What are your first impressions of 1.2.0.Release

[MiB]

How is Roo 1.2.0.Release working for you?

Have you noticed anything between earlier versions, especially between 1.2.M1 and the 1.2 release regarding code generation and workability? Are you pleased with the possibilities and the development patterns that using Roo suggests? Or are you using only parts, building the rest on your own?

Personally I couldn't get 1.2.0.Release working in practice, as opposed to 1.2M1, as I couldn't get a build-able project to open properly in STS 2.9. So I'm back to Roo1.2M1, but then my openjdk7 version is not official and could have influenced things to not behave as designed.

During the use of Roo1.2M1 I have also discovered the need to backup everything, including ITD-files and project settings as both M1 and the release would sometimes stop responding for seemingly no good reason and the only way back was to either have a full backup in the repository or remake the project with a script file (which is still a lot of work as typically I had made many more developments, that needed transfer by hand).

Are you using Roo with STS as the IDE or where are you using it?

Please do tell of your experiences with Roo 1.2.0.Release and later!

[delgad9]

As a matter of fact, I might have one...

These are my first impression based on preliminary results using Roo JSF with my Petclinic test database with 100k vets, 100k owners with 3 pets per owner and 100k visits.

1) Loading Owners or Vets grid first time*, takes around 11-12 secs. Moving to the next or last page takes around 50 mscs.
1.1) It seems that the whole data grid result set is cached the first time the page is requested.
1.2) It seems that Ajax approach is not used for navigating the grid.

2) Spring Web MVC is not used???

3) The L&F has improved a lot in comparison of raw WEB MVC. However I think is not as great as other RIA options available-yes like jQuery-.

Thank you and B. Roogards
jD

*Metric using Firebug 1.8.4

[MiB]

Thank you. L&F?

[delgad9]

You are welcome...

Miscellaneous things first. 1)What you think about the reported times? 2)How good are they for you? 3)How much is Ajax* important for you? 4)I believe Spring Web MVC is the BEST MVC out there. Would you replace it for another just for rendering old html stuff.?

Now critical things: L&F stances for Lost & Found or Look & Feel. You pick.


B. Roogards
jD

*It is a confusing term sometimes. The context used here is programming.

[jbbarquero]

Hello,

Good question, indeed.

At first sight, the shell doesn't seem as fast as it's said in the blogs.

The program works well, I haven't seen any failure (there are no hangs, nullpointers and so on).

I'm working in a project using the previous 1.1.5 release (in order to use a stable version for deploying to production) and the new 1.2 release to try some new features: the maven multi-module and service layer. I'd like to see Spring Data as well (but it seems to add additional jars that must be validated before deploying them to production)

The more I use Roo 1.2, the more I like it. Even more, I'm beginning to miss the new features while using the previous 1.1.5 release.

I never like the Spring MVC that Roo creates, although I'm used to working with it. For the time being, it isn't still a RAID tool for me, because I have to do many modifications. Actually, it's not Roo's fault, but mine's (and it's complicated because we don't use GWT, JSF 1 was a complete failure, I like Vaadin but nobody else, and the desired JQuery isn't still supported)

However, I use a small subset of features in this application, so my opinion can be little representative.

To summarize: I like it, but I still have a lot to study.

Greetings, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to the entire Roo community.

[rcgeorge23]

Hi Guys,

Slightly off the subject I know, but your post got me thinking about my own experience with Roo. I'm still a bit confused about how Roo should be used... on the one hand it's great for getting a spring mvc application running quickly, but would anyone seriously use the scaffolded CRUD stuff in a real application? It's handy at dev time, but I think it would need to be re-written by hand for a 'real' application. Managing the JPA stuff, creating finders, etc is also great, but the use of static methods makes unit testing really hard.

I really want to use roo in an application for the full lifecycle - an app that gets deployed to production and used by the public, but at the moment we're just using it to quickly knock together prototypes, or to create simple web apps for internal use (support / reporting / etc).

I'd be interested to hear other peoples' take on this. How do you guys use Roo? How do you unit test your apps? That kind of stuff.

Cheers,
Richard.

[delgad9]

@rcgeorge23,

I second the points raised...

I really want to use roo in an application for the full lifecycle - an app that gets deployed to production and used by the public

What are the stoppers and/or missings and/or weaknesses and/or <anything you consider> that not allowing Roo for getting to next level: PRODUCTION


B. Roogards
jD

[MiB]

Useful tags are what I miss the most. There should be an open source user repository of tags, so we could help out developing better tags. Perhaps also with a learning area for tag development in the Spring environment and for other technologies as well. As it is now when everything in the backend works I switch to Spring tags and hand edit the rest. If I need browser scripting, like for modern html5 audio player I install JQuery or ExtJS.

My main swipe against scaffolding and the current tags is they create the XML-type of self-enclosing html5 elements and I want the html-type that I use myself when I hand code my templates. And they don't mark up content in an intelligent fashion either.

As of now, I replace scaffolding in all pages except for the administration area, when the needs there are modest.

[delgad9]

@MiB,

I cannot be more on agreement with you...
Roo back end support is excellent. Where there is room for improvement is on the client-side.

That is why, I've dedicated a great percentage of my R&D work on integrating modern and successful client-side technologies like jQuery to Roo.

Concretely, I am developing a addon codename SYNERGY that turn any WEB MVC app into a RIA jQuery-based.
I believe the great differentiators of SYNERGY vs other UI frameworks is its superior performance, small footprint, very easy to extend and maintain.
For more info on SYNERGY please visit http://pragmatikroo.blogspot.com/201...velopment.html.

Thanks
jD

[rcgeorge23]

What are the stoppers and/or missings and/or weaknesses and/or <anything you consider> that not allowing Roo for getting to next level: PRODUCTION

There are a few things I'd like to see improved...

I want the CRUD scaffolding that Roo creates for me to be more useful. I accept that it'll never be perfect - Roo doesn't know about the business specifics of the application I'm creating, but I'd like the markup to be similar to the markup that I'm used to working with. I've never used dojo before - I want to use jQuery. I don't really like tiles - what's wrong with jsp includes? I know it's possible to configure Roo to generate whatever style of markup you like, but being the lazy developer I am I guess I'm just waiting for someone else to solve the problem for me!

Roo has been in the wild for what, 18 months - 2 years? I would have expected that by now there'd be a flourishing ecosystem of 3rd party add-ons for all sorts of things. You want the front end of your webapp to be content-managed? No problem, just install the roo cms add on. I want roo to help me build the public-facing front end for my web application, not just an admin CRUD interface that I will probably need to rewrite. I feel that there's so much potential here - there are so many things I find myself re-writing for every project I'm involved with. This is where Roo could really shine.

Incidentally @jD, I'm looking forward to trying out your jQuery add on when it's finished!