Oracle has released a free "freemium" version of its Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF) that can be used outside of the Oracle stack for creating web applications.
NOTE: Freemium is a business model by which a product or service (typically a digital offering such as software, media, games, or web services) is provided free of charge, but a premium is charged for advanced features, functionality, or other elements.
Bill Pataky, vice president of product management in the Oracle Fusion team, has confirmed that the firm is looking to attract new developers to the Oracle fold with this release of the Java Enterprise Edition (JEE)-based framework based on the Model View Controller (MVC) architecture.
Oracle ADF is an end-to-end JEE framework that the firm says "simplifies application development" by providing out-of-the-box infrastructure services and a visual and declarative development experience.
NOTE: Oracle ADF includes a set of over a 150 standards-based Java Server Faces (JSF) components with built-in Ajax functionality. With these components, web-deployed user interfaces can be developed with a level of functionality and interactivity previously reserved for thick-client applications.
"The goal is to reduce the amount of code that developers need to write each time they deploy an application," said Pataky.
With this release, Oracle ADF Essentials features a good proportion of the component elements of the full-blown ADF itself. The most prominent variance between the two is that ADF Essentials runs on the GlassFish application server, which is of course free; while ADF on the other hand requires Oracle's WebLogic application server, which of course is not free.
