Grants Blog
News from the SOA, JEE, ADF, JDeveloper and Oracle Forms World

Tuesday at UKOUG saw me catching up on a few sessions but the key session today was the roundtable/open session "Apex, Forms, JDev: which tool". Generally these open session are not that well attended (maybe 10-15 people) but I counted over 40 people which was just awesome.

The idea of the session was really to address that commonest of questions: which tool do I use? There have been blog wars kicked off on the back of that exact question but today it was, a rational open discussion. Questions came up about:

Is Apex suitable for heavy data entry applications?
Customization of Apps with Forms, and in the future, JDev.
Is Forms really a viable option? Does it have a future.
Can you really migrate Forms or Java or Apex (or whether you should even try!)

Not surprising to me was that fact that the Apex, Forms and Jdev Oracle representatives felt very comfortable in where the "sweet spot" of their product was and how other tools are sometimes better. Its not always a binary choice of tool.

I'm hoping that some of you who were there might post your comments on the sessions but it felt like a great way of the Oracle tools community to discuss those burning questions about tools choice, and have the guidance of Oracle experts and customer alike.

First day at UKOUG saw plenty of packed sessions although it does seem that general conference numbers are down on previous years.

The first session I caught was Sten Vesterli doing his "Tools: What's Hot and What's not". Sten does a great presentation and I love how he limits the use of slides. I also loved his analogy of Oracle Tools developers in a raft asking which way they should go down the river. Great start to the day for people using Oracle Tools. If I do have one comment Sten, I'd personally say Swing is not as hot as you currently rate it.

The next session was Dana Singleterry from the Oracle Tools PM team who gave an introduction to JDeveloper and ADF. Dana did some nice easy-on-the-brain demos that give a nice idea of what kind of things you can do in JDev.

I then had two back to back sessions. The first was in one of the big auditoriums for "Forms: Features and Future" and we got about 120, which was a great turnout. Life in the old Forms yet!

It was then a quick dash to another hall to deliver "Redeveloping a Forms application using ADF". This is always an exciting presentation for me since its pretty much all demos. Again, a good turnout. I think we probably had about 70 people in the room.

Today we have a roundtable session on "Apex, JDev, Forms, SQL Dev: The choice is yours". So all those people who asked "which tool should I use", this is an essential session. You'll have Product Managers from each of these tools to pick their brains! Hey, maybe you might even see a fight break out ;o)

It's Monday morning and today I'm at the opening day of the premier UK Oracle Conference, UK OUG. I've got two presentations today; the first will be "Oracle Forms: Features and Future" where I will be talking about Forms 11g and integration with Web services and SOA. I then follow that with a presentation on "Building your business Services in Oracle ADF: A Case Study of Redevloping a Forms application" where I will be diving into ADF using an existing Forms application as a sample application which I will build, hopefully, infront of your eyes!

If you are coming along and are interested in Forms and/or Fusion/ADF then come along. I'm also hoping to check out Sten Vesterli's "An Overview of Oracle Development Tools", Dana Singleterry on "JDeveloper 11g: Where Do I start".

Are you coming to the UKOUG conference next week? On the Friday session you could attend a 2 hour masterclass delivered by yours truely and Duncan Mills on "How to become a Fusion Developer with no Java".
The aim of the masterclass is to focus on how far you can go and what you can achieve without having to get into the nuts and bolts of Java and the Java platform.

We'll be covering everything from building business services based on database tables, reusability, page design, task flows, drag and drop, popup dialogs, graphs and maps. And of course, you get to ask the people building ADF all those deep dive questions you always wanted to know!

Oracle in Egypt and Jordan are running two partner technology days (Jordan 18th Nov, Egypt 18th Nov) at which I will be talking about Oracle Forms strategy, Forms and SOA and will also give an introduction to our Fusion development platform: JDeveloper and Oracle ADF.

For any Oracle technologists in the area, this might be a good opportunity to see how to modernize your current investment, and what the future holds for Oracle technology.