ADF custom binding for given service data model

Question

hi
I have this business service that has a given data model. I would like to bind ADF Faces components to this data model.
two examples:
(1) The data model has a date attribute somewhere that holds the date of when something has been "checked"/"approved". The user interface should present this information as a regular checkbox.
(2) The data model has some attribute as "multilingual text". It is like a regular text attribute, but the text (data) has been translated. The user interface should present this information as a regular text input field, but depending on some "selected"/"current" language.
I looked at this example from Steve Muench about custom binding:
http://otn.oracle.com/products/jdev/tips/muench/custombinding/CustomAttrBindingClass.zip
I have found some "solution" to implement the kinds of custom binding I need:
http://verveja.footsteps.be/~verveja/files/oracle/CustomBindingStuff-v0.08.zip
(Check the README.txt file.)
I extend JUCtrlAttrsDef and JUCtrlAttrsBinding, introduce a ConversionProxyRule interface and added meta-data to the <x>PageDef.xml files.
JDeveloper shows warnings like these in the "Compiler - Log", but it all seems to work fine:
Warning(55,62): <Line 55, Column 62>: XML-24534: (Error) Element 'NamedData' not expected.- questions:
(1) Do I really need all this, have I missed some typical approach for this?
(2) How do I now that "extending" the binding this way, doesn't break in the next JDeveloper release?
(3) What alternatives are there to approach this kind of "binding requirements"?
many thanks
Jan Vervecken

Answer 1

(1) Is the simplest overall and the solution I myself would do, but given your comments....
(2) This would be the second easiest, but would involve some delegation, sure.
(3) Involves creating custom binding objects, which while possible, we don't have much documentation on that
JDeveloper shows warnings like these in the "Compiler - Log", but it all seems to work fine: Warning(55,62): <Line 55, Column 62>: XML-24534: (Error) Element 'NamedData' not expected.
This is an XMLSchema validation failure since the schema for the <attributeValues> element in that namespace does not allow <NamedData> children, only the <action> element does. You can extract all the schemas from the adfdt_common.jar file in the ./adfdt/lib directory to have a closer look at that.
- questions:
(1) Do I really need all this, have I missed some typical approach for this?
I mentioned a straightforward approach that in my opinion doesn't qualify as radically altering your data model, but I respect your opinion to see that differently of course. :-)
The approach I mentioned would be the typical approach for this case.
(2) How do I now that "extending" the binding this way, doesn't break in the next JDeveloper release?
There is no 100% guarantee other than the fact that we try our best not to perform breaking changes since keeping upward compatibility is something we've tried to do since the beginning.
(3) What alternatives are there to approach this kind of "binding requirements"?
We've discussed the three alternatives above that I can think of. This doesn't preclude others, but those are the first three we both thought of... I hope others chime in with some insights based on there experiences, too.