Oracle JDeveloper and Oracle ADF 12c (12.1.3.0.0): New Features

Introduction

In addition to providing an integrated development environment for the Fusion Middleware 12c (12.1.3.0.0) release, this version of JDeveloper and ADF version introduces quite a few new features to explore. FMW 12.1.3 includes an updated SOA release. If you are looking for the SOA development environment which in previous releases were provided as downloadable JDeveloper extensions, please refer to the SOA download page on OTN.

Read on to learn more about the new goodies in this release. As always, we welcome your feedback on the OTN forum.

Previous Version? If you are looking for the new feature list for a prior 11g or 12c release, please refer to the release documentation page.

New In This Release

General

• Oracle Fusion Middleware 12c: This release of JDeveloper and ADF correspond with Oracle Fusion Middleware 12c (12.1.3.0.0), which includes updated versions of WebLogic Server, TopLink, Coherence, and SOA in additional to other middleware components.

IDE

• Java SE 8 Preview While this version of JDevleoper must run with a Java SE 7 JDK, you can add Java SE 8 as a Java SE library (Tools > Manage Libraries, Java SE Definitions tab) and use that to compile and test against. Make sure your target deployment environment supports Java SE 8!
  • With Java SE 8, JDeveloper introduces a new refactoring to transform an anonymous inner class into a Lambda expression
• Maven enhancements We've squashed quite a few bugs in this area (including removing absolute path references) as well as incorporating a couple new features:
  • New ADF "oracle-adffaces-ejb" archetype introduced to enable creating a basic ADF application using ADF Faces and EJB from Maven.
  • JDeveloper now supports creating a project from an archetype which takes parameters.
• Download and Apply patches from Update Center We now have the option to distribute critical patches (in Opatch format) through JDeveloper's Check for Updates tool.

Java EE and Web Development

• No Paging mode New option when creating EJB and Bean data controls to control paginated fetching of data.
• AccessMode specification Ability to use the AccessMode annotation on either the session bean class or the interface (remote or local) on which the data control is based.
• Data Control property annotations Define data control properties (for example UI Hints) through annotations directly on the bean classes and avoid the prior requirement to maintain separate XML structure files for this purpose.
• Customizable configuration classes Ability to specify a configuration class to hold the metadata for custom bean data controls.
• Servlet-based EJB clients Ability to generate servlets that operate as EJB clients for improved EJB client testing.
• ID Generator audit If an JPA Entity does not have ID generation an audit tip to create @GeneratedValue annotation will appear.
• Configurable beans.xml location Beans.xml may now be added to either WEB-INF or META-INF depending on user requirements.
• Web Sockets The properties window now supports the option to create and edit Web Socket annotations for Java classes.

Web Services Development

• JAX-RS REST services JDeveloper provides support for creating JAX-RS 1.1 and 2.0 REST services and clients using provided Jersey implementations.
• WADL viewer enhancements The WADL preview has been redesigned for improved readability and usability.
• HTTP Analyzer REST structure page enhancements The Structure view of the HTTP Analyzer for REST requests and responses has been redesigned for improved usability.
• Fast Infoset Fast Infoset is now enabled by default on SOAP Services in JDeveloper to improve SOAP messaging performance.

Application Server Integration

• Coherence (GAR) deployment JDeveloper now supports the creation and deployment of GAR files for Coherence projects.
• ojserver ojserver is process that can service ojdeploy requests with less overhead per request. The Ant task generation for ojdeploy now supports options to use ojserver instead.
• Browser configuration script In the Web Browser and Proxy settings of JDeveloper, it's now possible to use a configuration script (for example, wpad.dat) for the proxy definition.

Database Development

• SQL Developer 4.0 This JDeveloper version is aligned with SQL Developer 4.0, so many of the new features of SQL Developer are exposed in JDeveloper, including new Reporting, Cart features, improved searching, and more.
• Database Connection enhancements In addition to updating the third-party databases you can connect to, we have also added the ability to pass additional/arbitrary JDBC parameters to the connection.
• Code Insight in Database Modeler Code insight is now triggered when typing entries in the Database Modeler.
• Many SQL & PL/SQL Coding improvements There are a number of enhancements to SQL and PL/SQL coding including:
  • Shared implementation with IDE of code folding, usage highlighting, code insight, and use of audits for highlighting and fixing missing methods
  • Offline PL/SQL can be compiled against a database connection
  • Ability to test SELECT statements embedded in PL/SQL.
  • Synchronize package specifications and bodies to add and remove member declarations.

ADF View (ADF Faces, DVT)

• The New DVT Client Side Charting Solution provides the following benefits:
  • Client Side Resizing: Ability to resize and fit to containers without the need to go back to the server for layout.  
  • Improved Server Scalability: Layout is offloaded to the client, reducing server workload and increasing scalability of applications.
  • Rich Set of Features:
    • Over 30+ chart types
    • Redesigned zoom and scroll
    • Marquee zoom and selection
    • Redesigned Time axis
    • Hide and show series and ability to change layout with client side rescale
    • Improved data labeling

• New Gauges are now focused on the stamping use cases and support input. Gauge types include: LED, status meter, dial, and the new rating gauge.
  

  

• Thematic Map has a number of new features, including:
  • Area layer styling and marker zoom behavior:

    

  • The new marker rotation feature:

    

  • Ability to display isolated areas:

    

  • Support for custom base maps:

    

• New Component: Diagram can be used to visualize different sets of data by displaying nodes and relationships between them. Diagram is currently available as a runtime-only component, and provides a pluggable framework for the application developers to define custom layouts in javascript.

• New af:deck component: This new container component that shows one child component at a time and allows the transition between children to be animated (ie. fade, slide in).  See the Deck demo and documentation for more details.

• NEW Tablet First Page Template:  Start your layout off right with this new page template constructed with the key mobile friendly design principles in mind.  This three column layout template is ideal for both a tablet in the landscape orientation and the desktop. It contains a top area that works well for a logo, product name, and navigation components. The left area also works well for navigation controls. Target the center area for the main content of the page. The right area can contain ancillary content. The content shown in the below screenshot merely suggests what to add and where. It is not included with the template.
  

  

• Client side CSS rules:  ADF skinning framework now supports client side rules such as @charset, @document, @font-face, @import, @keyframes, @media, @page, @supports.  These agents can be used to achieve responsive design and to allow use of more modern techniques for graphics such as icon fonts.
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  .myStyleClass {
   background-color: Yellow;
  }
  af|button {
   -tr-inhibit: background-image;
   color: Red;
  }
  af|button::access-key {
   background-color: Blue;
   color: Yellow;
  }
  @media screen and (max-width:1680px) {
   .myStyleClass {
   background-color: Red;
   }
   af|button {
   color: Lime;
   }
   af|button::access-key {
   background-color: White;
   color: Purple;
   }
  }
  ...
  

• 

• Table scrolling on tablets.  If a table's scrollPolicy attribute is set to "scroll", users on a desktop will interact with the existing virtualized scrolling behavior whereas users on tablets will experience an optimized scrolling behavior that is common for tablets, sometimes referred to as high water mark scrolling.   In prior releases, only paging was available for tablets.  In addition, there is a new skin property, -tr-scroll-policy, that lets an application decide what scrollPolicy=auto results in.
• OutputFormatted supports header tags h1 to h6:The outputFormatted tag now allows header tags, e.g. <h1> Heading One </h1> for accessibility. Since header components like panelHeader also generate header tags for accessibility, developers should ensure that the heading level in the outputFormatted appears in correct order relative to parent header components.
• Enhanced design time support: New creators for panelTabbed, panelAccordion and Navigation Pane.  Improved support for dynamic tables that do not use ADFm.  
• Calendar Enhancements:  - Added the ability to resize all-day and timed activities in day and week view of the calendar. Also, allows developers to color code days such as holidays.  Ability to add total hours per day to the date column header.   14846700
• Reduce visual clutter.  New feature to hide table scrollbars until a user needs them.  This was done to reduce visual clutter on pages
• List View - Implemented mouse hover functionality on rows in the list view to better indicate selectability.
• Export to CSV.  Added support to export table/tree/treeTable content to CSV files, in addition to Excel.  In addition, provided the ability to export in forward only mode, and bypass adfm rowLimit restriction. 
• Reorder Fields in Query.  Added ability to reorder fields in Query search panel.
• Geometry support for Rich Text Editor:  Added the dimensionsFrom attribute to the RichTextEditor component and the code to make the RichTextEditor stretch when dimensionsFrom is set to parent.

ADF Controller

• Recursive bounded task flows Support for calling bounded task flows recursively. In previous versions, the view layer did not detect that the view activity had occurred and did not re-render the region.

ADF Business Components

• Groovy Debugging: Groovy is utilized in a number of places, including Business Rule validator and trigger expressions. Now, one can set breakpoints and use the JDeveloper debugger to debug Groovy expressions.
• Groovy Support for attribute UI hints: Entity and view attributes have a list of UI hints that can be utilized to how best render an attribute in their user interface. With Groovy support, now these hints can be calculated at runtime.

ADF Desktop Integration

• Windows 8 & Excel 2013 support Updated support for Windows 8 and Excel 2013.
• New Components Several new components are introduced in this release:
  • Image: The ADF Image component can be used to add images to an Excel workbook.
  • Output Text (Worksheet Errors): Used to display worksheet errors.
  • Output Text (Table Errors): Used to display database table errors.
• New Properties Several new properties have been added in this release:
  • AllowCancel (Status message): Allows the user to cancel an ActionSet call that may be hung or taking too long.
  • ResizeMode, ResizeColumnsMode properties and ResizeColumns action (Table): Allow more control over table resizing behavior.
  • Tooltip: Many UI components now have a Tooltip property for specifying tooltips.

Bug Fix List

The following customer-reported and published bugs have been fixed in this release. This is a small subset of the total number of internal, unpublished bugs fixed.