Now that the dust has settled on the unveiling of Oracle’s Application Development Framework (ADF) Mobile, InfoQ examines the reactions to the product from the community.
Oracle’s take on what tools developers will need in this new era of mobile computing appears much the same as its competitors. The writing is officially on the wall. Mobile devs don’t want to endlessly rewrite their code for each mobile OS. Over at the stackexchange.com site, at least one member there, exTrace101, found the price to be an issue:
Q: I would like to know whether Oracle ADF Mobile is free to use for someone who doesn't have the (expensive) ADF license&hellip.
A: it turned out to be not free, cost : USD$ 120.00 per named user, or USD$ 5800.00 per processor and if you want to deploy your app say to app store you need processor license.
Economically challenged devs can check out a free version of the ADF as reported earlier in InfoQ. exTrace101 turned out to be a wealth of information. Answering his own queries when none proved sufficient:
Q: What about usage scope?
A: Oracle FAQ: A named user plus license of ADF will entitle customer a single named user license of the ADF Mobile. A processor license of ADF will allow customer to deploy ADF Mobile-based application to unlimited number of devices.
Q: Is ADF Mobile suitable for games?
A: I'm still though unclear about whether it's suited for games but there is a hint : Oracle FAQ: You may even add a feature based on device-native code. All of these can run within the same application, and all of these features can communicate with each other. (I) hope someone else (can) shed more light about making games with ADF mobile.
While over at IceSoft Technologies’ site, zzzz8, a member there, wondered how Oracle’s ADF Mobile stacked up against Icemobile:
I just saw the news release and a few articles (and Oracle's website) on Oracle ADF Mobile. It's quite an interesting solution. Unfortunately, its main drawbacks are that it seems to only work with Oracle WebLogic and Fusion, making it unavailable for people like me who don't have the money to purchase an Oracle WebLogic license. However, Oracle states that apps developed using ADF Mobile should be able to pass muster in the Apple app store - which is one of the big negatives with ICEmobile.
Q: Could anyone on the ICEmobile team comment on the differences and similarities between ICEmobile and Oracle ADF Mobile?
To which ted.goddard, another member there replied:
A: ADF mobile applications make use of both an embedded JVM (Java virtual machine) and PhoneGap, so an online ADF mobile application that makes use of server-side JSF (JavaServer Faces) is very unlikely to be accepted. If the application is self-contained and does not download arbitrary scripts or HTML pages, then it would not violate app store guidelines. Similarly, it should be possible to create a standalone ICEmobile application that would pass review. It would be necessary to develop this application in pure HTML and cache the HTML within the App. The step to include the JVM is interesting: previously scripting languages other than WebKit JavaScript were prohibited, so this introduces the possibility of an ICEmobile application with JSP (JavaServer Pages) or ICEFaces running within a local JVM.
And to provide further proof that it isn’t what you know but whom you are acquainted with. Google Group the ADF Enterprise Methodology Group rang authoritative. A member of that group, Vaibhav Rastogi, commented on the relationship between Phonegap and ADF Mobile:
Oracle ADF Mobile is based on Phone Gap. PhoneGap libraries are included in the container to support device services integration.
Oracle bigwig Joe Huang, as might be expected, was a fount of data:
There are a ton of advantages of using ADF Mobile over just plain PG:
- For starters, ADF Mobiles embeds PhoneGap in the framework, so for starters you already get PhoneGap with ADF Mobile.
- ADF Mobile delivers a set of Oracle-developed HTML 5 component set that’s completely optimized for mobile. If you worked with JQuery component before, you know it’s great for desktop browsers but not optimized for web engines in the mobile devices. We initially looked at JQuery/jQueryMobile but they were just not up to our performance requirement.
- Business logic is delivered through an embedded light-weight headless JavaVM. If you are doing straight PG+JQMobile, you either have to code your business logic in native code or in JavaScript. With ADF Mobile, you use Java.
- An Encrypted SQLite DB engine is embedded in the framework. With PG+JQMobile, you have to find a way to encrypted DB yourself.
- Out of box integration with Oracle Identity Management
- Integrated development experience in JDeveloper
- Same development paradigm as developing any other ADF app
Some of these advantages like JavaVM can only be delivered by Oracle.
