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Google's framework is most similar to Oracle, using Java as its native language, said Farrell. With JSF, Oracle is going "the declarative route," providing an abstraction layer, he said.

Observers offered varying perspectives on Oracle's moves, with one analyst making a comparison to Microsoft's Oslo software modeling platform.

"Oracle's introduction of ADF and MDS (Metadata Services) underneath it shifts development for their stack to a more abstract declarative model and away from one where a developer writes Java code in an editor to specify the systems they want to build," said Jeffrey Hammond, principal analyst for application development at Forrester Research. "What Oracle's really introduced with 11gR1 is the first mainstream model-driven platform, although with Microsoft's Oslo on the horizon, it certainly won't be the last.

A software company executive stressed the critical importance of Java to Oracle.

"The grand unifying theory of Oracle Fusion Middleware is BEA. And adding Sun Microsystems to the mix means that Java becomes more important to Oracle than even SQL," said Miko Matsumura, vice president and chief strategist at software vendor Software AG.

Oracle is offering unity of product lines, an analyst said.

"Although the Oracle Fusion product portfolio came from far more diverse sources than BEA (as Oracle was obviously a more aggressive acquirer), the result is far more unified than anything that BEA ever fielded," said analyst Tony Baer, senior analyst at Ovum. "Before getting swallowed by Oracle, BEA had multiple portal, development, and integration technologies lacking a common framework. By comparison, Oracle has emphasized a common framework for mashing the pieces together."

Oracle's 11g middleware underpins Fusion Applications, the company's next-generation business software intended to combine features from various product lines. These applications have not yet been released.

Earlier in the day, Oracle President Charles Phillips stressed the importance of Fusion middleware. "This is a major launch of a key part of Oracle," Phillips said. "It's really the unifying point of a lot of things that we're doing," Phillips said.

He said the company has made 58 acquisitions in the past five-and-a-half years.

InfoWorld (US)

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