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I would like to start up a project from scratch. I am a java developer for years. I did even write my own mvc framework some time ago for fun. Now I am working in a company using in-house framework - which i think is a total loss of time and money. I respect the idea of teaming up with different skilled people for a large scale project. The separation of the project is very important; Graphics guys, front end developers, software architectures, software developers, database experts, etc. I cannot risk to use a scripting language like php.
Lately, I am researching java technologies for a large scale project in every aspects. What I mean by that, for the front layer I come across with very famous technologies.
Spring
MyFaces
Tapestry
Google Web Toolkit
Cocoon
Velocity
Every one of them states that it is the simplest, the fastest, the latest technology and whatsoever. Of course only one them can hold the truth. I need a front end technology for fast implementation for ajax, customer/administrator security, themes, templates, internationalization, caching static pages, clustering and a support of ejb. It should also have IDE support, community support, rich documentation and online tutorials. Still I have no experience of those frameworks which to choose from. Maybe there is even better one? And most importantly, I cannot risk to start up on a technology which has development limitations. Is there any suggestions for this layer?
For the business layer, I am sure of EJB and JPA. I do even considering a web service for facade of this layer for interoperability purposes for future extensions. However, I have no idea about securing that layer (it could be applied on its web service level) which is still a problem for me. For the application server I am considering GlassFish.
And for the last question is what IDE should be picked for development. Regarding all the technologies, which are going to be used, an IDE should help me in every step, either doing the configuration for me or helping me configuring with its ready wizards. I suppose the IDE will have proper plugins for to be used technologies.
I know that I want too much, however I have a hope for a combination of technologies which will help me saving time and money in my future plans.
I ll be really glad to hear your responses, experiences for a bigger picture.
edited: There is no ultimate answer, I know that. I am just taking advice. Any answer is appreciated.
Well, I'm going to go out on a limb and give concrete recommendations, since I think the question can be answered.
I'll simply recommend my stack.
My stack is Stripes for the front end, and Glassfish/Java EE 5 on the back end.
Stripes is a simple Action (or MVC, whatever floats your boat), that has a small, but robust and vocal community. It has tight integration with JPA (through a plug in), a very good, and current, printer book on the topic as well as excellent reference documentation. It's main rendering tech is JSP with JSP Tags and EL.
It is not a component framework like JSF/MyFaces, so it's implementation is simpler, and it's lifecycle is simpler. It works very well with Ajax.
The key factor around Stripes, since it's based on the HTTP request cycle is that it does most of the grunge work for you, yet is very lightweight. It's easy to pick up and understand. Creating a basic Stripes app is a couple lines in the web.xml and two jars (one of which is log4j). If you can think in HTTP, then Stripes is a good fit for you.
On the back end I would simply stick with EJB and GlassFish. Java EE 6 and GFv3 are out have been out for sometime. It offers a lot of new features over Java EE 5, and GlassFish offers most any web service tech you would like to use. Java EE 6 and Spring are pretty much equal on a bullet point by bullet point basis, and since you were looking at GF, you may as well use EJB since it's there and integrated in the box. If you were using Tomcat, then Spring might be a good choice.
And, that's it. That's all you need (I dunno what you wanted Velocity for, you can add that trivially if you like, but I wouldn't use it for pages, personally, modern JSP is much better IMHO).
Glassfish will secure your web services, you can use Java EE security with your web apps, you can share logic between the back end EJBs and your web app and web services. It all works out of the box with 15 minutes of configuration to get Stripes running.
I use NetBeans, but all of the other IDEs work as well. NetBeans is nice because it come integrated with Glassfish. One less thing to configure. Download it, fire it up, and it works.
There's a Stripes plugin for NetBeans, that I don't use. I don't see a need. Once you add your few lines to your web.xml that you cut and paste from the web site, you never see Stripes again. From there, it's all simple annotations.
Unless you have a crushing need for all of the complexity and learning curve of a component framework, it doesn't get any better than Stripes, and GF w/Java EE 6 has everything you need in the box.
So, in summary: Stripes distro from www.stripesframework.org, NetBeans download from netbeans.org, and stripersist from stripes-stuff.sourceforge.net. It's a rock solid foundation that will go wherever you want to take it.
Come on by to the Stripes IRC on freenode at #stripes, and we'll answer any question you have (or hit the mailing list).
Well, first of all, your question is not good. Every technology has it's bright sides and dark sides. To choose some specific technology - you need experience in all of them to estimate which problems can emerge with your project. Given your definition: fast implementation for ajax, customer/administrator security, themes, templates, internationalization, caching static pages, clustering and a support of ejb - 90% of frameworks support all of it either directly or using some plugins.
Moreover, various technologies are better optimized for various needs. You can't have a all-in-one-super-framework that is flawless and does everything the best way possible. Given that the framework is highly scalable and fast (example: Spring and/or Portlets) will make it hard to configure for some small tasks.
So the only thing I can recommend is to google "Java Web Framework Comparison" and hope for the best.
As about IDE, I can see only 2 choices: IntelliJ Idea and Eclipse. Again, there is no clear winner so yet again google is the only source of information you can get.
Added:
Talking about frameworks again, complex projects use several of them at once taking the best parts of each to aid with the specific project needs. But to do that effectively - you need to be a guru in all of the mixed technologies.
There is almost no way that someone can actually answer this question for you. In terms of frontend technology, one of the frameworks will work for you and others won't. It all depends on which one makes sense to you. My suggestion would be to try them all out and pick the ones that you feel the most comfortable with.
With that being said, I do have a few suggestions. First, don't limit yourself to using Java. If it were me, I would use Ruby on Rails running on jRuby as the frontend as it is the fastest framework for developing web applications that I have used. By running it on jRuby, it allows you to hook into Java and let java and its libraries do all the heavy lifting on the back end. I would stay away from web services and implement things using ReST.
In terms of an IDE, definitely go with IntelliJ IDEA. It may take a little bit to get used to, but it is definitely the fastest IDE on the market. However, both Eclipse and Netbeans are also very good for Java and a tad cheaper.
Once again, the answer is, "it depends".
All of the above projects started off with simple ideas. As they gained traction, they have all added neighboring features which are useful to some but not necessarily all. In other words, you will have to do deep analysis to pick the perfect framework.
You are not going to find a perfect match unless you just happen to be of like mind as the dozens of people working on the particular framework, assuming that all those minds were ever in perfect agreement. The only "perfect" fit is the one you write yourself, and even then you find it's not perfect as you are limited in time and effort on developing the framework; after all, you DO have a program to write, and the framework development time competes with the program development time.
As far as IDEs go, there's differences in taste and style. I tend to gravitate between the old standbys of Netbeans and Eclipse, and my next IDE to play with will be IntelliJ Idea. The thing to remember is that most people commit to one IDE and then defame the rest, so you really can't get a good comparison. IDEs take too much time to really learn for a person to give a honest unbiased opinion. A good candidate IDE "X" will be the worst in some eyes and be the best in others.
Given how the other answers look, I would say the biggest remaining factor is the learning curve for you and your team. Given your description of the separation of roles, your primary concern should be picking an overarching framework, such as Spring. From there, your database guys can pick whatever they want for data persistence (hibernate, jdbc, whatever) and your gui guys can pick whatever they want for their front-end (tapestry, jsf, etc.).
The primary concern I would have with such a distinct separation of roles would be the communication on the team. Make sure that their is a high degree of open communication, especially when discussing interface design, as those will be integral in the success or failure of your project (especially if you pick Spring).
As far as IDEs go, it's personal preference. The two mentioned in the other posts (Eclipse and IntelliJ) are the two I hear the most about, with Eclipse being my standard IDE for the last 4 or 5 years. I'm not familiar with IntelliJ, but I know that Eclipse has plug-ins to support Spring, Hibernate, and a host of other frameworks and ORM solutions. It also has plug-ins to support other languages as well, such as Ruby and PHP.
"I did even write my own mvc framework some time ago for fun" - at the end of the day it may happen that you will regret that you did not stay with it. In fact the technology that is better than currently "famous" most probably is the one that will be famous a little bit later, not now. Half of your list is already "famous" as obsolete.
I have to develop an ERP System for a 2,000+ end users organisation.
Could you please suggest me with comparable points that among (Java or .Net)
in which technology I should invest money and time? Although I have done
some average projects in both, but this project is going to be very big in near
future in terms of scalability.
I want to know your experiences and some tips from you people, so that I can develop
and deploy this project efficiently.
I rate .Net > Java for this project only due to less development time available.
We have to use some Rapid App Development technology.
I have to deploy this on Cloud (Azure or Google App engine).
It will be better if I got answers from those people who works in both (.Net and Java).
I will appreciate answers from your experiences.
I would suggest creating a very small proof-of-concept project in both technologies, which do something real - like allow people to log in, see messages, and allow them to type in new messages, and log out again.
Even if the project is laughably small, if you do it well, you will have a finished product on each platform which have shown you by experience how things works and if you like the way you had to do them. You will be able to see if you can debug in the cloud, if you can profile when load testing, if you can do fast work inhouse which then works well when deployed to the cloud.
And you will need to figure out things. Are the online resources good? How responsive is the StackOverflow community for each platform when you ask questions?
Personally, I consider the ".NET is Windows-only" to be important. Except for that I do not believe there is any technical showstopper for either platform.
I think both approaches can be used to deliver this successfully. I would expect you to have the same amount of success/pain with either choice. When it comes to making a decision you should base it on the amount of expertise that you have to hand. That is, your own and that of your existing colleagues and the resources that you can acquire (new recruits, contractors, consultants etc.).
That said a couple of technical notes:
The Java approach tends to have more freedom, i.e. more frameworks and choice of technologies for various solutions (although GAE will bring in some restrictions).
There is less choice in the .NET space, but that is not always a bad thing. E.g. you tend not end up in tireless debates about the logging frameworks.
Java is starting to age as a language and C# is a bit nicer, however there a number of newer languages that run on the Java VM (Scala, Groovy, Ruby, Clojure).
I plan to start a mid sized web project, what language + framework would you recommend?
I know Java and Python. I am looking for something simple.
Is App Engine a good option? I like the overall simplicity and free hosting, but I am worried about the datastore (how difficult is it to make it similarly fast as a standard SQL solution? + I need fulltext search + I need to filter objects by several parameters).
What about Java with Stripes? Should I use another framework in addition to Stripes (e.g. for database).
UPDATE:
Thanks for the advice, I finally decided to use Django with Eclipse/PyDev as an IDE.
Python/Django is simple and elegant, it's widely used and there is a great documentation. A small disadvantage is that perhaps I'll have to buy a VPS, but it shouldn't be very hard to port the project to App Engine, which is free to some extent.
Since you mentioned python, I would suggest looking into Django. You may need to look harder for hosting options, however...
Is App Engine a good option? I like the overall simplicity and free hosting, but I am worried about the datastore (how difficult is it to make it similarly fast as a standard SQL solution? + I need fulltext search + I need to filter objects by several parameters).
App Engine is nice. It supports Python or Java (with some limitations), and it provides free hosting for small needs (rare, at least for Java). But I wouldn't expect the exact same performances as with dedicated servers, the cloud is about scalability, not performance (you won't always get the fastest response time for a single hit; however, GAE would handle gazillions of concurrent hits without any problem while your servers would be on fire). But this scalability is not without cost; if you don't need it, the development tradeoffs may be too much trouble. And also note that it does not support full-text search out of the box (what an irony), you will have to use extra tooling.
What about Java with Stripes? Should I use another framework besides Stripes (e.g. for database).
I like Stripes very much. I love its conventions over configuration approach, it's a very elegant and simple framework (but still powerful). Definitely not a bad choice. For persistence, if you go for GAE, you will have to use JPA or JDO. If you don't, it's at your discretion (although I would go for JPA).
See also
Google AppEngine - A Second Look
As many things in life, this depends on what your goals are. If you intend to learn a web framework that is used in corporate environments, then choose a Java solution. If not, don't. Python is certainly more elegant and generally more fun in pretty much every way.
As to which framework to use, django has the most mindshare, as evidenced by the number of questions asked about it here. My understanding is that it's also pretty good. It's best suited for CMS-like web sites, though - at least that's what it's coming from and what it's optimized for. You might also have a look at one of the simpler, nimbler ones, such as the relatively new flask. All of these are enjoyable, though they may not all have all features on AppEngine.
Kay and Tipfy are excellent Python framework choices when you target specifically GAE. Kay is modelled after and similar to Django, but is better suited to GAE.
I've been kick App Engine around a little bit, and so far the DataStore is pretty quick... there is a bit of a learning curve compared to SQL, but I've had no real issues. I'm not sure about fulltext search, however filtering is simple, you would just run each filter one at a time.
class DBModel(db.Model):
field1 = db.StringProperty()
field2 = db.StringProperty()
field3 = db.IntegerProperty()
GQLObj = DBModel.all().filter('field1 =', 'Foo')
GQLObj = GQLObj.filter('field2 =', 'Bar')
As far as hosting, with GAE I'm not sure you even get a choice, I know you can register your own domain with google though.
I don't think the datastore is a problem. Many people will reject it out of hand because they want a standard relational database; if you are willing to consider a datastore in general then I doubt you will have any problems with the GAE datastore. Personally, I quite like it.
The thing that might trip you up is the operational limitations. For example, did you know that an HTTP request must complete within 10 seconds?
What if you get 50% of the way through a project and then find that a web service you are using sometimes take 15 seconds to respond? Now you are toast. You can't pay extra to get the limit raised or anything like that.
So, my point is that you must approach GAE with great care. Learn about the limitations and make sure that they will not be a problem before you start using it.
It depends on your personality. There's no right answer to this question any more than there's a right answer to "what kind of car should I drive?"
If you're artistic and believe code should be beautiful, use Rails.
If you're a real hacker type, I think you'll find a full-stack framework such as Rails or Django to be unsatisfying. These frameworks are "opinionated" software, which means you have to really embrace the author's vision to be most productive.
The wonderful thing about web development in the Python world is there's several great minimal frameworks. I've used several, including web.py, GAE's webapp, and cherrypy. These frameworks are like "here's a request, give me a string to serve up." It's raw. Don't think you'll be stuck in Python concatenating strings though, God no. There's also several excellent templating libraries for Python. I can personally recommend Cheetah but Mako also looks good.
Google App Engine + GWT and you have a pretty powerful combination for developing web applications. The datastore is quite fast, and it has so far done the job quite nicely for me.
In my project I had to do a lot of redesigning of my database model, because it was made for a traditional relational database, and some things were not (directly) possible with the datastore.
GWT has a fairly moderate learning curve, but it gets the job done very well. The gui code is really easy to get started with, but it's the asynchronous way of thinking that's the hardest part.
As for search I don't think it's supported in the framework. Filtering is possible on parameters.
There are some limitations to GAE, and you should consider them before putting all your eggs in that basket. The fact that GAE uses J2EE distribution standards makes the application very easy to move to a dedicated server, should the limitations of GAE become a problem. In fact I only think you would have to refactor the part of your code that makes the queries and stores the data (which shouldn't be much more than 100 lines).
I've built several apps on GAE (with Python) over the last year. It's hard to beat the ease with which you can get an app up and running quickly. Don't discount the value in that alone.
While you may not understand the datastore yet, it is extremely well documented and there are great resources - including this one - to help you get past any problem you might have.
A legacy web application written using PHP and utilizing MySql database needs to be rewritten completely. However, the existing database structure must not be changed at all.
I'm looking for suggestions on which framework would be most suitable for this task? Language candidates are Python, PHP, Ruby and Java.
According to many sources it might be challenging to utilize rails effectively with existing database. Also I have not found a way to automatically generate models out of the database.
With Django it's very easy to generate models automatically. However I'd appreciate first hand experience on its suitability to work with legacy DBs. The database in question contains all kinds of primary keys, including lots of composite keys.
Also I appreciate suggestions of other frameworks worth considering.
Use sqlalchemy. On any framework you choose. It can reflect your database as ORM.
I’m currently rebuilding a legacy PHP web application with a MySQL database my self.
The PHP code was kind of spaghetti and is now rewritten in Java as it type safe, promotes well-structured code, has excellent tooling and has superior unit testing capabilities. For database to Java mapping I use Hibernate/JPA.
The web application is incrementally delivered to production. Meaning we run both Java and large parts of the old PHP code together until the application is fully converted.
But in order to use hibernate effectively we needs the database to be logical correct (something MySQL MyIsam does not enforce). So with each production release I run an refactoring scripts for the database (also used to build the development environment and do unit testing) and update the PHP code with a new version that works with the schema changes.
As a web framework I use Stripes as it’s simple, elegant and easy to learn.
I have very good experience with Django. Every time I needed it was up to the task for interfacing with existing database.
Autogenerated models are the start, as MySQL is not the strictest with its schema. Not that it will not work only that usually some of the db restrictions are held in app itself.
My first thought would be to use Hibernate and Java, but I may be biased because that is what my experience is in. You generally map your Model classes via Hibernate after you create the database anyway, so it might not be a bad choice.
I'll let it explain itself to you: Hibernate's website
I suppose that any PHP Framework (I'm a PHP guy, so I will only talk about PHP) could be OK for you ; but you should use one that's well-supported, has a large community, ...
To make things short, I'm thinking about one off this list :
Symfony
Zend Framework
CakePHP
Kohana
Code Igniter
Now, if you're asking "which framework is the best", it's a question that doesn't really have an answer : it's mainly a matter of personnal preferences...
Still, here's a couple of questions+answers that could bring you some interesting informations :
Best PHP framework for an experienced PHP developer?
What PHP framework would you choose for a new application and why?
To use a PHP framework or not?
PHP Framework Decision - Analysis paralysis!
PHP - MVC framework?
Which PHP Framework is right for this project?
Also, note that choosing a Framework is an important decision -- which means you should take some time to evaluate each framework and how it'll answer your specific need.
Really : you should definitely not rush that decision.
You know, there's a whole Ruby web dev world away from Rails, e.g.:
Sinatra
Ramaze
Webby
With such a general question it's always a bit hard to help...
Try web2py, extremely easy to prototype any webapp, and IMO a bit easier to grasp (overall) than other similar web frameworks, HTH
There are no clear cut winners when picking a web framework. Each platform you mentioned has its benefits and drawbacks (cost of hardware, professional support, community support, etc.). Depending on your time table, project requirements, and available hardware resources you are probably going to need some different answers.Personally, I would start your investigation with a platform where you and your team are most experienced.
Like many of the other posters I can only speak to what I'm actively using now, and in my case it is Java. If Java seems to match your projects requirements, you probably want to go with one of the newer frameworks with an active community. Currently Spring Web MVC, Struts2, and Stripes seem to be fairly popular. These frameworks are mostly, if not totally, independent of the persistence layer, but all integrate well with technologies like hibernate and jpa; although you have to do most, if not all, of the wiring yourself.
If you want to take the Java road there are also pre-built application stacks that take care of most of wiring issues for you. For an example you might want to look at Matt Raible's AppFuse. He has built an extensible starter application with many permutations of popular java technologies.
If you are interested in the JVM as a platform, you may also want to look at complete stack solutions like Grails, or tools that help you build your stack quickly like Spring Roo.
Almost all of the full stack solutions I've seen allow for integration with a legacy database schema. As long as your database is well designed, you should be able to map your tables. The mention of composite keys kind of scares me, but depending on your persistence technology this may or may not be an issue. Hibernate in Java/.NET supports mapping to composite keys, as does GORM in grails (built on hibernate). In almost all cases these mappings are discouraged, but people who build persistence frameworks know you can't always scorch earth and completely recreate your model.
I'm considering developing a school information system using the Grails web framework. Before a school can use the system, they will need to setup the following data
School data
Students
Teachers
Subjects
Classes
etc.
I'm considering using a CMS in order to get the ability to CRUD these entities "for free". The CMS may also provide other features out-of-the-box that I could use.
Ideally the CMS should be implemented in Java or Groovy, does anyone know of something suitable? I looked at the Weceem CMS plugin for Grails, but it's missing some core concepts I need, e.g. the ability to add users to groups.
Thanks,
Don
Java is good for rock-solid, high-performance, secure Enterprise apps. Java is considerably less good for getting a relatively simple Web project out the door in a short time.
Therefore, were I in your position, my personal gut feeling would be to go with something Grails based. I'm not very aware of any projects that already partially implement what you want, but if you can find one (Google?) then grab it! That will leave you more time for polishing and adding bells and whistles.
If you're not tied to Java, I'd recommend looking at Drupal for PHP as your CMS. Many sites, even sites of major Java organizations such as SpringSource, have used Drupal as their CMS because it offers so much out of the box.
Magnolia CMS 1 in version 4.3 has full-blown Groovy support. After 7 years of active development, a CMS like Magnolia provides you with a ton of stuff you need to run a website. I wouldn't even think about starting from scratch no matter what framework you use. Understanding the problem you are trying to solve and finding a solution to it is usually taking more time than actually implementing said solution. Even if you believe you know what you need now, rest assured your requirements will overrun you before you know it.
I know it's not Grails related, I would use the DaisyCMS, as it's java based you can add an extra Java Web applications to the Jetty and add extra functionality to the CMS using Grails for your other functinality. I hav enot tried this, it's just a suggestion.
Use Grails scaffolds to get simple CRUD functionallity.
Do you really want to build it from scratch? There are already open-source CMS. In your case I would evaluate open-source CMSs and if necessary would contribute code.
Does it need to be Java/Grails? There are good ones written in PHP or Python (django, joomla).
I tried Grails 1 year ago. It is very straightforward as long as you align with the concepts and standards (e.g. simple CRUD scaffolding). But if there a special requirements you get to similar efforts as with a Java framework like Spring MVC (though grails is also based on Spring MVC).