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I’m just back from the ODTUG Kscope11 conference in Long Beach, where I presented my regular tools overview presentation, a WebCenter session, an enterprise ADF development session and an ADF tuning session as well as various panels.

One thing I noticed very clearly is that almost all the non-Oracle presenters in the Fusion Middleware track were from outside the U.S. For example, the Lunch and Learn panel on Fusion Middleware consisted of

• Guido Schmutz (ACE Director, Switzerland)
• Sten Vesterli (ACE Director, Denmark)
• Ronald van Luttikhuizen (ACE Director, Netherlands)
• Chris Muir (ACE Director, Australia)

In Scott/Tiger, we are busy with ADF development, and I know from my ACE Director friends in Europe that they are also working on ADF and SOA projects.
Is nobody in the U.S. actually using Fusion Middleware? Or are they just not talking about it?

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Oracle Fusion Applications!

It’s been “announced” at OpenWorld 2009 and again in 2010, and we have seen demos and screenshots - now is the time for Oracle to deliver. I want to see real-life Oracle Fusion Applications installations, so we can really have a look at how Oracle is building a serious enterprise application with ADF - I’m sure there are lessons to learn.

Additionally, I would really like Oracle to offer a “Fusion Applications Services” license - just the engine, not the UI. That would allow me to use the rock-solid data model and services, but put together a custom application on top. If the engine license was reasonably priced, we Oracle partners could start breaking into the middle market with vertical solutions to compete with SAP. But Oracle is very much an enterprise software company selling big bundles to big companies, so I’m not holding my breath…

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The ADF framework has improved dramatically over the years, but mysteriously, it remains a niche product outside a select circle of Oracle enthusiasts. If you look at the Google Trends graph for the last couple of years (below), you see Forms slowly declining and APEX is slowing climbing at about the same rate. And far below both of these, you find ADF flatlined.

It seems that ADF is stuck in the no-mands-land where Oracle products suffer a slow death - not free, but too cheap for the Oracle salesforce to bother with.

It’s too bad - ADF 11g is a great product, and Oracle would do the world a big favor by setting ADF free (Oracle Mix, free oracle.com account required).

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I’ll be speaking at the Oracle User Group Norway Spring Conference, April 14 to 16. This great conference takes place on a cruise ship sailing from Oslo to Kiel and back. My topics will be

• What’s Hot and What’s Not - An Overview of Oracle Development Tools
• Forms to ADF - Live!

They’ve lined up an impressively international speaker list, including Dan Morgan, Debra Lilley and Sue Harper - and me, of course …

See you in Oslo!

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The third thing I wish for from Oracle in 2010 is a free ADF runtime license. I believe that the current licensing is limiting ADF to existing Oracle enterprise customers, and that’s too bad.

I am not looking for Oracle to make ADF Open Source - but just to get the option to legally run ADF applications on Glassfish (and possibly JBoss and others). Support should be forum-based (like for Oracle XE).

This has several benefits:

• Universities could teach ADF (it’s full of brilliant code and design patterns) in the knowledge that students could use it outside the closed Oracle world.
• The thousands of capable developers in China, India, Phillipines and elsewhere, who are currently using Open Source solely for cost reasons, could pick up this brilliant tool.

It would not cannibalize existing revenue, as enterprise customers would still want to buy a support contract. But it would translate into both a wider ADF developer skills base and additional license revenue for Oracle as these customers eventually buy a support contract or upgrade to WebLogic.

Oracle is sitting on an unrecognized jewel while Java developers all over the world are wasting time with a plethora of much less capable frameworks. Help the world build better apps faster - set ADF Free!

Please vote for this idea on Oracle Mix.

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The first thing I wish for in 2010 is a WebCenter standard edition product at a reasonable price.

Currently, WebCenter is available as WebCenter Suite - which is a massive bundle with everything, and a corresponding massive price tag ($125,000 per CPU). There is also a WebCenter Services license, but at $80,000 per CPU for just content management, secure search and a couple of Oracle-branded open source products, this is even more overpriced.

What I wish for is “standard edition” product containing the core WebCenter product, the JSF Portlet bridge, OmniPortlet/WebClipping and the open source parts (Wiki/Blog and Discussions). This product does not need to include WebCenter Spaces, WebCenter Composer, Universal Content Management, Secure Enterprise Search, Presence etc.

This product should provide a way forward for the many existing Oracle Portal customers who are currently defecting to SharePoint in droves, as well as promoting ADF Faces at the way to write portlets.

If you agree, please vote for this idea on Oracle Mix - and feel free to comment below or to sten@vesterli.com.

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At the UKOUG conference in Birmingham, I gave a presentation entitled “Life After Forms” for people wondering what to do about their Forms applications. The reason that people consider this is of course that the talk in the Oracle community tend to concentrate on the two new options: ADF Faces and Application Express.However, whenever I talk to Oracle customers at conferences and on-site, most are still running Oracle Forms.In order to get some hard numbers, I gathered some statistics from the OTN Forms forum. Interestingly, the number of posts on this forum show almost a completely straight line since the forums started in 1998 (see figure below). This means that the interest in Forms (as measured by OTN Forum threads) has remained constant over more than 10 years - and shows no sign of tapering off.So if you are still running Oracle Forms, you are not alone. And with Oracle promising support until at least 2017, there are no technical reasons why you should rush out and re-develop existing Forms applications.

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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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It’s time for Oracle OpenWorld in San Francisco again - I’ll be speaking on Sunday Oct. 11 at the User Group symposium on “Simple SOA - A Real-Life Case Study”. It’s session S312178 in Moscone West L3 room 3000 at 11:15 a.m.

I will also be participating in the ADF Enterprise Methodology Group sessions, both on Sunday Oct 11 in Moscone West L3 room 3014 at 10:30 a.m. and in the Unconference on Wednesday Oct 14 at 1:00 p.m. If you are interested in Oracle ADF, look up the ADF EMG sessions and join the group.

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One of the three presentations I’ll be giving at the UKOUG Technology & E-Business Suite conference 2009 in Birmingham Nov 30 - Dec 2 is “Forms to ADF - Live!”. For this presentation, I am going to convert an existing Oracle Forms application to an ADF Faces (web) application.

Now, instead of just converting the same old Forms demo application again, I would like to use a couple of real-life Forms. So if you would like to see what your existing Forms application might look like in ADF, please send me an e-mail (sten@vesterli.com).

What I am looking for:

• a couple of Forms of medium complexity
• all necessary support files (PLL etc)
• a database create script (tables, PL/SQL etc)
• an export or a script for creating realistic test data
• a bit of your time answering my questions on the app
• your permission to show your app during my conference presentations

What I’ll give back:

• a running ADF web application with the same functionality
• a JDeveloper Workspace with all the code

There’ll be no cost to you, of course. I look forward to hearing from you!

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