Best of 2024: Introduction to Visual Builder Studio, Visual Builder Cloud Service, Stand-Alone, and JET
Description
00:00
Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast, the first stop on your cloud journey. During this series of informative podcasts, we’ll bring you foundational training on the most popular Oracle technologies. Let’s get started.
Nikita: Hello and welcome to the Oracle University Podcast! I’m Nikita Abraham, Team Lead of Editorial Services with Oracle University, and with me is Lois Houston, Director of Innovation Programs.
Lois: Hi there! If you’ve been following along with us, you’ll know that we’ve had some really interesting seasons this year. We covered Autonomous Database, Artificial Intelligence, Visual Builder Studio and Redwood, OCI Container Engine for Kubernetes, and Oracle Database 23ai New Features.
Nikita: And we’ve had some pretty awesome special guests. Do go back and check out those episodes if any of those topics interest you.
Lois: As we close out the year, we thought this would be a good time to revisit some of our best episodes. Over the next few weeks, you’ll be able to listen to four of our most popular episodes of the year.
Nikita: Right, this is the best of the best–according to you–our listeners.
Lois: Today’s episode is #1 of 4 and is a throwback to a discussion with Senior Principal OCI Instructor Joe Greenwald on Visual Builder Studio.
Nikita: We asked Joe about Visual Builder Studio and Oracle JavaScript Extension Toolkit, also known as JET. Together, they form the basis of the technology for the next generation of front-end user interfaces for Oracle Fusion Applications, as well as many other Oracle applications, including most Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) interfaces.
Lois: We looked at the different terminologies and technologies, how they relate to each other, and how they deliver the new Oracle Fusion Applications and stand-alone, bespoke visual web applications. So, let’s dive right in.
Nikita: Joe, I’m somewhat thrown by the terminology around Visual Builder, Visual Studio, and JET. Can you help streamline that for us?
Lois: Yeah, things that are named the same sometimes refer to different things, and sometimes things with a different name refer to the same thing.
02:18
Joe: Yeah, I know where you’re coming from. So, let’s start with Visual Builder Studio. It’s abbreviated as VBS and can go by a number of different names. Some of the most well-known ones are Visual Builder Studio, VBS, Visual Builder, Visual Builder Stand-Alone, and Visual Builder Cloud Service. Clearly, this can be very confusing. For the purposes of these episodes as well as the training courses I create, I use certain definitions.
Lois: Can you take us through those?
Joe: Absolutely, Lois. Visual Builder Studio refers to a product that comes free with an OCI account and allows you to manage your project-related assets. This includes the project itself, which is a container for all of its assets. You can assign teams to your projects, as well as secure the project and declare roles for the different team members. You manage GIT repositories with full graphical and command-line GIT support, define package, build, and deploy jobs, and create and run continuous integration/continuous deployment graphical and code-managed pipelines for your applications. These can be visual applications, created using the Visual Builder Integrated Development Environment, the IDE, or non-visual apps, such as Java microservices, docker builds, NPM apps, and things like that. And you can define environments, which determine where your build jobs can be deployed.
You can also define issues, which allow you to identify, track, and manage things like bugs, defects, and enhancements. And these can be tracked in code review merge requests and build jobs, and be mapped to agile sprints and scrum boards. There’s also support for wikis for team collaboration, code snippets, and the management of the repository and the project itself.
So, VBS supports code reviews before code is merged into GIT branches for package, build, and deploy jobs using merge requests.
Nikita: OK, what exactly do you mean by that?
Joe: Great. So, for example, you could have developers working in one GIT branch and when they’re done, they would push their private code changes into that remote branch. Then, they’d submit a merge request and their changes would be reviewed.
Once the changes are approved, their code branch is merged into the main branch and then automatically runs a CI/CD package (continuous integration/continuous deployment) package, build, and deploy job on the code. Also, the CI/CD package, build, and deploy jobs can run against any branches, not just the main branch. So Visual Builder Studio is intended for managing the project and all of its assets.
Lois: So Joe, what are the different tools used in developing web applications?
Joe: Well, Visual Builder, Visual Builder Studio Designer, Visual Builder Designer, Visual Builder Design-Time, Visual Builder Cloud Service, Visual Builder Stand-Alone all kind of get lumped together. You can kinda see why. What I’m referring to here are the tools that we use to build a visual web application composed of HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, and JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) for metadata. I call this Visual Builder Designer. This is an Integrated Development Environment, it’s the “IDE” which runs in your browser. You use a combination of drag and drop, setting properties, and writing and modifying custom and generated code to develop your web applications. You work within a workspace, which is your own private copy of a remote Git branch.
When you’re ready to start development work, you open an existing workspace or create a new one based on a clone of the remote branch you want to work on. Typically, a new branch would be created for the development work or you would join an existing branch.
<strong s
United States
