[ajug-members] Web 2.0

[James Mitchell]

FYI - Tiles wasn't really 'integrated into MyFaces'.  Tiles was re- 
factored out of Struts and now lives on it's own, independent of  
Struts, JSF, or anyone else.

Struts is out of scope?  LOL!  That couldn't be further from the  
truth!  Struts is no longer just something you download.  Apache  
Struts is a suite of products....or as Ted Husted so eloquently put  
it...'An embarrassment of riches':

http://www.nejug.org/2006/include/struts-2006-3.pdf

For new and existing Struts projects...how cool would it be to  
suddenly bring Struts up to speed?  What is 'up to speed'?
  - Seemless AJAX integration (with multiple implementations to  
choose from)
  - IOC (Spring/Hivemind/{your choice} everywhere)
  - JSF integration (more on this in future postings)

What am I talking about?  Many people have said for years that the  
only thing better than Struts (as you used to call it) is WebWork.   
Well, as it turns out, the Struts community and leaders agree!!!    
So...if you can't beat 'em join 'em....and the WebWork community and  
leaders also agree!!  So, we have decided to join forces.

http://blogs.opensymphony.com/webwork/2005/11/ 
webwork_joining_struts.html
http://www.theserverside.com/news/thread.tss?thread_id=37794


The proposal for Struts 2.0 is a codebase initially built on a  
cleansed version of the latest WebWork code ('cleansed' in the sense  
of 'removal of parasitic licensing') and then rapidly adopted to  
become 100% backward compatible to both Struts 1.x and WebWork 2.x.

WebWork (right now) is light years ahead of Struts with respect to  
AJAX, IOC, and other modern concepts and technologies.  Combine that  
with Struts' market share and corporate buy-in, and you have a  
framework that is...well....'up to speed'.

What does this mean for my current projects?  Nothing really, all  
Struts 1.x apps will run unchanged via a compatibility kit, allowing  
you to continue as usual or move to the new (dare I say 'better'?)  
architecture.

Your thoughts?


--
James Mitchell
EdgeTech, Inc.
http://edgetechservices.net/
678.910.8017
Skype: jmitchtx



On Feb 5, 2006, at 12:24 PM, Burr Sutter wrote:

> I'd like to start a discussion related to Web 2.0, AJAX and JSF.
>
> First some background information:
> * Here is the wikipedia definition of Web 2.0 -
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_2.0
> From a developer standpoint it means that we are considering the  
> use of AJAX and RSS/RDF to create a more user-interactive and  
> dynamic web application.
>
> * AJAX is basically async requests to the server with zero page  
> refresh time, it allows for really cool web-based applications like  
> GMail, OddPost and Google Maps.  Check out www.ajaxian.com .  I'm  
> going to try to get Dion or Ben (the founders behind Ajaxian) to  
> come to Atlanta for a presentation.  What do you think about one of  
> them being one of our keynotes for the conference.
>
> * JSF is Java Server Faces and it is the standard for Java EE 5 for  
> building server-side web-based applications.
> Here is an interesting tidbit on JSF vs Struts:
> http://www.jroller.com/page/dgeary?entry=top_ten_reasons_to_prefer
> JSF was originally modeled after ASP.NET WebForms.
>
> The Java Champions have been asked to provide feedback on what Sun/ 
> Java/JCP should be doing for Web 2.0 and AJAX.
> The obvious answer is to make it incredibly easy to implement in  
> JSF components/widgets, so easy that the end-developer (the person  
> assembly his/her custom web form) isn't even aware that there are  
> partial async requests happening to keep the scrollbars on his/her  
> datagrid working well.  I've personally spent the last 2 years  
> working on ASP.NET applications with a little bit of Struts on  
> Websphere on a parttime basis. I've not tried to build a product  
> based on JSF.
>
> What are your thoughts on this matter?
>
> What is out of scope for this discussion? Struts, unless it is  
> simply talking about a really cool feature of Struts that should be  
> available in JSF (and I think Tiles have already been integrated  
> into MyFaces).
>
> Burr
>
>
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