Practical experience on Oracle products: Oracle JET is here

Wednesday, October 28, 2015

Oracle JET is here - for JavaScript lovers

Oracle makes a big move towards client side HTML5 enterprise application development - based on a collection of proven open source JavaScript tools: Oracle JET - the JavaScript Extension Toolkit. After 3 years of active development and internal usage for its Cloud products at Open World 2015 it has been made publicly available.

To get a feel of an Oracle JET application check out the "WorkBetter" JET Demo:

Oracle JET provides a rich set of Oracle JET UI components that you can use out of the box (based on Alta UI). The documentation contains code snippets which can be used to integrate the desired UI controls in your application. (If you are a business user (with a certain affinity and love for IT) you will be able to use Oracle JET components inside "Oracle Application Build Cloud Service" )

For data visualization it is almost the complete set you may know from ADF. This is pretty cool.

Oracle JET (Enterprise) Features

Comparing to other UI Toolkits it is great to see that important aspects of every enterprise application has been addressed.

Support for localization & internationalization
UI Components are implementing the latest WCAG 2.0 / WAI-ARIA accessibility guidelines
Theming support - Default is Alta UI
Security - Oracle JET API provides the oj.OAuth authorization plugin which supports the OAuth 2.0 open protocol

Oracle JET Technical Base

Obviously the core of Oracle JETs stack is based on HTML5 / JavaScript / CSS3. For certain aspects it uses proven JavaScript Libraries for Binding, Templating and Modularization.

How does it compare to ADF

Well,
Oracle ADF Faces - for Java developers looking for a set of JSF components implementing Alta UI
Oracle JET - for JavaScript developers looking for a set of components implementing Alta UI

In the Javascript ecosystem there are a lot of changes. If you do not want to deal with all of that ADF is the right choice. If you love Javascript and want to embrace every new JavaScript libraries then Oracle JET is for you.

Further Information on Oracle JET

I have put together most of the interesting things to get started on Oracle JET. BTW, For next year it is announced that it is going to be available open source on GitHub!

Oracle JET - Getting Started
http://www.oracle.com/webfolder/technetwork/jet/globalGetStarted.html

Oracle JET Quickstart Basics
http://www.oracle.com/webfolder/technetwork/jet/public_samples/OracleJET_QuickStartBasic/public_html/index.html