Overview of the OA-Framework Components

OA-Framework is a very rich and powerfull development tool ; we will not start an in-depth discussion about how it works, but here is the main vocabulary you will need :


MDS - The declarative metadata repository used with 11.5.10+ OA Framework applications. This replaced the older AK Repository.

Page
The first component is the page ; a page is a set of regions (header, footer, table…), and each region can contain items (field, button, checkbox...), or other regions.

Pages are XML files found under $APPL_TOP/MDS folder example:-
$appl_top/pa/11.5.0/mds/project/webui/MyProjectsPG.xml

BC4J : Business Components for Java
BC4J is a set of java libraries that meshes SQL database concepts like views, tables and transactions into the Java world via View Objects (VOs), Entity Objects (EOs), and Application Modules (AMs).

All BC4J components are found under $JAVA_TOP example:-

Application Module, View Object, View Link, PVO found under:-
$JAVA_TOP/oracle/apps/pa/project/server/

Controller found under:- $JAVA_TOP/oracle/apps/pa/project/webui/

Entity Object, Validation View Object, Validation Application Module found under:-
$JAVA_TOP/oracle/apps/pa/project/scheme/server/


View Object
In the simplest terms, a BC4J view object encapsulates a database query and provides iteration over and access to the view rows in its result set.

Entity Object
When we handle data through a page - INSERT / UPDATE / DELETE - we do this by using an Entity Object. An Entity Object is a java representation of a table ; each column of the table is mapped to an "Entity Attribute".


Application Module
An application module is a container for related BC4J objects. The AM is connected to the database, and is responsible for the commit and rollback of a transaction.


Controller
The controller is the java code in charge of loading a page when we call it. It is also in charge of handling an event on a page, like a click on a button, or the call of a List Of Values. It has three Methods:-


1. ProcessRequest
2. ProcessFormData
3. ProcessFormRequest