It's nice to see another ADF book out there, this one from Sten Vesteli titled "Oracle ADF Enterprise Application Development Made Simple" comes from Packet Publishing

Unlike other ADF books out there, this one doesn't aim to teach you Oracle ADF, but rather focuses on the right way to structure and manage a project that leverages ADF. This is a welcomed addition to the bookshelf for people who are looking into ADF based development.

One thing I find is that some organization just start developing an ADF application without first doing much planning, something that is understandable given that it is very easy to start building a prototype with ADF and then just grow it into a full blown application. However, as the book points out, doing a bit of planning before you delve into the actual project development can save you a lot of time in the future. For example it is much better to have the right breakdown and structure of your project to allow you to do efficient team development right out of the gate, then to find out 1 year down the road that you are dealing with one monolithic size project which is hard to manage.

The book touches on such topics as project organization (workspaces, projects, packages), planning your infrastructure (templates, framework classes), coding standards, team structure, etc.

It also covers various aspects of application lifecycle management such as versioning, build, testing, deployment and managing requirements and tasks and how all of those are done when using JDeveloper and Oracle ADF. It's nice to see that the book covers working with Oracle Team Productivity Center - a solution that might not be getting the exposure it deserves. The book also has some chapters about security, internalization and customization of applications both with MDS and with ADF Faces skins (and it even covers the brand new skin editor).

Overall I think this is definitely a book you should read if you are about to start your way on a new enterprise scale ADF application. Taking into account the topics that the book discusses before you start your work will save you time and effort down the road.

By the way, don't forget that as an OTN member you can get discount on this and other books.