ADF BC 11g – Creating business rules for unique keys on actual database unique keys (rather than primary keys)

Phew, that's the best title I could think of for this post. Not the most inspiring I'd agree. Anyway, let's continue.

Users of JDeveloper 11g ADF Business Components will be familiar with the ability to create Declarative Validation Rules on an EO's underlying table's primary key, somewhat confusingly (as we will see) referred to as a "UniqueKey" validator, though it's based on a primary key. The main reason to create such a rule is to avoid the particularly unfriendly database constraint error that is thrown, to replace it with a more friendly error message defined in ADF BC.

This "UniqueKey" rule can easily be extended to actual schema unique keys through a little trick (as separate to a primary key) as we'll see in this post.

When an EO is created in your Model project based, the IDE takes the opportunity to capture all the constraints of the underlying table (or you can resync these at a later date by right clicking the EO in the App Navigator and choosing the Synchronize with Database option). To create a "UniqueKey" validator based on the primary key of the table you:

a) Open the EO editor
b) Select the Business Rules node
c) Then Entity Validators followed by the plus button

In the resulting Add Validation Rule dialog, selecting the Rule Type of "UniqueKey" gives you the option to pick the relating EO's primary key based on the same constraint from the database:


However you'll notice what it doesn't display is any actual unique keys (such as say a database constraint employees_uk that enforces the first_name and last_name must be unique within the employees table).

One solution to this is to define Alternate Keys in the EO via the EO editor's General page's same named option:


Once created the Alternate Key will then appear as a "UniqueKey" option in the Add Validation Rule dialog.

However there is an easier way.

If you select an EO in the Application Navigator, then open the Structure Window option, you get a list of parts of the EO including Constraints, which will include all the database constraints for the particular EO. As can be seen in the following picture, this includes not only the primary key, but also unique keys:

If you select the unique key constraint and then open the Property Inspector you'll see:


...including an option to create the unique key constraint as an Alternate Key (the default being false). Setting this to true means that when you create the validation rule for a "UniqueKey", you'll see the unique key constraint listed as well as the primary key:


This little trick saves us having to manually create Alternate Keys based on the columns in our unique keys, but rather reuse the unique key constraint definition to define the Alternate Keys for us.

JDev 11gPS1 – Java editor "Declaration Insight"

The JDev11gPS1 New Features page lists a large amount of improvements, including something called the "Declaration Insight". The New Features blurb lists this feature as "When declaring local variables from method calls, declaration insight can automatically add the declaration and assignment code as well as completing the method call."

Like us, if you're using JDev11gPS1 you've probably already stumbled upon this feature and not realized it.

You'll be familiar with the traditional Completion Insight. Say in an EntityImpl you're implementing a method and within you want to call the super class method to get the database transaction. However you've forgotten the function name, is it getDBTransaction or getDatabaseTransaction? This is easily solvable by starting to type the function name "getD" then activating Completion Insight, either via pressing Ctrl-Space or the Source menu's same named option. The editor will show the Completion Insight popup in blue with all the functions starting with "getD" in the super class stack, including the method we’re interested in getDBTransaction:

Selecting the same named method, the method is instantly copied into the code:

...saving you some typing and hunting around for the right method.

However the Completion Insight only really gives the right hand side of the assignment expression. It would be good if you could get the IDE to create the left hand side of the assignment expression creating a variable of the correct type to take the result from the function, as well as the function call on the right hand side of the assignment operator as per what the Completion Insight does.

This is where the new "Declaration Insight" comes in. On invoking the Completion Insight with Ctrl-Space showing itself in blue, if you press Ctrl-Space again you'll see the popup changes to puce and displays the very similar Declaration Insight:

Again selecting the same named method, using the Declaration Insight the result is:

....where both the function call and the variable to be assigned the result are inserted into your code, ultimately saving you a bit more typing. If you're like me, and always forgetting what the return type is by the time you're back to the editor, and having to hunt for it again by double invoking the Completion Insight, this will same some extra time.

A minor but useful enhancement in the latest JDev11gPS1 release.