Problem with Web Services in ADF - Resolved

So I spent some time working with a client last week who was attempting some interesting things with ADF.  For one, this guy was a beginner to ADF and Java and someone just threw him into the deep end.  It wasn't just "create a couple pages to allow users to update this data", it was create a web service, and not just a web service but a service that accessed more than one database.  One was an Oracle database, the other a SQL Server database.

Working wtih SQL Server itself wasn't a problem, but trying to get one application that could talk to both at the same time was a problem.  It is supposed to be possible, but it isn't the best way to do things.  The better way is to use a DB Link on the Oracle database itself.

Once we straightened that out, we encountered an error testing a simple web service.  It would try to deploy to the integrated Weblogic instance, but fail in deploymentment with an error that the service implementation class could not be found.

Now the only reason I could think of that it would attempt to deploy and give an error like that after compiling nicely was that the versions of Java were different.  If it was compiling with a newer version of Java than Weblogic was running with, that would be an issue.  I presumed that the issue would, however, also manifest itself when deploying an ADF Web Application.  Especially if it was the same app just being deployed differently.

Turns out presuming anything is a bad idea.  As it was late on Friday and I was getting close to missing my plane home, I asked the developer to send me the log and while getting a ride to the airport I took a look at it on my phone.  I found this part of a line: "C:\Program Files\Java\jdk1.7.0_21\jre\bin\java.exe -client -jar" indicating that it was indeed compiling with jdk1.7.0_21 and trying to deploy to a Weblogic server using a version of 1.6.

 

I e-mailed back the devleoper and he changed the Compiler "JDK Version Compatibility" setting to 1.6.  Low and behold - problem solved.  And just in time for the weekend too!