JDeveloper 10.1.3.3 Released

JDeveloper 10.1.3.3 build 4157 has now been released to OTN for download:

http://www.oracle.com/technology/software/products/jdev/htdocs/soft10133.html

A list of the bugs fixed in this release can be found at:

http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/jdev/htdocs/10.1.3.3/fixlist.htm

Altering the Show/Hide Text of a "detailStamp" Facet

Another question that is related to the one that I answered in my previous post is how you can alter the Show/Hide text in the <f:facet name="detailStamp">. The answer to this one is to use the <af:showDetail id="showDetail1"> component instead and set the attributes disclosedText and undisclosedText.

If you drag and drop a Master table with in-line details in a JSF page with JDeveloper, it will generate code like:

<f:facet name="detailStamp">
<af:table rows="#{bindings.DeptView1.rangeSize}"
emptyText="No rows yet." var="detailRow"
value="#{row.children}">
<af:column headerText="#{row.children[0].labels.Ename}"
sortable="false" sortProperty="Ename">
<af:outputText value="#{detailRow.Ename}"/>
</af:column>
<af:column headerText="#{row.children[0].labels.Job}"
sortable="false" sortProperty="Job">
<af:outputText value="#{detailRow.Job}"/>
</af:column>
</af:table>
</f:facet>

for the in-line table. Here you cannot change the generated Show/Hide text that ADF generates. See the image below (in Swedish):
If you want to modify these, to something like:


you need to use some code along the line of:

<af:column headerText="Test" sortable="false">
<af:showDetail id="showDetail1" disclosedText="Brown" undisclosedText="Charlie">
<af:table rows="#{bindings.DeptView1.rangeSize}"
emptyText="No rows yet." var="detailRow"
value="#{row.children}">
<af:column headerText="#{row.children[0].labels.Ename}"
sortable="false" sortProperty="Ename">
<af:outputText value="#{detailRow.Ename}"/>
</af:column>
<af:column headerText="#{row.children[0].labels.Job}"
sortable="false" sortProperty="Job">
<af:outputText value="#{detailRow.Job}"/>
</af:column>
</af:table>
</af:showDetail>
</af:column>

If you do not want to have any text at all, just set the attributes disclosedText="" and undisclosedText="".

Hiding the Header for the Selection Facet

A question that I have seen on a few occasions is how you can hide the "Select" heading in the table when using the selection facet. Here is a solution for that problem that is based on this entry: http://www.orablogs.com/fnimphius/archives/001973.html in Frank Nimphius blog. Please note that, as Frank writes, that "Note that the CSS uses translateable text (or here translateable component names) to identify the component, which makes this solution weak.".

You can hide the 'Select' text by setting the text size to 0 for the concerned table header style (using display:none will not work, as it will cause the table headers to display over the incorrect column).

Here is the Table as default:

The "Select" (or in Swedish "Välj") header is controlled by this style (th.x2z) element (see page source):

<th scope="col" width="1%" nowrap class="x2z">Välj</th>

Now you can alter the af:tableSelectMany by changing the code in the page to:

<f:facet name="selection">
<af:tableSelectMany text="Test">
<f:verbatim>
<style type="text/css">
th.x2z{font-size: 0};
</style>
</f:verbatim>
</af:tableSelectMany>
</f:facet>

This will result in the following table:


Now the "Select" (or "Välj") test is set to 0 size, thus will not be displayed.

Running a JAR File that Includes Another JAR From the Command Prompt

Today I got a question from a colleague on how-to run a JAR file that includes another JAR file directly from the command prompt, he couldn't get this to work - it just ended up with java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError exception. At first glance this seemed quite trivial, but it turned out to be more complicated than I first thought. My initial attempts also resulted in java.lang.NoClassDefFoundError, so I started to search around a bit for further information about the topic. This led me to this site http://one-jar.sourceforge.net/, and (as always) it turned out that someone else already solved the problem.


As I use JDeveloper (of course...) it needs to be added a few steps in addition to using one-jar to get the whole process to work, this is documented below.


1. First I created a new Workspace in JDeveloper with 2 projects 'mainproject' and 'subproject'.


2. In the 'subproject' there is a single dummy that have one method that just writes something to the System.out. There is also a JAR deployment profile that includes the mentioned class. The target JAR file I just called sub.jar.


3. Now it's time to create the 'mainproject'. As I am using the One-JAR in the end there are 2 restrictions I need to take into account for this project:

a. The main class needs to be named 'Main'
b. The target JAR file needs to be called 'main.jar'

I created a new class called 'Main' in the 'mainproject', added a dependency in the Project Properties to 'subproject' and created a dummy method in this class that uses the class created under 2. I ran the Main class inside JDeveloper to ensure that it worked before proceeding.

After that I created a JAR deployment profile. I made sure to name the target JAR file to 'main.jar'. Also checked the 'Include Manifest File (META-INF/MANIFEST.MF)' box and pointed the 'Main Class' to my 'Main' class. Next I made sure NOT to include my classes from the 'subproject' into this JAR file. This as they will be provided in a separate JAR file.


4. Next, it was time to download and install One-JAR. One-JAR can be downloaded from http://sourceforge.net/projects/one-jar. I created a new empty folder on my file system and placed the one-jar-boot-0.95.jar file there and renamed this to one-jar.jar. In my newly created folder I also added 2 subfolders 'main' and 'lib'. Once done I deployed my 2 JAR filed from JDeveloper, main.jar and sub.jar and placed them in the respective folders (main.jar in main and sub.jar in lib). The archive now has a structure similar to what is shown below:

5. Now it's time to test this, and if it works correctly then the result should look something like:

D:\home\Demos\OneJARDemo\deploy>java -jar one-jar.jar
Hello from Main
Hello from sub project!

About Rules and Execution Order

A question that pops-up from time to time is about Rules and execution order, i.e., is there a way to control the execution order of rules? There are technically two ways of doing this. The first way of obtaining this is by using rule priorities, the second is to use the ruleset stack.

However, I believe that using rule priorities in general should really be avoided, and is usually discouraged for two reasons; first, if will impact performance negative with respect to the built-in conflict resolution strategies. Secondly, it is considered bad style to use priorities in rule based programming to try to force a specific order. If you find yourself using priorities for most of your rules, then you should consider if using a rule based approach is really the best solution for your problem. If you want strict control over execution order, then you are really using procedural programming and not rule based programming.

If you still want to execution order, you should use the ruleset stack. This will be a more flexible solution than using a single ruleset and using rule priorities. How to do this is described in the Oracle Business Rules Language Reference, section 1.4.3 'Ordering Rule Firing'.