title: What is Oracle ADF?
body: <p>What is Oracle ADF?</p>
  
  <p>On the Internet I found the following definition:</p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>ADF integrates a mix of subframeworks to provide the key functions for
    object-relational mapping and other forms of service access, data
    bindings, and user interface, along with the functional glue to hold
    it all together.  ADF stands for 'Applications Development Framework'
    and it's developed by Oracle. ADF is a framework and it'll help you
    build your applications easily as many of the redundant things that we
    do while we develop our applications are taken care by the framework.</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>But I still have a couple of questions with respect to understanding ADF:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li><p>ADF is an extension to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Java_Platform,_Enterprise_Edition" rel="noreferrer">Java EE</a> Framework, and can things that can be done using ADF (including SOA Development) be done by normal Java EE programming? (Please correct me if I am wrong.)</p></li>
  <li><p>Is it mandatory to learn ADF for doing <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service-oriented_architecture" rel="noreferrer">SOA</a> applications?</p></li>
  </ol>