page by calling following URL
With the emergence of next generation Fusion technology middleware stack there is confusion between the technologies OA framework and ADF among Oracle developers especially for the people who are developing extensions for Oracle Applications 11i/R12. Both are Oracle technologies for developing web based User Interface with Jdeveloper. Hence I decided to bring out the detailed overview of OA framework and ADF, and identify the rite technology for your web development projects.
OA Framwork
OAF (Oracle Applications Framework) is used to create the web based Oracle Application extensions and it is the default web technology for 11i and R12 development. It is closely integrated with Oracle Apps hence it is meaningless outside apps context. OAF is a model-view-controller technology stack which comprised of OA framework View (regions and pages) and BC4j respectively as view and model layers.
OAF and Oracle Applications 11i/R12
OAF includes AOL which provides e-business functionality like functions, menus, responsibility, functional security, data security, messages, profiles, flexfields, and concurrent programs.
List of Values – validation, auto complete, auto clear is available in OAF.
Transactional Search – Query Bean is available in OAF.
Data export, Configurable pages and Rich text editor is available in OAF.
OAF supports translatable table (TL tables).
Who columns like created by, modified by, creation date, modified date are supported in OAF.
Since OAF is tightly integrated with E-Business session management is done automatically.
Menu that appears at the top of the page is integrated with AOL menus. Hence the menus can be configured dynamically by manipulating AOL menus and no coding is required.
Functional security is available in OAF which allows you to configure the responsibility dynamically for the user.
User authentication is done from SSO. So no need to configure or write any code.
Data security is available.
Secured against cross site scripting attack.
OAF page access can be tracked.
Standards and guidelines are available for developing extensions in OAF which is the most important thing.
Reusable regions are available in OAF.
UI cannot be migrated to ADF 11g (may be in the future Oracle will come up with migration utility for UI but even then only declarative pages would be migrated and the UI pages should have followed the coding standards strictly).
BC4J can be migrated with minimal code change.
Controller cannot be migrated hence you have to rewrite all the logics in the controller if you want to migrate it to ADF 11g.
ADF 10g
ADF 10g (Application Development Framework) is the core technology for Fusion Applications and uses lot of open standards and technologies. ADF can also be used for common J2EE applications because ADF technology stack allows you choose between various options. ADF is primarily comprised of ADF Faces, ADF model and ADFbc (which is previously known as bc4j in OAF)
ADF 10g and Oracle Applications 11i/R12
ADF 10g does not include any support for AOL
List of Values and its associated features like validation, auto complete and clear does not exists in ADF.
No Transactional search, Data Export, Configurable pages or Rich text editor.
No support of Translatable Table and who columns.
No support for E-business suite session management.
No support for integration with Oracle Workflow.
E-business security features are totally unavailable in ADF 10g. (security features include Data security, functionally security, SSO etc)
Page access cannot be tracked in ADF 10g.
No support of for menus in ADF.
Reusable regions cannot be created in ADF 10g.
ADF 10g can be easily migrated to ADF 11g.
And most of all you cannot extend or personalize the existing page with the help of ADF.
And the advantage of ADF 10g over OA framework is that your investments would be protected when you want to migrate to ADF 11g.
(ADF has many advantages starting from the underlying architecture, the level of support for Web Services and SOA development and going all the way to the actual development experience of UIs using visual editor and drag and drop binding. -- Shay)
Conclusion
Consider following points when choosing technology.
If you want to build few pages with close integration of e-business suite then opt for OA framework. Remember if you want to migrate your code to ADF 11g in the future, you have to follow the coding standards strictly and code all the business logic in bc4j rather than handling the logic in controller.
If you don’t want a close integration e-business suite or your building entirely new application then go for ADF 10g.
should be deployed in the $JAVA_TOP/<path of your file>.
For eg:
if your files path in jdeveloper is $jdev_home/myprojects/oracle/apps/ap/setup/webui/setupCO.java
then place your class files in the following path in the instance $JAVA_TOP/oracle/apps/ap/setup/webui/setupCO.class
Deploying Page and Region files
The Page xml files(*PG.xml) and region xml(*RN.xml) files resides in the database. So you have to import the file into the database to make it work in the instance. Oracle application provides XMLExporter/XMLImporter to export and import page files from and to the database.
This command will import the SetupPG.xml file into the database.
Extracting from instance
If you have done your personalizations in the developement instance and you want to deploy the personalizations into the production instance, then you can extract the personalization using XMLExporter command from the developement instance and Import the extracted xml file into the production instance in the same way you did for PG.xml files.
In case your page is referred in existing pages of Oracle applications you can skip this step. But if you want to access the page as a new Function then follow these steps.
Create Function as ID: XX_SETUP Name: SETUP Function type(HTML tab) : SSW URL: OA.jsp?page=/oracle/apps/ap/XXX/SetupPG¶meter1=xx¶meter1=xx
Attach the function to a Menu Attach the menu to a Responsibility
Restart the server
After deployement you cannot see the page immediately on the server instance. This is because your Pages and class files would be cached in the middle tier. So you have to bounce the apache.
Managed beans are Java classes that you register with the. The managed beans are initialized when they are referenced in the application for the first time. It helps to handle UI events or write data manipulation code. TIP: Use managed beans to store only logic that is related to the UI rendering.
Managed beans can be registered in three files
adfc-config.xml
Task flow definition file
faces-config.xml
adfc-config.xml
Managed bean declared in this file can be of any scope.
Task Flow definition file
Managed bean scope can any scope. However, managed beans of request, pageFlow, or with scope set to none accessed within the task flow definition, must be defined within the task flow definition file. Managed bean definitions within task flow definition files will only be visible to activities executing within the same task flow.
faces-config.xml
Allows any managed bean scope other than pageFlow scope.
The order of searching a managed bean in the application is faces-config.xml, adfc-config.xml and Task flow definition file (if exists). Hence managed bean defined in the faces-config.xml takes the precedence.
As a general rule in fusion web applications, a bean that may be used in more than one page or task flow is defined in the adbc-config.xml and a bean that is used within the task flow is defined in the task flow definition XML file.
Add a managed bean
To add a managed bean
Click the adbc-config.xml file or task flow definition file.
Go to Property editor -> Managed bean tab
Choose the +(Add) Icon.
Difference between Managed Bean and Backing Bean
Backing bean and Managed bean are not different they are the same. Managed bean is about how the bean is created and initialized. Backing bean is about the role a particular managed bean plays.
In other way, Managed bean is a JavaBean registered in the adfc-config.xml file. These beans have properties that are bound to the values of UIComponents.
Backing bean is a special type of managed-bean consisting of properties that are UIComponents. Instead of the bean properties being bound to the UIComponent values, they are instead bound to the UIComponents themselves.
Unbounded A specialized form of task flow that has a single entry point and zero or more exit points. It is configured in adfc-config.xml file.
It cannot declaratively specify parameters.
It contains default activity
It cannot be called by another task flow.
Unbounded task flow can be used when
You want to take advantage of ADF controller features not offered by bounded task flows
You don’t need ADF controller features that are offered when using a bounded task flow.
The task flow will not be called by another task flow.
The application has multiple points of entry.
Bounded A set of activities, control flow rules and managed beans that interact to allow a user to complete a task. It is used to encapsulate a reusable portion of an application.
A bounded task flow can be called another bounded task flow or unbounded task flow.
The bounded task flow always specifies a default activity
Managed bean specified in pageFlow scope is visible only within the task flow, and isolated from rest of application.
Because of the resuability features, bounded task is mostly used in all applications.
Features of Bounded Task Flow
Well-defined boundary An ADF bounded task flow consists of its own set of private control flow rules, activities and managed beans. Input and Ouput parameters are available to bounded task flow just like a function call. Data controls can be shared between task flows.
Single point of entry An ADF bounded task flow has a default activity that executes before all other activities in the task flow.
PageFlow memory scope Its a new scope introduced in ADF. And its lifespan is ADF bounded task flow.
Reuse You can identify an entire group of activities as a single entity and reuse it in another application.
Parameters and return values You can pass the parameters and get the output just like a function call.
Transaction ManagementIt represents a transactional unit of work. While entering a bounded task flow you can create new transaction or join the existing one.
Reentry You can choose to reenter the bounded task flow.
Security Secure a bounded task flow using fusion security.
