One tip I found Useful, and I didn’t find enough resources talking about it, is how to populate a value of Entity Attribute or Binding Value with the current logged in user using Groovy

Simply use this:
adf.context.securityContext.getUserPrincipal().getName()
Piece of cake

So I love git, and I Love GitHub and since I use them both, and I use JDeveloper I though of developing a plugin for JDeveloper to integrate with Git and GitHub eventually

Here is my Attempt of doing so:

I Introduce to you: JDeveloper Git Extension 1.0.0 Beta Version which works on JDeveloper 11.1.1.5 JDeveloper (Will be working on migrating it to 11.1.2.x soon)

The project is divided into different phases:

Phase #1:  Cloning Git Repository into JDeveloper Project (Completed)

Phase #2:  Provide the Files Action and overlay (To push, pull, commit, checkout, add to ignore list and more ..)

Phase #3:  Provide an Integration with GitHub

So Far I’ve finished Phase #1

It’s simple, you simply choose a project > New > General > Projects > Clone Git Repository

And enter the URL of the Git Repository and the select the Project you want to Install the files to

Once you finish, you should recieve a Success Message telling you everything is Good for, a simple refresh to your project you can see all the new files exported from Git.

If you tried to clone to a project that has been already cloned an Error message will popup telling you, you shouldn’t do that!

Simple isn’t it…

Check out the Photos, and for any one who dares enough to try it download it from here

WebCenter Sites – A WEM (Web Experience Management) System which FatWire Acquisition played a great role of making
WebCenter Portal – The old definition of Oracle WebCenter Suite including WebCenter Interaction, WebLogic Portal
WebCenter Content – Which is the new name of Oracle ECM which was acquired from Stellent by Oracle
WebCenter Content – From which I want to point out new information about it

• WebCenter Sites
  
  This is the WEM (Web Experience Management) Functionality that Oracle talked about when acquired FatWire, and it’s different that a normal WCM (Web Content Management) see this article, there is no talk of how this feature gonna be from oracle, but soon enough we will know, however oracle defines the product as :Oracle WebCenter sites enables marketers to rapidly create multiple online experiences that strengthen customer engagement. It allows them to reduce maintenance demands on IT while gaining more control over dynamic targeted content to promote customer loyalty and increase revenue.Waiting to see more about WebCenter Sites
• WebCenter Portal
  
  
  This is basically the old WebCenter Suite as we used to know it, including Oracle Weblogic Portal and Oracle WebCenter Interaction suite plus WebCenter Servies, oracle defines the product as:Oracle WebCenter portal is a portal and composite applications solution that delivers intuitive user experiences for the enterprise that are seamlessly integrated with your enterprise applications.
• WebCenter Content
  
  This was a shock to me, because this is Oracle ECM in its new name, and hopefully new face.
  This will be the official name for Oracle ECM from now on, so ECM people should get used to it!, and here is the oracle definition of the productOracle WebCenter content provides organizations with a unified repository to house unstructured content, and deliver it to business users in the proper format, and within context of familiar applications to fit the way they work.
• WebCenter Connect
  
  Stream Based Conversation System, That’s how oracle made it look like, This is also a new thing that oracle introduces, to know more read this post, or read the definition of the product from Oracle:Oracle WebCenter connect provides an innovative social experience designed to drive collaborative decision making within businesses through a modern web experience and consumer style design that delivers a highly engaging environment to focus productivity.Waiting to see more about this interesting news, don’t you!

No matter how hard you try to make your development environment as close as possible to your production, you get disappointed by a lot of errors in production mode!
Experience is what helps you in that issue, but even with experience the migration process from development to production still can be very painful.

But…I can proudly say, that you won’t face such a trouble with WebCenter Interaction!

Thanks to the WebCenter Interaction Migration mechanism, which export portal object in a .pte (PorTal Extension) to be imported easily with their dependencies and parents, the migration process couldn’t be easier, and it took me about ummm 30 minutes, to transfer more than 50 Community, 100 pages, layouts and custom portlets with it’s related dependencies (Includes copying and pasting files from both servers!).

So bad that WCI is no longer in strategic products of Oracle, it could be the best out there

Here is a head start, and enjoy the rest on mdlwr with Oracle Middleware Products

I recently faced a requirements when the customer needed to display a custom portlet of Oracle UCM specific Document Type in WebCenter Interaction, and those who don’t know WebCenter Interaction aka WCI aka AquaLogic User Interaction aka ALUI, should read about it!

Anyway so I went through UCM Content Portlet Suite (CPS), and I found the search but, the customer wanted a thumbnail (Rendition) of the document to be displayed!

After searching online I found an amazing article on different ways to integrate WebCenter application with Oracle ECM, of course the author was talking about Oracle WebCenter not Oracle WebCenter Interaction -There are differences, huge ones!- but one of the ways specifically interested me, that is using JSON output of the UCM services to be parsed using Javascript and do the work needed.

So HTML pages, can display content from UCM using Javascript and JSON Parsing, COOL!

So instantly -actually 2 weeks later!- I started to dig out how to deal with this JSON object returned, and how can I use it to fulfill my needs.

The author of the Video/Article gave 2 simple examples, Showing the folder structure of the UCM and to search UCM, using the Ajax way!

So as I wanted to get the result of a specific document type, so I was interested in his last example,

1- How can I tune his search query to give me what I need?,

2- How can I actually get the rendition of the file? and

3- How can I know the image path using the rendition?

Read the rest on mdlwr

I can’t wait to test and see how this works

check it out http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/adf/adfdi/index.html

What I’ll be demonstrating how to create a simple JSF (.jspx) web page that has two combo boxes that depend on one another. In other words, two combo boxes (af:SelectOneChoice) depend on each other and are automatically refreshed when selected.

Here is an index of each section in my article:

1. Create New Application
2. Setup Database Connection
3. Working with the Model
4. Creating the View / JSF Page
5. Creating the Navigation Form
6. Adding The Combo Boxes
7. Wiring the Combo Boxes

Create New Application

Alright, let’s get started by creating a new Application Fusion Web Application (ADF). I’ll call the application name DependentCombos, and my application package prefix will be org.k.tutorials.

I’ll leave the rest of the options and settings at their defaults and hit Finish on the next step. You can adjust the options and settings if you want to, you are totally allowed to (I can’t prevent you from doing it, do it, do it man ).

Setup Database Connection

Now let’s setup a connection to a database so we are able to create some Entities and View objects. For the purpose of this tutorial I used the famous HR Schema that exists in any Oracle Database.

To setup the connection to my database server I need to go to the Application Resources pane/panel on the left side (the Application Navigation area). It should be under the Projects panel. If it’s not there, go to View -> Application Navigation and the panels should appear on the left.

Inside the Application Resources panel right click on Connections and then select New Connection -> Database. Fill in the details, test the connection and you’re good to go.

Working with the Model

In the Projects panel on the left, right click on Model and click New. In the New Gallery screen that appears go to Business Tier -> ADF Business Components and then select Business Components from Tables on the right side and click OK. Now in the Initialize Business Components screen that appears after clicking OK, choose the connection we created above, leaving everything else to the defaults and hitting Next.

In step 1 (Entity Objects) enter org.k.tutorials.model.entities as the package name. Now click the Query button to populate the list of available tables and then let’s select Locations, Regions and Countries as the entities to use. Once you’ve selected/moved them over, rename each of the entities so their names are singular. In other words, change the “Entity Names” to Location, Region and Country. Click Next to proceed to step 2.

Now in step 2 (Updatable View Objects) enter org.k.tutorials.model.views as the package name. Next, select only Location, give it an Object Name of Locations and click Next to continue.

In step 3 (Read-Only View Object) enter org.k.tutorials.model.roviews as the package name. Next click the Query button and then select only Regions and Countries and rename them to be Regions, Countries instead of RegionsView, CountriesView. Click Next.

Finally in step 4 (Application Module) enter org.k.tutorials.model as the package name. I like to put this in the root of the structure with the name HrAppModule. So that’s it for now, in the model, click Finish and let’s start working in the ViewController.

Creating the View / JSF Page

Now we’re going to create the view in a similar fashion as we created the model. In the Projects panel, right click on ViewController and then click New. In the New Gallery screen that appears go to Web Tier -> JSF and then select JSF Page on the right side and click OK.

In the Create JSF Page screen that appears, enter MyPage.jspx as the file name, ensure Create as XML Document is checked and lets choose a template of your choice from the Quick Start layout (I personally use the one column with fixed header and scrollable auto body) and then click OK.

Creating the Navigation Form

In the Application Navigation structure on the left, expand the Data Controls panel and then expand HrAppModuleDataControl inside of it. Now ensure the MyPage.jspx Structure panel is open (it should be below the Data Controls panel). If it’s not, go to View -> Structure.

Once HrAppModuleDataControl is expanded in the Data Controls panel and the MyPage.jspx Structure panel is open, we need to drag Locations1 in Data Controls to f:view -> af:document -> af:form -> af:panelStretchLayout -> Panel Stretch Layout facets -> center in the Structure panel. You can also simply drag and drop Locations1 into the center working area column of JDeveloper when the MyPage.jspx tab is selected and in Design view — it’s the tab to the right of the DependentCombos Overview tab.

Whichever way you choose to perform the drag and drop a menu will appear and you should select Form -> ADF Form as shown below.

Next an Edit Form Fields dialog will appear. Let’s include navigation controls by checking it and then click OK.

Adding The Combo Boxes

Alright, lets get to business. Now we will drag and drop Regions1 (the first combo box) from Data Controls into the af:panelFormLayout that we just created above. When the menu prompts select Single Selection -> ADF Select One Choice.

Now in the Edit List Bindings dialog that appears we will set the Display Attribute (column) to be simply RegionName and then click OK.

Next we will add the Country Combo box, but we’ll do it in a slightly different fashion than the Regions Combo box. What we’ll do this time is drag and drop CountryId from inside of Locations1 to the same location in the Structure that you did the drag and drop with Regions1.

In other words, drag and drop HrAppModuleDataControl -> Locations1 -> CountryId in the Data Controls panel to center -> af:panelFormLayout in the Structure panel and when the menu prompts select singleSelection -> ADF Select one choice.

Now in the Edit List Bindings screen that appears click the Add button to the right of the “List Data Sources” menu. In the Add Data Source dialog that appears expand Regions1 and select Countries2 as the data source and click OK.

Next for the data mapping, let’s set the Data Value as CountryId and List Attribute as CountryId as well (this should already be populated). Down below under List Items set the Display Attribute to CountryName.

Doing so will effect like the following:

1- Make countryId in Locations1 Iterator take its value from CountryId of Countries2 Iterator

2- Make the visible combo box to user is the value of column CountryName from Countries2 iterator

3- After selecting one of Countries that will effect the changes to get The CountryId of the selected CountryName to bind it to CountryId of the Locations1 iterator

Also note, choosing Countries2 from under Region1 iterator means that Countries2 is a detail table for a master Region1, that way when Region combo Box is selected, the regionID is automatically appended in the Where Statement of Countries2 iterator SQL Query, and that way the Countries2 Iterator is filter depending on Region1 Combo Box value

Wiring the Combo Boxes

Okay so now we need to make the Combo boxes depend on each other. To do this we need to edit the source of MyPage.jspx, and we can do that by going to the MyPage.jspx tab in the center working area of JDveloper and then selecting Source down at the bottom.

In the source, scroll down to where our two af:selectOneChoice elements are located (the combo boxes). In the first combo box (Regions1 with id=”soc1″) add the attribute autoSubmit="true". Now in the second combo box (CountryId1 with id=”soc2″) add the attribute partialTriggers="::soc1".

We add “::” before the component ID in the partialTriggers attribute value so that an AJAX call occurs when the value of the Region combo box changes. When this happens, the Country combo box values are automatically updated according to the Region selected.

Here is what the source should look like when you finish modifying it.

Now let’s add a commit button to our form. To do this, drag and drop HrAppModuleDataControl -> Operations -> Commit in the Data Control panel to af:panelStrechLayout -> f:facet center -> af:panelFormLayout -> f:facet footer -> af:panelGroupLayout horizontal. When the menu prompts, select ADF Button.

Now go to the source code and remove the disabled attribute from the commit button you just added (af:commandButton / Commit). These are disabled by default for security purposes.

Alright, at this point everything we have is just a show, there isn’t any real database activity occurring. The combo boxes should be populated with data and so we can test our dependent combo’s as a proof of concept.

This article is published in ITNewb, view it on this link, check it its great.

I’ve been away for really really really long time, but I’m sure missing it, and I wont be letting that slip away again.

Unfortunately I’m still busy in a new project in KSA Riyadh, Webcenter and ADF dealing with “المراسم الملكية”, It’ll be the first real project for me using webcenter, and I’m talking about webcenter 11g in here.

But I’ll try to be Here more, and I’ll do keep update of this blog alive.

I’m scheduling to post 2 articles in itnewb in the next couple of days, and I’ll share it in here as well.

Hope you are all glad for me to be back