I am planning to develop a swing application for developing a large in-house software.
Features:
It should be menu based.
Modular
Secure
Can you please help in choosing the right architecture and technologies to use with Swing. Also any good sample should be helpful.
Do have a look at the NetBeans platform. It makes things a log easier. Especially for "large" applications, the module concept will help you a lot (e.g. for structuring your application)
It has a learning curve, but I think in the long run it will help you.
This article might give you an idea:
http://netbeans.dzone.com/nb-belgian-radio-monitoring-toolkit?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zones%2Fnetbeans+%28NetBeans+Zone%29
The limited requirements you list don't really eliminate any framework options. Get a little further in your requirements and design before you determine what you need to add to Swing.
To strengthen eugener's claims, I would recommend looking into Spring Rich Client, or its successor Valkyrie RCP.
I would suggest multi-tier architecture based on Spring Framework. We had a very good experience using Spring on the client as well as in our own application server. It makes difficult tasks a lot easier.
If you are not afraid to start with a framework that is still under development (although many of its parts are now stable), you couls take a look at GUTS.
It also requires knowledge of Guice Dependency Injection library, which helps having a very clean design of the whole application.
Related
I am not familiar with any of the leading frameworks of java but still i managed to develop a desktop application. These days people are talking about spring, strut, hibernate etc.. I want to know how many of kind frameworks exists there and which of them are commonly used for developing a desktop application which involves database as well.
Which of them do you think is a must learn for Desktop application developers. Thanks in advance..
None of those are directly related to desktop applications, although Spring can be used just about anywhere, and Hibernate is app-framework-neutral.
The only real desktop framework player these days, IMO, is Griffon.
Maybe you don't really need a framework, take a look at the SWT/JFace Data Binding that is also good to learn for a desktop/database oriented application developer.
Take a look at the NetBeans platform. It is a very sound framework that eases a lot of things - but it does have steep learning curve.
Especially when you know Swing already it's very handy, because you after all it's a Swing framework and plays nicely with any Swing component out there.
Here is a nice little demo showing how to use JPA and the NetBeans platform to create a simple CRUD application:
http://platform.netbeans.org/tutorials/nbm-crud.html
Is any such frameworks we can build on ?
It should includes good-looking user-interface.
One framework to build a complete application.
i used Vaadin that is nice and easy
https://vaadin.com/home
There are plenty and all have some good parts people love about. Here your main concerns seems to build a nice UI. Then, I suppose, you need something like jQuery-UI/ZK/YUI or something in that area. The popular Java Web Frameworks will do little help in that regards.
After deciding on any of the UI frameworks, you can choose any popular web framework, consult your team/developers here. And look at this thread about Most Common Java Web Frameworks.
GWT, Icefaces, Richfaces, JavaServer Faces. There are many more you can search on the internet.
Using one framework to build the complete application depends on the type of application you are building. I will suggest the use of Java Server Faces (JSF).
I have came from another question to this one:
How can one start with Java (JVM) ecosystem? What are beginner, intermediate and advanced knowledge-bases (bags!)? To be honest Java ecosystem was always a bit confusing to me, so it would be very helpful to provide some "reference references" and "defacto tutorials" for learning (curve!) JVM.
Note: I want to use JVM with Scala (or Clojure) but not Java itself.
I am a C# developer (WPF, Windows Forms, ASP.NET, Web Services, ... like that).
The Java Tutorial is a good place to start.
Update: you have enough questions for about a dozen posts here ;-) Honestly, you should do some research yourself (Google is your friend), then ask more specific, targeted questions; that would yield better results. (e.g. I don't think anyone can answer your question regarding Swing or JavaFX without more specific details about what you are trying to achieve.) I try to give a few pointers below, about areas I know to some extent.
for servlets and other web frameworks, here is a bunch of tutorials.
Tomcat and Jetty are both application servers.
there are a lot of different web frameworks, because different people have differing preferences, ideas and style, so many have created their own framework. It can be confusing, but at least there is choice :-)
for persistence, apart from JDBC, ORM frameworks are another strong option. I use Hibernate and I can recommend it; in a bigger project it can make your life much easier. Ultimately it depends on your specific project and constraints; there is no single right choice.
AFAIK Java has no equivalent of LINQ.
See also this post for further recommendations.
Java based web applications need to run inside of a web container such as Jetty or Tomcat.
You build your app and deploy it to the container which hosts the application at runtime.
Pure/plain JDBC should only be used directly by simple applications or integration layers that do not have access to the class model.
Most applications that I have seen have used some kind of Object Relational Mapping framework which models the entities as classes at a higher level than plain old JDBC.
Popular O/R frameworks include:
hibernate
toplink
datanucleus
cayenne
For web based development, you could start with AppFuse, see the quickstart guide.
AppFuse is a templating system that generates the skeleton of an application for you.
Then look deeper into what has been generated, and see what frameworks they are using.
AppFuse lets you choose between different technology stacks, so you could compare.
I haven't seen AppFuse support for Guice or GWT.
Guice is a Dependency Injection framework, others that could be used instead are Spring or picocontainer.
Another investigative approach that you could try would be starting with AndroMDA, which is a model driven architecture framework - you start with a UML model and then generate or forward engineer a working application.
AndroMDA also lets you control the choice of the underlying framework implementations by configuring different cartridges, once again you should dig deeper to see what they are using in the generated application.
If you are looking for a basic introduction, then the Java Tutorials are nice. To do other things like Java Web Development, then your going to need to consult google for the respective technology since they vary so widely.
One book though that I highly recommend taking a look at is Java Concurrency in Practice
Yeah, it is almost impossible for new guys to get started. This is going to drive away a lot of developers, and Java is in danger of not having constant new bloods. The old farts would love that, it's great for career security, and that's why they are making Java more and more complicated.
I want to take the next step in java web development, I am hoping to get insight & feedback on: what my next steps should be and how best to take them.
While learning the basics of java web development, I put together a simple web app that performs simple accounting and financial calculations. The web app is on a single jvm, uses Tomcat, and has standard web functionality - i.e. login/logout, basic security, etc.
How can I make this web app more "enterprise ready" - distribute functionality of tiers over different servers/jvms, HA, balance-able, etc.
What do I need to know/learn? - i.e. EJB3 or Spring Framework (seems spring is better option), REST and/or SOAP, etc.
How would one recommend (books, websites, etc.) I learn the "requirements" (see preceding line)?
Thanks!
In my opinion, you should try different approaches for a same problem, so you could compare the pros and cons of different tools and frameworks.
For instance, try to build an application using EJB, and then the same application using Spring. Take the presentation layer of your code written with JSF and then rewrite it using Tapestry.
I think this will be very helpful to you, as you'll be able to make best decisions when choosing tools for your future developments.
A few things to consider, as food for thought:
How good is the error handling/logging of the application? For example, if the user tries to put in X in for a currency value, what does the application do?
What is configurable within the application from the user and what is in configuration files and what is in a database with regards to configuration? Do you have passwords encrypted within the application?
What patterns would used in building this application? Are there patterns you could see using now that you have a prototype?
Is this application ready to handle different currencies and languages?
What happens if someone leaves the screen for a few hours and tries to use a form?
What administrative functionality does the application have?
Does it handle the case where the user has JavaScript disabled?
What are the limitations of your application, IOW what can't it handle the way it is?
Have you considered trying to write a manual for the application?
EJB or Spring? gets asked quite a lot nowadays, here's a decent related question about them.
Have some real users using your application. You'll be amazed on how many "new" features/improvements can be performed in your app ( and the technologies you'll learn to satisfy those requirements ) by having real users using it.
I would suggest the following books/tutorials are a must for every Java developer:
Manning: Spring in Action - 2nd edition
Manning: Java Persistence with Hibernate
Core JavaServer Faces
Adobe Flex ( Adobe website video tutorials )
Effective Java
Apart from the standard technologies above you must be familiar with
Different testing frameworks , JUnit is a must
Build tools like ANT and Maven
Also you can build small projects by downloading trial versions of MyEclipse or Flex Builder.
I suggest that you create small java experiment projects for each new framework/library that you want to learn.
I've had good success using maven to help me quickly and consistently create java projects that I use to experiment with one technology at a time, such as Spring, Hibernate, etc. I use maven's site life cycle to record notes about what I learned and to document how to build and run each project. So, now I have 20 or so projects that I can use as baseline projects, one for each framework, to build upon.
Also, I prefer buying and reading books rather than relying on google and websites to learn new frameworks. Seems that I'm able to learn a lot faster this way.
I also suggest that you write web apps that you, yourself, would want to use. Or write a web app that solves a problem you've been having. I've found that I learn a lot more this way rather than simply copying and pasting from examples in a text book.
Hope that helps,
- Dave
Spring or Tapestry would be good options for new learnings. Does your app use any web services? If not work those in. Work with other application servers like JBoss and Weblogic and note their nuances with java. I'd also recommend learning Maven and work that into your build/deploy process.
Have fun,
Mike
You could vastly reduce the time taken to build your apps by learning some Test-Driven Development.
Try learning JUnit - it's becoming a core skill now, even in unagile shops.
If you're focussing on the web, try out Selenium - which has a Java controller to drive your tests from Java test cases.
After investing a bit of time in TDD will pay off no matter which frameworks or apps you work on. If you learn to test drive your code, you'll end up with smaller, cleaner code and less debugging.
You might look at AppFuse, which is a bundle of Java things together.
Or, you might take a look at a few more technologies to play with and add in:
Version Control - SVN
Tools - Ant or Maven
Framework - Spring, Seam, Struts
ORM - Hibernate or iBatis
Test Driven Development - JUnit, Emma
Continuous Integration - Hudson
I'd also read the Pragmatic Programmer and/or Code Complete.
Allow me to state that "enterprise"-ready does not necessarily imply scale-out solutions, many, many enterprise Java applications are running on larger systems requiring long-running-systems skill of their own.
I recommend mastering the Java language and runtime, understanding how bytecodes and loading traverse the JVM vs. focus on any given framework.
Speaking of frameworks and if you really have the time, try recreating an application framework yourself. Try and re-invent the wheel. IMO it is an excellent lesson in why frameworks themselves exist and teaches one to employ the features instead of always trying to work around them.
One more thing, never forget the database. I don't care what that looks like Oracle, MySQL or NoSQL, but become also an equal master at the data store.
I was thinking which framework would be a good choice to go into. I'm focusing on java apps and tested spring, grails and seam so far. I've also looked aboard java and gave ruby on rails a try too.
In future I will be focusing on portlet development which I've gone through already without a complete framework (just hibernate).
Maybe someone could share some experiences? Or point me to a corner which I don't looked in so far?
Regards and thanks for reading ;)
If you're doing this out of curiosity and to learn something new, rather than to meet specific requirements for a specific project, maybe you'll enjoy the Play! Framework. It contains a lot of stuff from other frameworks and is designed to get you up and going very quickly, with short development cycles and not a lot of arcanae.
Their stated purpose is to be "by Web developers for Web developers". They intend to put the fun back into Web programming.
This sounds good and I've read a few nice things about it in fora and blogs, but I haven't tried it myself yet so that's all the recommendation I can give.
Grails has a plugin for developing portlets, described here.
If you consider Groovy or Grail, you might consider ZK, too. It is an Ajax framework integrated well with Groovy and Grail.
I'd say you go with a framework that targets the programming language you're most proficient in. If you already are good in Java, and you're a quick learner ( to learn Groovy ), Grails could be a good choice.
If you'd like to go with another scripting language, say Ruby/Python, then choose Rails or Django, or Pylons ( the list could go on here ).
If you're going for a Java only framework, I'd go with Spring MVC.
You should have a look at the play framework (SO question).
Finally a Java framework made by Web developers. Discover a clean alternative to bloated enterprise Java stacks. Play focuses on developer productivity and targets RESTful architectures.
I was thinking which framework would be a good choice to go into. I'm focusing on java apps and tested spring, grails and seam so far. I've also looked aboard java and gave ruby on rails a try too.
FYI - Grails is using Spring and Hibernate underneath; SEAM uses JSF and Hibernate.
Grails is the Java equivalent of RoR. It's based on the same idea: "convention over configuration".
It's also important to be clear that Spring is far more than a mere web MVC framework. It's based on DI and AOP and encompasses persistence, remoting, enterprise services, etc. It supports portlet MVC, which is a plus given your requirements.
Personally, I would recommend straight Spring over any of your choices so far if you stick with Java. It's important to know something about what's going on under the covers. If you know Spring well, Grails will be easy.
I'd use Wicket rather than Play! because Play! requires Python as a semi-dependency. With Wicket, you only need Apache and Java and thats it.
I suggest you also check out here:
http://gokhan.ozar.net/best-java-web-frameworks/