I need support in order to speed up development process. I received a request to start developing a website with java technology. I usually develop in C# - ADO for Entities - ASP.NET MVC - MSSQL server - Visual Studio. Best of these choices were:
- C# Intellisense.
- ORM.
- Complete Security Management of Users, Roles.
- Separation of Concerns into MVC.
I was wondering if any can help me to determine best Java MVC Framework - DB - IDE based on these premises, Start a project with:
- Integrated security for users, roles
- MVC
To shed more light, to replicate same functionalities I can have each time I start a website using C# ASP.NET MVC 2 project. example http://nerddinnerbook.s3.amazonaws.com/Images/image020.png
First, let's discuss IDE, ORM, and security, and DB: In my opinion, the best Java IDE is IntelliJ IDEA. It's from the same folks who have developed Resharper for Visual Studio. It has the most powerful editor of all Java IDEs and has built-in support for many popular Java frameworks.
ORM: The most powerful ORM library in Java is Hibernate. Hibernate itself is an implementation of Java Persistence API (JPA) standard. EclipseLink is another implementation of JPA, but Hibernate is a better option IMO.
Security: Spring Security is probably the most powerful security (authentication and authorization) framework available in the Java world.
DB: If you are comfortable with SQL Server, then keep on using that. However don't use Microsoft's JDBC drivers. Instead use a driver from DataDirect: http://web.datadirect.com/products/jdbc/index.html. If you don't want to use SQL Server, MySQL is a great FOSS choice and Oracle, DB2, etc. are other options.
For the Web framework, there are several options:
Option 1: If you want a RAD style framework, choose Grails. Grails is similar to Ruby on Rails but uses JVM and a Java-like but dynamic language named Groovy. Grails' ORM API is called GORM, which is built on top of Hibernate, but is much easier to use. Grails also uses Spring Security for managing security.
Option 2: If you want an enterprise-grade framework, choose JBoss Seam + JavaServer Faces. JSF is a component-based MVC framework, and there are plenty of great JSF libraries available for use: RichFaces, OpenFaces, etc. Seam integrates JSF with EJB and together they make a great enterprise framework. However it has a steep learning curve.
Option 3: Use Spring + SpringMVC + JPA.
Option 4: Use Struts 2 .
Final remarks: If you are looking for an easy-to-learn MVC + ORM framework, use Struts 2 + JPA. If you are looking for a RAD and easy-to-use MVC + ORM framework, use Grails. If you are looking for a robust and enterprise-grade (but not-easy-to-learn) framework, use JBoss Seam.
Not only Spring MVC but the whole Spring eco system will get you up and running with the least surprises. You can also download the Spring Tool Suite (a preconfigured eclipse version tailored for Spring) to get an integrated development environmanet which knows about all spring stuff.
But Spring - Spring MVC - Hibernate - Spring Security and STS seems to cover your needs and will provide a sound basis to do the project without too many bad surprises. This leaves you to focus on the customer and the jump to Java.
Afterward you might consider different options in the Java space, as there are plenty of other frameworks available with their strong points. But in the short run it is better to limit the number of moving parts
The standard, most common framework/orm setup is spring/hibernate. Both of these tools have unfortunately been grown to ridiculous extremes over the years, so they may seem daunting in size, but a simple setup with each is much easier than it may seem from looking at all of the options on their respective sites.
Best suggestion would be to follow a step-by-step to get a basic spring/hibernate setup going and just expand off of that. At one point I had a prototype project like this I'd use to generate a "starter-set" to bootstrap projects.
BTW, I'd also suggest a simple ant build script. Some people may suggest maven, but it's enormous and very (imo overly) complex, and you're going to have enough new tools to wrap your head around to want to avoid having to learn another large command set.
Welcome to the Java world. The best thing (and in some cases also the worst thing) about the Java domain is that you can create your own stack based on your requirements. You're not necessarily bound to a single vendor as is commonly the case in the .NET domain.
Since it seems you're in a greenfield situation you can:
Adopt the webdevelopment stack of a large commercial vendor like Sun/Oracle (JSF/EJB3 + NetBeans/JDeveloper + Glassfish/Weblogic + MySQL/Oracle) or IBM
Adopt the webdevelopment stack of a smaller open source vendor like JBoss, SpringSource.
Take a look at JBoss Seam and SpringSource Grails and Roo (the latter two are based on the frequently mentioned Spring/Hibernate frameworks)
Mix and match your own stack based on the above and your requirements. Although this requires deep knowledge of the various technologies, frameworks, tools available.
You have lots of options as you can see. Now since your interested in a productivity focused stack - and I suspect an opensource one - and you have no legacy I recommend either Grails or Roo. In which Roo is probably the most accessible one since you don't have to learn Groovy. If you don't like the generation tooling I advice you the stick to the Spring stack and just adopt Spring/JPA/etc.
As for IDE, the only Java IDEs worth their salt IMHO are Eclipse and Netbeans, especially since both of them are free. Use Eclipse for extensibility and ease-of-use, use Netbeans if you need to rapidly develop a GUI.
Related
I'm looking for good java MVC web application development kit (or framework), with servlet engine, database persistence layer and viewer layer included and ready to go? One example is TDK (Turbine Development Kit), but it's kinda outdated, and their M.E.T.A. is very hard to work with (it uses maven 1.0).
Thanks,
David
There's AppFuse and Roo if you're looking for "make it go".
If you're not dead-set on Java, there's Grails (and JRuby on Rails).
Give a shot to AppFuse. It will leverage either Struts 2 or Spring MVC for you, with a nice persistence layer.
There are many good 'stacks' that you could use, some of which have already been mentioned.
They all have their own strengths & weaknesses, and you really need to select a stack that best fits your requirements.
The Spring/Roo, AppFuse & Seam are all great, but they do come with a certain amount of... errm... bloat.
You may find that picking and mixing technologies actually provides you with a lighter weight and more performant solution, so long as the technologies you choose integrate relatively seamlessly.
If you're looking to package a full execution environment including the servlet engine as part of your application, Jetty is a good choice, and you can easily integrate it into a Maven build environment.
You may also want to investigate using HyperSQL for your database, which will allow you to prototype using an SQL compliant database without having to worry about installing a full database manager such as MySQL or PostgreSQL.
is Spring Roo supposed to be only a tool for rapid development of web applications, thanks to all that scaffolding, source code generation and similar stuff, such as grails for groovy.
Or can it be utilized as a source code generator / osgi platform for building enterprise applications ? What I mean is, that there are source code generators, that generate only domain model and light DAO layer based on metadata definition when starting a new project and you have to stick to the objective - create a web app. But there are also generators, that generate the entire DAO and service layer - fantastic for iterative dev process of bigger apps - and you are not restricted otherwise, you are just using it to build you enterprise app step by step. With this you can really build a huge enterprise applications / platforms that will be maintainable for a very long time.
Also the OSGI model could be employed in a way, that you might develop a core portal application for instance, with a package of social office addons that you may plug in, etc. etc.
My point is, that Java development needs to be "Rubyfied". I mean Ruby on Rails environment where you have everything unified and standardized. A platform that could rule the java world some time :-)
Since Thomas and #jhericks trashed Spring Roo I'm going to say I actually like it mainly because its not a framework. Roo also (now) support multi-maven modules.
To answer your question: Spring Roo is not framework. It is code generation.
So yeah it is a code generation platform not only for web apps but any Java app.
There are couple of reasons why some people don't like Roo:
It uses AspectJ
It uses Spring
It does Code Generation
After building several applications with Spring Roo I can say its greatest value is its ORM generating abilities and its DataOnDemand test generation.
Other than that Spring Roo is really just Spring *.
Frameworks like Play and Ruby on Rails are just not really the "Java Way". That is most Java (Web) Apps I see are combination of libraries and not a giant framework.
As far as I experienced, Spring Roo is meant to be a RAD/bootstrapping tool for web applications. There are some major features missing and not on the roadmap that would make it truly useful in an enterprise application context. An example being multi-module Maven support.
This rather polemic article and its follow ups summarize quite well how I feel about Roo and similar projects like Seam Forge.
If you are looking for something RoR-like for Java check out the Play Framework that currently seems to gain momentum.
Coming from Java background, I am now working in a Microsoft shop where we use MS technologies only. Can you please map this architecture stack to the MS world? I am not looking for equivalents to specific layers of the stack, but a proven end-to-end stack that is known to work in the real world:
Thanks!
Architecture Stack:
Hibernate
Spring DAO
Spring Declarative transaction management
Domain model POJOs
Spring MVC
BlazeDS
Flex
Flex Interactive data visualization for charting and interactive data analysis
Cross cutting concerns:
Security using Acegi+ACL (Data content authorization for user roles)
Testing with Mock Objects
Deployment using Ivy+Ant
Logging with Log4J
Architecture Stack:
Hibernate -> NHibernate
Domain model POJOs -> Domain Model POCOs
Spring MVC -> ASP.net MVC
BlazeDS -> RIA Services
Flex -> Silverlight
For DI, you can just go for spring.net if that is what you are familiar with. Spring and Castle Windsor are probably the most mature, followed closely by StructureMap.
Cross cutting concerns:
Security using Acegi+ACL (Data content authorization for user roles)
probably have to roll your own.
Testing with Mock Objects
.net methods are not virtual by default like java, which dramatically limits what a dynamic proxy (the secret sauce that makes mocking frameworks work in static language) can do. Either Rhino.Mocks or Moq would be the most used that are free, and use the dynamic proxy approach. There is also Typemock Isolator which will mock pretty much anything, but it is 800$/seat.
Deployment using Ivy+Ant
Ivy would be Cruise Control if you want free, and TeamCity if you want good (caveat: I am a jetbrains fanboi ;-) Ant would be NAnt or MSBuild (virtually the same thing)
Logging with Log4J
Two main choices, either log4net or the Microsoft Enterprise Library Logging Block (love their names) log4net is definately the more lightweight of the two choices, but it depends what you want to do
The following are not so much exact equivalents, but more alternatives used in the .NET world.
Spring MVC -> ASP.NET MVC
Flex -> Silverlight (client side only)
Flex interactive data -> Silverlight charting or ASP.NET Charting
Hibernate -> ADO.NET entity framework.
EDIT:
I think the following would be a good starting point (I have left out the things I do not know anything about, such as "declarative transaction management").
SQL Server
ADO.NET Entity Framework
.NET RIA Services
Silverlight (charting components are included in the Silverlight toolkit)
For logging I prefer log4net.
As for reporting and data analysis you might also want to look at SQL Server Analysis Services and Reporting Services.
Also check out Team Foundation Server for testing, automated builds and deployment.
.NET shops tend to be a bit more prescriptive in what is "allowed", so ask your co-workers first before diving right in and just choosing something.
I've used Spring.NET, and the Castle Project and both are pretty solid but not 1:1 feature wise with their Java counterparts. MS shops often tend to stay close to the mothership so are more likely to go with things like The MS Enterprise Library/Unity (solid but verbose), ASP.NET MVC, Silverlight and Entity Framework.
For CI there's TFS (Team Foundation Server, a free version now ships with Visual Studio) but if you want to stick with free software theres CruiseControl.NET, nAnt, nUnit basically take a Java project convert the "j" to and "n" and there's probably a product ;)
I know a couple of these have equivalents:
log4j -> log4net
Hibernate -> NHibernate
Spring -> Spring.net
Also, it seems like a POJO isn't really all that java specific (well, I suppose the the J part is :)). I guess a "plain old C# object" could be considered an equivalent ...
I found something, does Sharp + Silverlight get me 80% there? Is this considered the current best practice in the .NET world?
http://wiki.sharparchitecture.net/MainPage.ashx
The biggest missing piece I see is Acegi+ACL functionality...
One thing I'd add in, since I don't think it's been mentioned yet, is that Unity is a feasible (and simpler!) alternative to Spring:
http://www.codeplex.com/unity/
If we only need to graphically authorize a user,
view a few tables representation (from database),
ability to change data in the database visually
what tools to use to write such a web application that will run on Tomcat?
What framework allows to do that in the most straightforward, easy-to-manage and elegant way?
I would look at Spring Roo as the framework for building your app. It will allow you quick construction of most of the features you are looking for in several minutes. (or so they claim)
There are so many elegant web frameworks available to choose from...
A JSF solution is a one suggested by the Java EE standard - if you select JSF you'll have to be more verbose in the code, but you'll have the assistance of tools such as the Visual JSF designer in NetBeans. Using JSF2 is a much better idea, IMO.
I personally recommend you to have a look at Wicket - it's a great Java web framework, centered around ideas such as ellegance, simplicity and usability.
There are many more great frameworks out there, but this is a start.
You can also try Grails. It's Java + Groovy scripting + Spring Framework + GORM + Spring Security. Less boiler plate.
Tools: Spring Source Tool Suite (Eclipse based IDE).
I am embarking on a new RIA project with Java on the backend. I'm the only developer, and the app is a line-of-business application. My current stack looks like this:
MySQL || Spring(JdbcTemplate for data access) || BlazeDS (remoting) || Flex(Cairngorm)
My question is: what changes can I make to improve productivity? Manually coding SQL, server-side entity objects, client-side value objects and all the Cairngorm stuff is obviously a drag, but I'm not sure what higher-level frameworks to introduce.
What Flex/Java stack has served you well?
Manually coding SQL
Hibernate is an option to cut this out.
One thing that may be of interest is Grails with the available Flex Plugin. It's built on Spring, Hibernate and BlazeDS, so it's all there for you. It was unbelieveably easy to get it remoting stored objects and responding to AMF calls. I was using this and then moved over to a RESTful E4X implementation as I found it a lot easier to debug and tweak as I could inspect the server output in a browser and have tighter control over exactly what I returned to my Flex app (lazy loading problems in collections using BlazeDS were a headache at times).
Here is a quick tutorial showing how easy the whole Grails + Flex Plugin stack is: BlazeDS in Grails
I would seriously reconsider using Cairngorm. In my opinion it's a pretty bloated framework that introduces a lot of abstraction you'll never use. Check out:
http://code.google.com/p/swizframework
http://www.spicefactory.org
Both introduce the concept of dependency-injection into your Flex app.
Also +1 for Hibernate. I would use the standard JPA annotations on a Java class and extend that with Hibernate Annotations as you find you need additional functionality.
Check out springsource.org's new Spring BlazeDS Integration Project
Spring BlazeDS Integration is a new
addition to the Spring portfolio, and
a component of the complete Spring Web
stack. This project's purpose is to
make it easier to build Spring-powered
Rich Internet Applications using Adobe
Flex as the front-end client. It aims
to achieve this purpose by providing
first-class support for using the open
source Adobe BlazeDS project and its
powerful remoting and messaging
facilities in combination with the
familiar Spring programming model.
As alternative to hand-coding sql, aside from hibernate, you might wanna consider JPA/Toplink. And since you are already from a Spring camp, check out Spring ActionScript (formerly known as Prana), it's an IOC framework for Flex. It solves many inherent problems in Cairngorm. Also a good IDE that supports Flex/Actionscript like IntelliJ IDEA 8.
Whats missing between Flex and BlazeDS is, it doesnt have any sort of landing page where you have a listing of all the available services by just typing a url on the browser (similar to webservice endpoint).
You can try GraniteDS. It's an alternative to BlazeDS, with an actionScript generator, Spring integration (an Spring security), and if you use an JPA implementation, help you with the Lazy Initialization (in a transparent way).