continuing with the review of  Oracle Fusion Applications Development and Extensibility Handbook (Oracle Press), Chapters 7 & 8 get into the development side of building extensions through the use of JDeveloper and the ADF framework, although this approach is not recommended for CRM if it can be helped, bu then the Page Composer is far more powerful in the CRM context.

Chapter 7 walks you quickly through the process of establishing JDeveloper so that you can get underway with the customisation. Along the way the book references the very detailed Oracle guides and shares useful tips as well (for example how to share configuration between JDeveloper instances for connecting to a Fusion apps server without having to go through reconfiguration.

As Fusion Apps uses ADF for its framework, knowledge of this is going to help you understand more easily what is going as the book is not an ADF guide and focuses upon the use of the framework providing some honest hints and observations (e.g. it is necessary to know which task flow forms the basis of any page depending upon the product the identification of this information can be easy or difficult depending on the product).  The bulk of chapter 7 is focused to guiding you through 2 scenarios for customisation.

By the end of chapter 7, although a lot of information has been shared I’d have liked to have seen a couple of things addressed, how to minimise the risk/impact of customisation so that deploying a patch doesn’t clash or has minimal impact with any customisation. It is also too easy for organisations to customise a product to the point the C in COTs far out weighs the O and T. Remember CEMLI? The second aspect I’d hoped to have seen is the incorporation of configuration control of the development changes – but this probably more one of my pet issues showing.

Chapter 8 goes into the mechanics of developing your own UI within an Fusion App, covering DB table creation, business components, UI and so on including the security framework, creation of workflow elements and so on.  I have to admit that I found this chapter easier, than the pure customisation work of chapter 7 – although that could be because the whole mechanism is a bit more discrete.

Neither chapter really take on the question of testing (integration or unit level) – I’m sure that given all the good guidance here, that the authors have a few good practises and tricks that they could share on how to make testing as simple as possible.

Aside from a couple of small points, all said and done, the book does a tremendous job of addressing an enormous subject area, and recognises that it isn’t giving you every little detail by telling you which sections of the Fusion Developers guide will provide more detailed information. Bottom line, what the book doesn’t explain you have the insight into the official Oracle online docs to go find the rest of the information (without having to plough through a 1000+ pages of developer guide).

See earlier chapter reviews at:

• Chapters 1 & 2
• Chapters 3 & 4
• Chapters 5 & 6