Difference in ADF, JSF, Trinidad, MyFace

Question

Hi,
I need a brief explanation on ADF, JSF, Trinidad and MyFace. What are the similarities and the differences among them? More elaboration on price, license, the history, and the situation & condition to apply, IDE to work on for each product would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks

Answer 1

So Apache has 2 projects of ADF? i.e. MyFaces and Trinidad.
Apache has 5 JSF related projects:
- MyFaces: JSF implementation
- Trinidad: JSF extension that is the evolution of ADF Faces 10g
- Tomahawk: JSF extension with a small but useful component set
- Tobago: A richer set than Tomahawk, but not as feature packed as Trinidad imho
- Orchestra: A JSF extension focusing on the controller layer, not on component. It allows conversations, better web flows and such, but I didn't play a lot with that project so I cannot provide much insight
And why Oracle would like grant ADF Faces extended component to Trinidad while Trinidad is free and ADF Faces is Oracle proprietary. People will start using Trinidad instead of Oracle ADF Faces and Oracle is not making any money then.
Ah, a business model related question. There are many reasons why a company may decide to invest in open source:
- Allows other people to contribute to the code base, without having to pay them, effectively reducing the maintenance cost
- Look "cool" and open minded, not evil corporate-ish. This is therefore good for PR and is often perceived positively by the community, making the company more appealing as a potential employers. Also, contributors to open source projects, happen to be both the most passionate and skilled in their field most of the times, making them interesting resources for the company as well.
- Increase the adoption level of the product, thus producing an Halo effect.
Now the money side. If you cannot make money out of the product itself, nothing prevents you from offering the best tool integration as well. That tool can also happen to integrate other technologies that are themselves not free, like the AS or the remaining of the ADF stack for that matter. Most project managers will prefer to use the AS integrated with the tool rather than having to test and maintain both environment (the IDE and production one). Also, even if you don't make money that way, you can still sell expertise and who knows a technology better than the ones who created it? Last time I checked, Oracle Consulting was not the cheapest option around, but if they're the best ist's it worth it?
Hmm this is would be a hard choice; richer UI over lesser browser selection and more CPU consumption. But People will choose the free one I guess. This lead us back to Why Oracle grant a free Trinidad to have "rich" UI?
Actually, from my experience it's the opposite, Web 2.0 and Rich Web Application are buzz words in the industry and a hype can move market. Furthermore, the supported browser set difference is not that bad, it's mainly the horrible IE6 abomination that should not have ever existed in the first place. As for the CPU load on the client, well, most people don't use half of their CPU horsepower nowadays.
Good point. How much ADF Faces 11g richer than Apache Trinidad? Free license could be a big impact. Can I conclude that the richness of Trinidad is much more than JSF? If yes, I will take Trinidad for sure. Or Is Trinidad has the same level of richness with JSF?
Trinidad is infinitely richer than JSF 1.1 and 1.2 (the difference is a bit smaller with JSF 2.0, but that on is not really option just yet). ADF Faces 11g is much richer than Trinidad imho, but why not compare yourself:
Trinidad: http://www.irian.at/trinidad-demo/faces/index.jspx
ADF Faces 11g: http://jdevadf.oracle.com/adf-richclient-demo/faces/index.jspx
Regards,
~ Simon