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Leaving the details of the individual sessions aside, the impression from this year’s OpenWorld is that of a shift in Oracle’s perception of themselves.

Oracle used to present itself as a technology company that happened to use its technology to build applications. Now, Oracle is an applications company that happens to build some technology (software and hardware) as needed for its applications.

This was evident from the main keynotes that focused almost exclusively on Oracle applications present and future. There was no mention of any news in either database or middleware - this was relegated to the smaller Oracle Develop sub-conference. Looking at the tag cloud in the official Schedule Builder, you search in vain for any mention of PL/SQL or Application Express - even Fusion Development (ADF) get only a small mention.

For a developer this means:

1. The core products used for Oracle applications (Fusion/ADF/BPEL) will be around for a very long time.
2. The non-core products (ODP.NET, Application Express, etc.) will live only as long as there is a significant community using them.

This does not mean that either ODP.NET or APEX is going away (both have strong communities), but it means that it is up to the developer community to keep Oracle interested in these products.

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Since Oracle killed off client/server application development with Forms 6i, their position has been that new applications should be built building web technology. Oracle has invested heavily in JavaServer Faces together with ADF, which is what they are using for Oracle Fusion Applications. This approach (ADF Faces) is well supported with UI components, documentation, tutorials,and global developer events. 

It is possible to build applications with ADF and Java Swing, but this approach is barely documented and not at all pushed by Oracle. So Swing is likely to slowly wither away in the “continue and converge” category.

Oracle has occasionally seen the need to build rich, attractive user interfaces (look at the CRM applications). But when they need to do so, they use Adobe Flash to do it. This means that Oracle does not see JavaFX, which is another rich client technology competing with Flash, as a viable proposition. JavaFX goes into the “continue and converge” bin as well. 

The one rich client technology that is impossible to ignore is .NET, and Oracle is indeed supporting .NET very well. Look at the latest issue of Oracle Magazine - .NET development is one of the major themes. 

With Sun acquired by Oracle, Java (Swing and JavaFX) is out of the running for future desktop applications - leaving the entire field to Microsoft .NET.

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