Oracle Launches Developer Tool For Mobile Business Applications

Not to be left behind on mobile-development advances, Oracle announced the delivery of its Java-based Oracle Application Development Framework Mobile Client, an extension of the Oracle Application Development Framework.

A component of Oracle Fusion Middleware, Oracle ADF Mobile Client enables developers to extend their existing skills into mobile devices. It simplifies application creation and deployment using a single, standard Java user-interface framework and tooling for all supported devices. Developers can build once and deploy to multiple devices – and as support for new devices is added in Oracle ADF Mobile Client, applications can be deployed to the new platforms without redevelopment.

Mobile business applications

“The increased adoption of mobile business applications requires Java developers to create and extend mobile applications faster than ever before,” Ted Farrell, chief architect and senior vice president of Tools and Middleware at Oracle, said in a statement. “Oracle ADF Mobile Client and Oracle ADF Mobile Browser enable developers to leverage their existing skill sets to efficiently deploy applications across mobile devices and platforms, and address rapidly increasing mobility requirements within the enterprise.”

Oracle ADF Mobile Client provides native mobile functionality, allowing applications to be deployed directly to mobile devices, with initial support for Research In Motion’s BlackBerry and Microsoft Windows Mobile devices.

With access to real-time and offline data and deep device services integration, Oracle ADF Mobile Client provides benefits for a variety of applications, including field service, warehouse management, consumer goods/retail execution and sales-force automation.

Moreover, Oracle ADF Mobile Client complements Oracle ADF Mobile Browser, a product that enables developers to build connected enterprise applications for a broad range of mobile browsers, Oracle said.

Based on the same programming paradigm as Java Server Faces, Oracle ADF Mobile Client delivers a declarative development environment where the developer can work with a mix of visual-editing tools and Java code to define a device-independent representation of the application. This single generic application definition is then rendered on multiple device types using the native user interface for that platform.

This approach removes the need for developers to overly specialise on a particular class of device or toolkit, and allows the application to rapidly respond to the changing capabilities and platforms within the mobile space.

Oracle ADF Mobile Client allows the creation of Java-based applications running as local applications on the phone or mobile device.

Extending into mobile

Oracle ADF Mobile Client’s data-management facilities and access to on-device services make it an ideal platform for extending existing enterprise applications into the mobile space. And Oracle ADF Mobile Client also makes it easy to repurpose existing enterprise services and extend them into disconnected mobile delivery, regardless of the application’s original design.

Other new capabilities in this release of Oracle ADF Mobile Client include:

• Offline and real-time access to enterprise data: Oracle ADF Mobile Client framework provides design tools and data-synchronisation services for offline data synchronisation. In addition, a real-time data link can be established declaratively via Web Services. Data can also be cached locally, providing support for hybrid online/offline mobile applications.
• Local device hardware access: Mobile clients created with Oracle ADF Mobile Client can access local device hardware such as cameras, GPS and other data-acquisition sources from Java code embedded into the application.
• Declarative bar-code reader integration: Allows Oracle ADF mobile applications to simply and seamlessly integrate with integrated bar-code readers on the device.
• Data synchronisation between the device and the enterprise: Oracle Database Lite Mobile Server provides a highly configurable data synchronisation engine that allows delta-based automatic as well as on-demand synchronisation. Mobile Transaction Replay Service, part of the Oracle ADF Mobile Client, also allows logical transactions that have been recorded on the mobile device while offline to be replayed through a service API rather than directly to the database. This approach promotes the reuse of existing enterprise services and a well-separated service-oriented architecture.