Application architecture

Once you have found out what you need to build and how much you want to build, you now have to choose your application architecture. The architecture determines how many workspaces you have and which components go into which workspace.

The ADF framework is very flexible and allows you to build applications in many different ways, so there is a large number of possible architectures. Three good ones are:

• Simple

• Modular

• Enterprise

In a simple architecture, you build the entire application in one workspace. You saw an example of this approach in the Proof of Concept application in Chapter 1, The ADF Proof of Concept. Business components go into a model project in the workspace, and task flows and pages go into a view/controller project. This approach works well for small applications that will be built by one or two developers.

If your application is larger than 5-10 bounded task flows and/or more than two people need to work on it, a modular architecture is a good approach...