Thursday, February 14, 2013

Miscellaneous Musings about RMOUG Training Days 2013

I was only able to attend a portion of Rocky Mountain Oracle Users Group (RMOUG) Training Days 2013, but this was my 13th year to attend all or part of this conference (and my 11th year presenting). I have always enjoyed meeting and talking to the people who attend even as my interests have diverged somewhat from the database-focus that formerly aligned so well for me with the conference. As I have posted on before, this year's conference had a lot of focus on mobile application development in addition to the normal breadth and depth of database-oriented topics. In this post, I look at some of the excellent questions (and my responses) I was asked at my presentation on JavaFX and Groovy and look at some other things I learned while attending.

RMOUG Training Days 2013

JavaFX and Groovy

I started my session at 2:45 pm with about 10 people in attendance, but the audience reached about 25 people in size by the end. It was another good RMOUG Training Days audience with good questions that made me think they were understanding what I was trying to convey. I'll address some of those questions with my responses now.

One audience member asked how it worked in the JavaFX example that the overridden start method was never called from the static main function of the application. I explained that the same application class extends javafx.application.Application and, thanks to that inheritance, the start(Stage) method is invoked automatically as part of the JavaFX application lifecycle. That start(Stage) method is declared abstract in Application so concrete child implementations must inherit it. Only a call to one of the Application.launch methods was seen in my example, but the start(Stage) method overridden in the child class gets called via polymorphism during the application's execution.

Another question asked in my presentation had to deal with Oracle's use of JavaFX in their own tooling options such as JDeveloper, Oracle ADF, and the like. I obviously do not know the extent of this, but I was happy to speculate that Oracle would like to use JavaFX in more internal tools to leverage their investment in it. One attendee wondered if some of the Oracle ADF-based mobile applications shown in other sessions of this conference used JavaFX underneath. I don't know enough about that to confirm that.

Although I did not demonstrate it in my presentation, I did mention the availability of SceneBuilder. I also mentioned that while other IDEs such as JDeveloper can support JavaFX, NetBeans appears to be the current leader in JavaFX support.

One or two questions surrounded JavaFX's place in the competitive landscape. I attempted to contrast it with Flex, Silverlight, HTML5, Swing, other languages' graphics libraries, and other native mobile development platforms. In some ways, the determination of what JavaFX is competing against is based on how one wants to use it. In desktop applications, the most common "competitors" are pure Swing (without JavaFX), pure SWT (without JavaFX), Adobe AIR, and other languages' graphical libraries. In web application, obvious "competitors" are HTML5/jQuery and Flex. On mobile applications, obvious competitors include the web stack as well as native languages such as Objective-C for the iOS devices. It could be argued that it's a good thing that JavaFX has or soon will have so many different platforms to compete on, giving JavaFX developers flexibility to apply their skills easily to multiple platforms.

I talked about GroovyFX's support for concurrency as provided in the javafx.concurrent package and I referenced the Concurrency in JavaFX article. An audience member asked about Groovy's support for concurrency. I responded to this by briefly discussing gpars and explaining that gpars (Groovy Parallel Systems) is now bundled with Groovy (since Groovy 1.8).

Additional questions were asked that were, I thought, insightful, but I am not talented enough to write them down and respond to them at the same time and have now temporarily forgotten some of the others.

Before leaving coverage of my own presentation, I want to include two slides that I showed in the presentation and in a "slide show" that I had running while waiting for the start time to arrive. These slides summarize some key moments in the history of JavaFX and history of Groovy.

Thinking back upon the history of JavaFX and Groovy, it is easy to see some similarities between the two. Both started with significant enthusiasm that then seemed to wane for a while before resurgent interest and coming back stronger than ever. It seems to me that SpringSource has been a pivotal player in providing stability to Groovy and making it more popular than ever and Oracle has done the same for JavaFX (deprecating JavaFX Script and embracing standard Java APIs was bold but well played).

Oracle Fusion Application Development

I was able to attend Ann Horton's presentation "Web Development Techniques from an Oracle Fusion Applications Developer." Ann's presentation was filled with screen snapshots, making it easy to see how to use the graphical-based tools to build Oracle Fusion Applications and use Oracle Fusion Middleware. I don't have any experience with Oracle Applications, but a lot of people do. Although I probably won't have the opportunity to work with them anytime soon, I like to see what other technologies are out there and enjoyed seeing a different way of developing applications. As is the case with much of the software development that occurs, Oracle provides tools that make much of the creation drag-and-drop and selecting things with the mouse.

Ann described "Oracle Fusion Applications Suite" as the "next generation of Oracle Applications" and added that "Fusion" implies integration of multiple products "under a common umbrella and one look and feel." Ann showed via numerous screen captures (often annotated with arrows, underlines, or other markings to provide focus) how to build up an application using Oracle Fusion Applications Suite.

One of the things I like to do at a technical conference is find out what others are using for tooling. Ann mentioned that thousands of developers have worked on Oracle Fusion Applications Suite and that they have used tools such as ade (Application Development Environment), JUnit, Selenium, OATS, and JAudit in their work. I thought it was interesting that JSP and JSF fragments (.jspx and .jsff files) were shown in the presentation.

Ann talked about Fusion developers using and providing "Fusion Guidelines, Standards, and Patterns" (GPS). More details about the Oracle Fusion Applications can be found in Oracle Fusion Applications Developer's Guide.

Oracle ADF and Mobile Development

Until I read the abstracts for this conference, I had not even realized that Oracle ADF can be used to develop applications for iOS and Android devices, but the subject of Oracle ADF Mobile was a popular one at the conference. The main page for Oracle ADF Mobile describes it like this:

Oracle ADF Mobile is an HTML5 and Java mobile development framework that enables developers to build and extend enterprise applications for iOS and Android from a single code base. Based on a hybrid mobile architecture, ADF Mobile supports access to native device services, enables offline applications and protects enterprise investments from future technology shifts.

The Oracle ADF Mobile FAQ states that Oracle ADF Mobile is licensed "as part of the Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF)" and adds that "Oracle ADF can be licensed either as 'Oracle Application Development Framework and TopLink' item on the technology price list, or as part of the Oracle WebLogic licenses." The FAQ also addresses device support: "Both iOS (5.x and above) and Android (2.3.x and above) devices are supported. Furthermore, both the tablet and smart phones running these mobile operating systems are supported."

One of the audience members asked me how using JavaFX differed from using Oracle ADF Mobile and licensing is obviously one of the major differences.

Other Blog Posts on RMOUG Training Days 2013 Conclusion

I would have liked to attend more sessions at RMOUG Training Days 2013, but enjoyed the brief time I was able to spend there this year. It was good to see people I've known for a number of years and to meet new people. It is always good to remember that there is much more to software development than the relatively narrow view one can get when working in the same circles and communities all the time.

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