Some prominent IDE's have API that let developers create modules (IDE plugins, extensions) that interact with editors and other IDE components. E.g. Embarcadero Delphi has Open Tools API, that allows developers to create (and integrate into Delphi IDE) modules that programmatically creates forms, places components on them, writes code inside files and so on. These are great features because they let developers to integrate those frameworks (VCL, ADF and so on) into Model Driven Development (MDD) workflows (be it commercially provided or custom made by team of developers).
The question is - have JDeveloper such features - to create modules programmatically. E.g. one can imagine the workflow where UML class diagram is created by some third party tool. Is it possible to write some MDD transformation module (as JDeveloper plugin) that programmtically generates required ADF business components and web forms?
Certainly business components and forms can be created manually but does Oracle ADF or JDeveloper expose some API that could let create those components and forms programmtically without interaction with users. All the input data can be provided as XML file (that is output from UML designer or some other tool).
As far as I know there is JDeveloper Extensions but in Oracle forums I have received answers that JDeveloper Extensions are not intended for such a use.
I guess that ADF Essentials is becoming quite popular and there should be some interest to integrate ADF Essentials into MDD workflows. Maybe there are some hidden JDeveloper Extensions features or maybe even separate open source projects that already enable such integration.
Certainly, ADF business components and forms are usual code (XML, Java) files and the process to generate them can be reverse-engineered. Maybe there are some ongoing efforts to do that? I could contribute to them and not to start new project from scratch.
JDeveloper itself has some MDD features but I am not sure if these are rich and flexible enough.
