Wednesday, February 25, 2009

Deploy ADF Rich Faces Client app to OAS 10.1.2

My team lead asked me to investigate the idea of moving ADF Rich Faces applications (deploy, that is) into OAS 10.1.2...or at least 10.1.3.

Shay Shmeltzer said the following:

ADF Faces Rich Client require JSF 1.2 (part of Java EE 5).
OAS 10.1.2 came with a Java EE 1.3 server - you can install an OC4J 10.1.3 on it and that will bring you to Java EE 1.4 - but you still won't get the needed JSF 1.2 support.

On top of it the ADF 11g libraries were compiled with JDK 1.6 - OAS 10.1.2 uses JDK 1.4 (or maybe even older version).
Let us assume that ADF Rich Faces components uses new features of JDK 1.5 at least, even though it is compiled with JDK 1.6 (this may not be a valid assumption...if they use features that are only in 1.6...which is possible I guess). Is JSF 1.2 certified with J2EE 4 or 3? Let's assume not. So we would either have to find some weird JSF implementation that tries to implement JSF 1.2 features, while being compatible with JDK 1.4. That might be possible, but would it be profitable or interesting for anybody to do such a thing? I do not know.

What about somehow installing what is necessary into a J2EE 1.3 server to be able to process Java EE 5.0 stuff? I think it would be easier to simply use a different container...

But what if it is not. Would it be less work to extend a web server so that its core includes multiple j2ee version capabilities...than it would be to simply install a new webserver and reference that? What about manhour costs?

But what if I developed my own brand of rich faces that looked and smelled pretty much like Oracle ADF Rich Faces, but worked with OAS 10.1.2, or 10. 1.3? The end users would not have to break down and pay for licensing from Oracle (which, by the way, may be covered under their license anyway since there is some transferrance of licensing from OAS 10g to Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g...but they have not got around to checking yet...)

Given what I know this last option seems the best. Even though it would take eons for me, alone, to get the full suite of Oracle Rich Faces look-alike components implemented and debugged. But it would be fun to try...

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