Related
I want to develop an server/client software of which the clients will be in different Os's.
(Think Mobile phones, tablets, desktop pc's, I even consider this service to connect with asterisk and work with a phone call center).
I'm really searching amongst all the available server frameworks and cannot decide what is the best for my case or whether I even NEED for my specific problem.
Things to consider:
I need it to be scalable: Initially that server will be accessed through a website but later it will expand and allow people to access it through mobile apps, desktop applications, phone call/sms service, etc..
Low cost hosting and open source
Thousands of users to be using that service in the future. (So it must be able to handle this)
Small dev team (1-3 ppl)
I've done past projects in C/C++, actionscript, a bit java and a bit php.
I don't know much about server programming yet (but I'm ok with learning).
So:
it must have an active community and not have died yet.
Be as easy as possible to learn.
it must already solve the problems of security, packet asynchronism, concatenation
for me etc.
Is there such a thing, should I even bother to mess with a framework? What options do I have considering the tools available? What does the industry use? A list of possible options would be greatly appreciated!
A common technology stack which is open source, scales well and has a very active community is:
Java
Tomcat Servlet Container
Spring Framework (with Spring Security)
Either Spring Web-services or Apache CXF for web service (mobile connections for example)
JPA (Hibernate) ORM on top of MySQL
There are numerous other projects that sit around these technologies that fulfill various requirements. I would certainly recommend this as a starting point to your investigation.
I have a few questions to understand better Java's usage in context of web applications:-
Is Java EE web development suitable for small start-up (with less human resource) looking to develop an web application ?
What kind of difficulties may arise in Java EE web development, deployment & maintenance ?
What kind of things should be kept in mind/ considerations to be made when moving from PHP background to Java ?
Why Java web applications are not so popular today? ( or in case I perceived it wrongly, please list any major deployments beside linkedIn and ebay)
and Finally, What are some of the most important things to learn before starting web development in Java EE ?
Thank you
Generally the answer to the question of "what technology to use" is "the one which you have most experience with". However, Java EE is huge and clunky, and definitely not good for rapid prototyping, which you will be doing if you're doing a startup.
Personally I would recommend a more modern and dynamic environment. If you're coming from PHP, you should be able to pick up Ruby on Rails or Django (Python) easily. These two choices are in my opinion orders of magnitude better than Java EE. If you want to stick with Java, at least go with the Play framework then.
Is Java EE web development suitable for small start-up (with less human resource) looking to develop an web application ?
Yes, I worked in a startup where I was the only full time programmer.
What kind of difficulties may arise in Java EE web development, deployment & maintenance ?
The same as in any other web development shop. Of course, the problems have their Java flavor. For instance, one bug we discovered was caused by different minor version of JDK used on the live system than on our test system.
What kind of things should be kept in mind/ considerations to be made when moving from PHP background to Java ? Do not code the PHP way. Java's strength is OOP and its many libraries/ open source frameworks. Use that.
Why Java web applications are not so popular today? ( or in case I perceived it wrongly, please list any major deployments beside linkedIn and ebay)
I don't know why you think that, but Java is used everywhere. It is one of the few languages that Google officially uses. They use PHP as well, but it has a "lower" status.
and Finally, What are some of the most important things to learn before starting web development in Java EE ? Use Java's strong points which I mentioned above.
Updated after comment
I cannot make the choice for you. If you are in doubt and in a big hurry you should not go with Java. This is common sense. However, it is an opportunity for your team to learn and grow. Maybe there is a PHP/other client for Cassandra. I knew a former PHP programmer in a startup, who switched to Java. Not saying anything bad about PHP programmers in general, but he did all kinds of strange things, such as not leveraging the power of Java web frameworks and writing lots of procedural code mixed with HTML and SQL. Obviously there are lots of Java programmers who would do the same thing. The point is that your team will probably learn new ways to do things and benefit from it in the future.
Allow me to answer these from the perspectives of a developer/architect in a small start-up, experiencing a bunch of these issues.
What kind of difficulties may arise in Java EE web development, deployment & maintenance ?
How do you decide on which toolset/framework to use? Do you need an IDE? Which version control system and why? Do you want to develop at some place and deploy somewhere else, or develop directly on the server? Do you buy a linux box for this, or rent some cloud? How much do they cost, in terms of licenses and training?
What kind of things should be kept in mind/ considerations to be made when moving from PHP background to Java ?
How would your servlet send out an e-mail? It's much simpler in PHP. Need secure transfer of encrypted objects? Java is your friend. What about session tracking? Use cookies, or have a dedicated class do it? How do you access the database? Want to use hibernate? What other tools is hibernate dependent on? What are their costs (license+learning)? Can you use JDBC directly? What are the pros and cons? Which db to use to why.
Why Java web applications are not so popular today? ( or in case I perceived it wrongly, please list any major deployments beside linkedIn and ebay)
I am not sure if this is the case, but possible reasons could be the availability of .net and integration with C# based systems and Apple ditching Java from its SDK. But that is my speculation, don't quote me on it. I am developing a large scale system myself with Java 6.
and Finally, What are some of the most important things to learn before starting web development in Java EE ?
(This is my opinion) have a test or trial set up of the entire architecture. Is the GUI web-brower based? Is it an applet? Standalone application talking to a server? JNLP system downloading archives and JRE off the net? You will find some stuff do not work on Windows 7, some do not on Vista, W3C have deprecated the applet tag from HTML but Sun/Oracle asks you to use it, different browsers do not support contents of your style sheet, etc.
Firewall set up is another major challenge - you start using thread pooling using Spring libraries and your capabilities to use DBvisualizer to check on DB tables are gone! Now you need a DBA and a sys-admin to fix these who you do not have!
Personally I found the LAMP architecture (Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP) the fastest way to go for smaller applications, but if you need heavier guns for your app (security, GUI with swing, multithreading, etc), replace the P in LAMP with a tomcat container. The hardest thing I find is to judge the value of a tool in the context of my application - I do not need a tool that generates Java files with getter/setter methods given a list of variables - to me that is yet another level of indirection, but then JUnit in eclipse is helpful for debugging.
Just shared some of my thoughts - hope this helps, - M.S.
For a startup an interesting choice could be the Lift web framework, which is used for developing "Java Web Applications" (although in Scala).
We currently have a 2-tier Java Swing application sitting on top of MS SQL Server 2005. All the business logic is in the database. The client is quite old (and not very friendly), and for reasons of performance and scalability, we've already started porting some services to a middle tier in Java.
However, we still have a number of short and long term goals:
Pick a technology stack for a new front-end
This isn't easy - I can see everything from a web app at one end of the continuum to a traditional desktop app at the other being viable choices. The current front-end isn't really complex (mostly form-based), so I can see web/AJAX fitting, but it's an area where we don't know what we don't know.
Stacks on my list are:
Eclipse RCP, Netbeans RCP
Flex/Flash, Silverlight, JavaFX
Pure Javascript frontends (Sprout Core, Javascript MVC, ...)
Java-based Web frameworks (Wicket, JSF, ...)
Find a way of making the current application perform acceptably in a remote situation
We have some clients who resale our app to smaller clients and need to be able to remotely deploy it. Due to the 2-tier nature of the current architecture this leads to terrible performance (for example, calling a stored procedure that returns 18 result sets). We've used a Citrix solution in the past, but no-one likes that approach. Tunneling JDBC through port 80 also sounds like a bad idea. I was starting to wonder if there's anything that could use a X-Windows like approach to remote just the GUI part.
To simplify development and leverage your experience in Swing consider using Vaadin for your frontend. It is a Java framework for building modern web applications that look great, and perform well. All the code is written in Java and looks very similar to Swing.
As far as overall application architecture I would advise multi-tier, service oriented architecture. The best way to do it is by using Spring framework with Hibernate for database access.
If you want to easily redeploy your application, for an update, security reasons, etc. and if you want your application to be it to be accessed remotely, you should really consider a web based front end.
Plus, this way, only one app, your web app, will handle connection to the database, so no JDBC tunneling or whatever.
Concerning the best framework, it depends on your team knowledge, the way your application will be used (more or less javascript), etc.
We've just gone through a very similar evaluation process as we're migrating a legacy application.
For us the biggest deciding factor in what front-end framework to use was the prior knowledge of the development team. We wanted something that everybody would be comfortable with immediately. We had a couple of the senior developers that have worked with X or Y, but the framework that everybody knew was Swing.
In the end we decided on the NetBeans platform using RESTful webservice to communicate with an EE server.
As a bonus you can get your NetBeans platform application to deploy as a Java WebStart application, which means you get the benefit of not having to worry about individual installations.
If the frontend is mostly form-based, I would stay away from Flex. Flex is great for some applications (I'm using it for a canvas based application), but the form components of Flex has some usability issues. They just don't work like you expect from todays web. (like missing support for mousewheel, typing in dropdownlist only take first character into account etc.)
Assuming that you are going to force all your clients to install a new middle tier, I can't think of an argument against making it a Java web app. As already mentioned you have the benefit of controlling all access into your platform over HTTP, which allows easy resale, just with firewall configuration. There's no reason you can't make use of Javascript within a web front end, you may be interested in DWR, which allows you to interact directly with Java objects via Javascript. I've used this before to add some simple Ajax interaction to a Spring MVC webapp.
The reasons I like this approach, you're already migrating code into Java middle tier, so
Already imposing Java server hardware cost on clients, hosting app server / web server is comparable
Already have Java expertise, can be leveraged with DWR
Can use as much/little Javascript as appropriate (I've used DWR with IE6, Firefox 3, Chrome)
I think you're right to be wary of pushing too much functionality to the client, I'd go for as thin a client as possible. The only reason I'd look at the first two stack choices would be if you have some developer expertise in a particular area, and not Java webapp/Javascript.
I'd suggest to create a short list of candidate frameworks and create a small test application with all of them. This way you will get a sense of good and bad aspects from all of them and also get a picture what the community activity and documentation is like for each project (there is a lot of variance on those).If you end up doing this I hope you'll include Vaadin in your short list, I think it would fit you very well. If you have any questions just come over to our forums and we'll help you to get started.
Closed. This question needs to be more focused. It is not currently accepting answers.
Want to improve this question? Update the question so it focuses on one problem only by editing this post.
Closed 2 months ago.
Improve this question
I would like to create a desktop application in Java & web technologies. The main reason for selecting Java is that it is free, open source, and hence our investment would be minimal and we would save lots of investment with respect to licensing costs, etc. Also, the main reason for selecting web technologies is because our current programmers are well versed with web technologies like HTMl, css, Ajax, and we have good experience in creating amazing UI in web technologies.
I will give you some idea about the software that we would like to create. It would be a desktop based software, namely something like an ERP software.
The key requirements are that there should be a great UI and it should be fast and not very resource intensive.
I have heard that implementing a great GUI is possible, but difficult in Java. It can be done but is complex, whereas it is pretty simple to do the same in Visual Studio, Microsoft products.
I have also checked Adobe Air, Nokia QT, etc but they all are pretty expensive for us and we are looking for front-end browser UI and backend embedded server/database using java technologies.
Is it possible to create a desktop software in which the UI is created using the web technologies and there is an embedded server (like jetty or tomcat) and database and the backend programming would be in Java. How does JavaFX fit into this?
So basically, the desktop application would have an embedded browser (mozilla or some java browser which can packaged with the software), but the end user should never realize this.
I look forward to getting feedback about the same. Can you please provide some examples of software created in a similar combination of java + web technologies.
I did study some softwares like PulpTunes & Zimbra which were along similar lines, but they seem to be connecting to internet to display data. Our software would be totally an offline desktop application.
First of all, it is possible. If you are looking for example, check http://wiki.eclipse.org/Hudson-ci/Meet_Hudson.
You can get basic architecture if you dig into their code. It does not use any embedded db.
You are saying your application will always be offline, in that case I suggest you to go for pure desktop application using technologies like Eclipse plugin development.
If you already made up your mind, here are some points that can help you based on my experience with similar application,
Although your application is offline(I assume, your application need not connect to any server for any use case but the user machine can access internet ), you need to deliver changes(for example, change in html or jsp page )/bug fixes transparently to end user. JNLP/Java web start is a good fit for this.
If you are going for JNLP way of installing, you launcher should take care of embedded db installation and ports at the end user machine(this is big problem than it appears).
Also if you are launching server(in my case, Jetty) through JNLP, you will come across Class loading errors due to permission issues. Be prepared to dig through server code. I have done it long time ago and I do not have code now to point exact issues.
Show progress bars during installation process and during your application startup. Your war deployment takes some time and user needs some of knowing that application is startup is in progress. You will end up writing some swing UI.
Launch URL of the application automatically in default browser of the user system, after application startup. You do not need embedded browser.Check http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/J2SE/Desktop/javase6/desktop_api/.
I used MySql as embedded data base. Check Embedding mysql in java desktop application. It worked for me, I did not come across any problems.
Yes, it is possible. See https://github.com/jreznot/electron-java-app demo. There you will find an easy way to build Electron based application on Java, without compilation to JS, just Java application inside of embedded Jetty instance with Vaadin UI.
You are truly right, java is great if you are developing a project by self.
Server side coding can be done using Spring (For MVC, Database etc...Very rich and ligthweight framework, easy to learn and understand) with hibernate(ORM framework for Database handling, provides dialects for any Database server).
For UI, you can use Spring MVC OR JSF OR GWT OR javaFX. JavaFX provides JNLP download, which runs on java and without browser. check the link for more JavaFX samples. http://javafx.com/samples/
So its on you, what you want to use for UI side. If you prefer web UI (Not javaFX i mean) then you can have many options.
For Ajax, you will have libraries which support easy ajax. like DWR (Easy Ajax, JS to JAVA) and many other JS libraries like yahoo, jQuery etc.. can be used.
hope this helps.
IMHO the whole idea of running a web-server just to create a desktop app with js and ajax and stuff is horrible... I heard about Apple-creator Titanium which is allows to create crossplatform apps using web techniques. There are couple other similar programs as well.
I think you'll end up better buying a good wyswing Swing design tool for java ui which will cost you couple hundred bucks but will save you lots and lots development trouble. It is very hard to believe that laying out a nice desktop app is more complicated than laying out a web page.
I didn't get the embedded jetty/tomcat part. You want the desktop app to run an embedded server that talks to the database? So each desktop app would open a DB connection?
Why not have a Java desktop app that sends HTTP requests to a JavaEE server that connects to the DB and processes the requests? So basically, a Java client (which could be as rich as your developers can make it) replacing a browser. This gives you a lot more scalability, etc.
We have a similar (albeit much more complex) product developed using
- Swing + Apache Commons HttpClient on the desktop. This makes an HTTP POST request with serialized binary data to the server.
- A dispatcher servlet running in a web container that recreates the Java object on the server and executes the request.
I will probably get stoned for this, but I suggest JavaFX for this. We have successfully implemented a JavaFX-application for internal use in a larger company. The advantages are that the software is "controlled" on the server side (thus, nobody will have an "old" version). Installation effort is minimal (Java Web Start fixes this for you, it will even trigger a minimal JRE-installation if none exist) and last but not least, JavaFX can be run in the browser and as a pure desktop application alike without having to change the code.
Adobe FLEX is another contender, but it lacks the "Web Start" bit and is not quite as flexible when it comes to easy migration between browser and desktop.
Anyway, JavaFX is not quite feature complete as FLEX but version 1.3 can be considered battle-ready and you can create neat stuff with the free JavaFX plugins for Adobe Creative Suite (if your app will contain any graphics, that is).
Alright, the question might be broad. We've been looking at Jboss and a few other similar app. servers.
From the feature list it would be perfect for replacing our soon to be outdated homegrown reporting application on the server side. But at this point, for 2 developers, just grasping all the setup, configuration, administration, tuning,testing not to mention the APIs and programming itself just seems way too much, too big, too complex.
What path does people take to become familiar and productive with such application servers ?
Start with a simple one, and only use a more complex one if you really need the features.
For example, Do you really need the full JBoss stack? Would Tomcat not be sufficient? It's much less of a handful.
I would approach this the same way I approach anything new.
Start with the documentation - read the introduction and basic setup/configuration documents. Then move on to tutorials and maybe some simple apps that I find interesting. In your case, maybe port a few features over to the new system. As time goes on, you should get better with the tools at hand.
From my experience using one is the best way to learn what you like/dislike about it. Once you have a project set up for one application server it should not be too much work to migrate it to another. I am currently working on an application that we develop & test daily using a simple Tomcat v6 server, but which runs in production on both Websphere Application Server and JBoss.
As a side note for your development, I strongly recommend looking into integrating your Eclipse development environment with your chosen application server through server adapters - it will greatly speed up development tasks and simplify the debugging process.
I'd say that the minimum features for using Java EE are:
Servlets and JSPs, written using JSTL (no scriptlets)
JDBC
JNDI for pooling database connections (optional but recommended)
Basic authentication for security
You can accomplish a great deal knowing just those. If you want to minimize the learning curve, I'd recommend starting with those and staying away from EJBs, JMS, Struts, JSF, etc.
Another benefit is that this subset of features is common to both servlet/JSP engines, like Tomcat, Jetty, Resin, etc. and full-blown Java EE app servers like WebLogic, JBOSS, WebSphere, etc. An app that runs on one should be portable to any of the others, as long as you stay away from app engine-specific extensions.
You should realize that there's a trade-off here. You'll have to develop pieces that might be easier if you leverage the app server more. But hopefully you'll start with some simpler problems and work your way up once you're comfortable with the basics.
There's another approach: Hire an experienced guide to help you with training and mentoring for the first project. A six-month gig with a reputable consulting firm might get you started.
Last of all, I'd recommend Spring. It would also have a learning curve, but it's a good alternative to Java EE EJB development.