Spring migration from 3-tier rich client J2EE project?

[rollatwork]

Hi gang,

I'm aware of the Spring RCP and I believe I am correct in saying that the Spring Framework is primarily targeted at web based applications (?).

We're planning for a future release and have been interested in Spring for sometime and am just doing some preliminary research. We have a 3-tier architecture with thick Swing clients in far reaching remote locations.

Is there a migration path for these type of architectures that currently make heavy use of Business Delegates, JNDI lookups and DTOs on the client side? How does RCP fit into the picture?

Cheers,
Roll

[acastro]

I'm aware of the Spring RCP and I believe I am correct in saying that the Spring Framework is primarily targeted at web based applications (?).

not really, take a look at the rich client subproject
http://www.springframework.org/spring-rcp.html

you can use hibernate to build swing base applications as well...

[Keith Donald]

Roll,

Spring Rich (formerly known as Spring RCP) makes Swing easier to use. It's primary a set of abstractions built on top of J2SE Swing with the goal of improving productivity through simplification. This fits with the general philosophy and mission of the core Spring Framework.

Now, with that said, Spring Rich builds on core Spring. For example, it leverages Spring's IoC container for configuration and dependency management (to facilitate the development of a well-layered rich client app split into logical layers)

The stuff you mention you'll need for a typical enterprise thick client app: e.g codeless business delegates, jndi lookups, remoting, data access--are provided by core Spring, through its support libraries that build on J2EE. As Spring Rich ships with Spring (obviously), all of these libaries are available for use when you need them.

So in summary, Spring Rich is just one option that makes core Spring easier to use in a Swing environment AND provides abstractions for simplfying the Swing programming model. You don't have to use Spring Rich to take advantage of Spring's j2ee support libraries, aop framework, and IoC container in a thick-client environment--you can use them standalone (but of course I would recommend using Spring Rich, too ;-))