My learnings and views on Oracle Applications, Human Resource Management System, Oracle Time & Labor, Oracle Applications Framework, Business Process Execution Language and Service Oriented Architecture.
I am going to present 2 sessions in the Oracle OpenWorld next week and am the guest speaker for one of the Oracle’s session. Do catch me if you are going to be there.
More details on Oracle OpenWorld @ http://www.oracle.com/us/openworld/index.html Session ID: S316625 Schedule: Monday, September 20, 3:30PM | Westin Market Street Hotel Title: DreamWorks Animation SKG's Oracle Time and Labor Implementation Speaker(s):
Shiv Saroj, Senior Consultant
Daniel Thotha, Dreamworks Animation
Session ID: S318009 Schedule: Thursday, September 23, 3:00PM | Moscone West L2, Rm 2008 Title: Oracle Time and Labor Release 12.1 Updates, Roadmap, and Customer Case Study Speaker(s):
Prakash Pulla, Oracle, Director
Shiv Saroj, Senior Consultant
Nichole Lewis, Dreamworks Animation
Session ID: S316606 Schedule: Wednesday, September 22, 10:00AM | Moscone West L2, Rm 2007 Title: Data Auditing and SOX Compliance Speaker(s):
My abstract on technology direction regarding choice of framework for Oracle E-Business Suite has been selected for presentation. I am looking forward to present my paper at the OAUG Collaborate 10 conference. Below are the details of my session:
Session ID: 4584
Date: Tuesday, April 20
Time: 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Location: South Seas F
Speaker: Shiv Saroj
Product Line(s): Fusion Applications (FZAPP); Fusion Middleware (FZMW); Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS)
Track: Application Strategy and Services (AS); Development (DEV)
Abstract: OA Framework is the technology upon which majority of 11i and R12 releases of Oracle Applications is built on and ADF is the sole technology used for the development of pages in Fusion. A major portion of any Oracle Applications project involves the customization of existing pages and development of new modules to meet business requirements. OA framework provides a seamless, patch safe mechanism whereas ADF is capable of providing visually rich, complex logic modifications without much coding effort. Determine where do we stand when it comes to tool of choice for customization of current pages and development of custom modules? Should we start the custom Oracle Applications development on ADF or still stick to OAF? What is the future impact of these technologies on current business?
Collaborate 10 April 18-22, 2010 Mandalay Bay Convention Center, Las Vegas, Nevada Check http://oaug.collaborate10.com/reg/#fullpass for registration charges, starting at 1785$. More details here.
If you attend one conference this year, make this the one. COLLABORATE 10 offers practical insights, techniques and answers to your questions — precise, high-impact education and networking to help your company hit its Oracle Applications target.
·Over 400 user-driven sessions featuring tips, techniques and best practices for Oracle Fusion, Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, Agile, Hyperion, Oracle Communications and Siebel product families
·More than 50 Special Interest Group (SIG) and Geographic networking meetings — connect to discuss your specific areas of interest
·A powerful global community of Oracle technology and applications professionals and experts — ask your questions, get your answers — take advantage of valuable free advice
·Interact, face to face, with Oracle executives and product development professionals.
·Unique educational experiences included with your registration: Women in Technology panel discussion, Oracle Fusion “Soup to Nuts” seminar, OAUG/IT Convergence Boot Camp Workshops, presentations by Oracle Support, Oracle Primavera breakout sessions and more.
It has been a long while since I wrote my last article. I have been busy on some large scale Oracle Applications implementations on tight schedule along with my regular client workshops on EBS and Fusion Middleware.
I am going to make this post as the landing page for the Middleware 11g related updates, important announcements.
In last couple of years, I have seen the way Middleware 10g has evolved into Middleware 11g and its integration with recently acquired BEA WebLogic server. FMW 11g is truly amazing in the sense of technology platform, scalability, UI, usability and out of the box functionality. The list just goes on and on, I will leave it to you to read on the Oracle site.
Users of FMW 10g will also notice that almost most of the aspect of the development/ deployment, server configuration etc changed. Now instead of individually managed servers (SOA, WebCenter etc), all the servers get managed inside a WebLogic server. More on this later.
In the coming articles, I will be covering the following aspects:
Getting started (Where and What to pick up and install)
Making use of Amazon cloud computing as your FMW 11g server (unless you have 4GB RAM, don't even think of running the server locally)
A sample application development and deployment process
A sample integration with Oracle E-Business Suite
Use of WebCenter Spaces to have an Enterprise Portal up & running in seconds
Two of my papers have been selected for the upcoming OHUG [Oracle HCM Users Group].
XML Publisher to the rescue of Seeded Reports
API User Hook's - A hidden strength of Oracle HRMS
Tilak Vankayla will be the co-speaker for API User Hook session. Tilak's expertise lies in HRMS techno functional role. He is an expert in International,US Payroll and responsible for development of many existing features of International Payroll. We are pals since the time we used to work in the Oracle HRMS development team.
The Oracle HCM Users Group (OHUG) was born in 1998 as the Human Resources Information Systems Special Interest Group (HRIS SIG).
The OHUG is an organization devoted exclusively to providing users with valuable insight into Oracle and PeopleSoft Human Capital Management applications. OHUG provides its members with in-depth training sessions from industry experts, along with the opportunity to share experiences and best-practices information with colleagues implementing and using Oracle and PeopleSoft HCM applications.
OHUG also enables users to interface directly with Oracle executives, product managers, and development, gaining knowledge about new functionality directly from the source and ultimately influencing the future direction of the entire Oracle HCM product suite.
More details on http://ohug.org/index.php/conferences
We had a number of queries and discussions on the OA Framework Forum on OTN regarding OAF, ADF and Oracle Applications. In this article, I am going to cover where OAF and ADF stand with respect to Oracle Applications and what are the expectations out of them.
OAF stands for Oracle Applications Framework and is a MVC architecture based J2EE framework customized for use in Oracle Applications development. It is tailor made for use in the development, customization of Oracle Apps pages and any custom application development to be hosted, integrated in Oracle Apps. It has the inbuilt support for features like session management, AOL/J security, connection pooling etc. OAF provides classes for all the standard web widgets seen on the Self Service pages like Text field, List of Values, Table, HGrid, Buttons etc. I won't go deep into OAF architecture, you can get that detail in the OAF Dev guide.
Only choice of tool to work with OAF is Jdeveloper with OA Extension. There is no OA extension /plugin available for any other IDE. This is another factor where people keep getting confused. Jdeveloper is a generic Java IDE but the one without the OA extension can't be used for OAF development. OA extension is what provides the required OA libraries and enables OA based Workspace, Project creation.
OAF is the only option for any Oracle Apps related development [Here I am not considering PUI Forms interface for the simple reason that Oracle has stopped any new PUI based development a couple of years ago and is trying to convert them to OA pages]. Release 11i and recently launched Release 12 version of Oracle Apps is based on OAF. For look & feel and business logic changes to Oracle provided seeded Self Service pages, one can make use of Extension and Personalization features of OAF. Modifications done following the Extension and Personalization guidelines are upgrade and patch safe. Any direct modification made to seeded code will be overwritten during the patching.
ADF stands for Application Development Framework. Unlike OAF, it is not a vendor or technology specific framework. In fact it supports a number of technologies for each of its Model, View and Controller components and hence has received a good appreciation from the developer, architect community. It has gained popularity as the choice of framework for generic J2EE based applications development.
ADF is going to be used for Fusion release of Oracle Applications. As oracle itself is working on the Fusion release of Applications code and establishing the Applications specific standards, libraries, I don't see the fusion specific ADF development standards being out for customers, vendors anytime before 2009 or 2010 [ Might be even later based on the policy they come up with]. Though you can still create custom applications in ADF and host on a 10gAS server, the integration, maintenance, Apps LAF will be the issues you will have to face. ADF still doesn't have the native support for integration with release 11i or R12 based system and I don't see it coming as ADF is more of meant for fusion product which is still underway. As the path will be to move to fusion, I don't think that there will be any extra effort to provide native support of ADF for 11i or even in R12.
The first looks of the Fusion release Applications are supposed to be out in the Dec, 2008 [ % of functionality covered is not committed] and now with the exit [read firing] of John Wookey, Senior Vice President of Applications Development, who spearheaded the fusion development, I am not sure what's the new milestone dates as per new management [signs of further delays are out]. Well, this definitely means that all the customers will be on 11i or R12 release of code for a couple of more years and the biggest chunk of maintenance/enhancement work will be based on OAF. To stress on this aspect, you should consider the fact that there are no standards, guidelines available for customers, vendors with respect to ADF and Fusion. With the new framework going to take some time to get stabilize along with new fusion Apps code development, its going to take couple of more years.
Only scenario where I see ADF fit into current Apps related development is the kind of project where you have to develop a completely standalone application which just uses the Oracle Apps data but is not required to integrate with the Oracle Apps. For all Oracle Applications related development and customizations, stick to OA Framework.
What does the above mean? Good news for OAF developers as for next 5-6 years, most of the Oracle Applications related work will be on OA framework. Also keep in mind that ADF has many features which are similar to OAF. Hence it will be an easy path to learn ADF if you know OAF properly and want to move over to ADF related development. As the majority of current Oracle Applications code and customizations are OAF based, there should be an easy migration road map for OAF based customizations to fusion technology.
Mukul has put up a nice intro on the comparison of OAF and ADF tech stacks. Check it here.
This blog is a medium for me to share the knowledge which I have built upon in last couple of years. Earlier I have been involved with Development, implementation and consulting of Oracle Applications. Currently working on Oracle SOA Suite, BPEL to pickup on the industry leader Oracle Fusion Middleware.
I'm also going to post on the upcoming technologies in the arena of Oracle Applications.
