[Architect guide]

[hatim]

The point that you want to control every thing is an illusion (in my humble opinion) you are always dependent on the tools you are using (otherwise you can write your own, but thats not the point)

Your real motivation(if i understand correctly) is to fulfill the requirements good enough for you to be satisfied as pass (and not do the absolute best that you could have done)

If you get into the whole notion of how every thing works exactly you wont be able to move forward. Like I know that there are aspects generated for Roo, how they are done, how aspects really work (with all the reflection stuff) I have very little idea, but hey, it works. I don't have to create getters ..bingo.

You can start with some of the most basic things first like the core spring and hibernate architecture. (Even there you just get to use things, its very superficial knowledge to know that this xml config does this and this annotation does that, but its still good to go). OSGi is a beast in it's self.

Later you can focus on your particular technologies. I would imagine it would be a good idea to learn the integrating technologies in isolation (like eh-cache, gae etc) and then lean how it works in roo. Otherwise you will have too many variables on your plate. Just a thought.

[nzaero]

ok, tks for you help...

I was thinking to start here :
http://code.google.com/intl/fr/webto...l/roo-sts.html

it is GAE + GWT + STS all in one...

But as you said, SPRING CORE could be a good pre-requisite to understand the basics components...but the matter is that SPRING is based on the MVC and I would prefer to use the MVP as recommended by google... I have the feeling that I should investigate directly on how MVP + ROO can be associated to work on APP ENGINE...

Of course, I will check the other knowledges about SPRING CORE if needed...


An interesting question, is, how many weeks should I need to be familiarized (understanding and practizing) with SPRING ROO (which imply to understand all the other stuff) ?

I would like to say that in one month (12h per day, 7/7), I could be able to understand and to use the necessary for my application : (you can suppose I do not know these technologies)
- Maven - OSGi - Security - Hibernate
- Solr - GAE - GWT jajaja...yeah, you can say all SPRING ROO components...

Is is realistic ? One month to understand the necessary of these component in order to use them to build my application ? It is an important question that will help me to manage my time...(I will open a company in the same time...so I am not just doing the computer science part...)

TKX

[hatim]

by increasing the font size you are inviting the same reaction which in irc forums caps does (it's generally considered rude, but hey I have done the same when I was beginning).

I don't know why you want to ration time, generally it does not work for development. You have to solve problems. Just find the right problems to solve and get as much help as possible so you don't have to solve all of them (like spring roo gives you a very good maven based spring mvc project to start with in one instance, its a long way if you want to do it manually)

Other thing is, spring-core and spring-mvc are different things. You really need to read the spring manual (at least first few chapters).

Last but not least. If you are starting a company and investing money then first consider your business model. You can get help for what things you don't know or dont want to know (if you have enough). If you don't then first invest in your own learning (do the all the right things...not all things rightly)



For starters if you are really inerested then get a copy of KenRimple's Roo in Action MEAP. If you want to go real core, then read Spring in Action. If you want just recipies, try Josh Long's Spring Recipies book. Last but not least, study spring documentation and the Bible (aka Spring Manual)

[nzaero]

ok Hatim,

Sorry for the big 'one'.
I will studie the most I can and will look for the book you cited.

[nzaero]

Hi,

But, always, when I am asking about Spring Roo on other forum, it seems that it is not a certain choice...I think that it is because ROO is not enought already mature. Moreover, a lot of people have experimented it in its first version and have encountered some bugs...But I think that now, major bugs have been covered because Google present it in his GWT/STS tutorial.

My question is : Does ROO have a certain future ? Is there other very good feedback elsewhere that on SPRING ROO forum ? Will this tool have more functionalities in the future ?

Does DJANGO plateform is a very good alternative, as complete as ROO functionalities (mainly for the GAE) ?

Thanks,

[hatim]

So I think the correct question would be that does Spring (Spring source, VMWare and what they are doing) has a future.

As an outsider (a bit fanboy perhaps) I would say definitely.

Spring ROO is a tool to emit Spring based code. It is in the realm of static languages so for dynamic languages you would look to Groovy and grails.

You can not directly compare Django with ROO, same is the case with Rails. Their target audience is completely different. ROO is meant to give you a platform to work on and not do every thing for you. If you think that the platform should have certain features and ROO does not provide it, you are always welcome to extend with plugins.

There were very good reasons when Google started their GAE in python only and then there were very good reasons to include Java as well. Now they have also seen very good reasons to include SQL server in GAE (they didn't have it before).

So ROO has a future, with a very solid backing from SpringSource. So you can invest in this platform without a doubt. In reality you are investing in Spring it's self, Roo is just a facet of it.

I am sure there are people who can answer much better than me over here, I am interested to listen to what other say about this question.

[nzaero]

Great, you definitely motivate me to use ROO...

[nzaero]

Hi,

Please, I am not sure if there is in Spring (or Spring ROO), the technology to have :
- wokflow management (to modelize the process of editing, validating, publishing...)

- content repository (to have versioning, historic, and maybe simultaneous work on an article...)

If no, is it possible to use them with Jackrabbit ? Or can you advice me the adequate technology to fill these requirement ?

Tkx,

[Brad Murray]

I'm unaware of any such technologies in Spring itself.

For your versioning and CMS though, I'll still echo what other people are saying and grab Alfresco. You can have the open source version for free, and it has a lot of nice restful APIs that you can use to integrate it with your app.

Architecturally, what you want is not one app that has all of these functionalities, but a web-app acting as the integration point for different technologies, often running in seperate apps in your domain.

My own project (large public sector CMS) has both Alfresco and Solr running on dedicated servers, but the end-users do not interact with them, our CMS and integration applications do. You are leveraging thousands of man-hours that has gone into getting those applications as good as they are in their domain.

Honestly though, I do think it would take more than a month to become proficient in working with all of the techs you could combine with Roo. Roo itself does not dictate any long term design choices though. Every single part of what a default Roo application uses can be pulled out, its just a matter of getting to know where it puts things.

[nzaero]

ok, step by step I am seeing more clearly the desing of my application.

But, Alfresco is not free ($$$) ? So I can not interact with it without paying, isnt it ?

I agree with you when you talk about the design. I want a backend for the organisation, creating the content (articles, foto, advertising...), and a web site that show all the work done. That is why, to help my community to work 'easily', I want to offer them a repository content, a search (Solr), and I need to control the workflow (validating before publishing).

What is happening is that I am really interesting by Magnolia, dotCMS or JAHIA but they are expensive. I do not have money to pay them, so I think that I will be able to UNIFY powerfull tecnologies to construct my 'CMS-like' quickly (max = 6 months)...and that SPRING ROO will help me to be the most productible as possible

I will look for Alfresco, but in general, I think that I prefer to be depedent to a free tool rather than a paying one. All these Open CMS are under GPL, then LGPL then they are paying, or you need to pay to have their most interesting feature.


Now, one important thing I am looking for is a collaborative tool (+ optional workflow), that is free ($$$) and that works on GAE (and if comptible with Spring it would be perfect).

tks,