Ad-(and dis-, if any)vantages of Spring AS compared to Swiz

[Dr.Drane]

Aloha,

I'm going to (re)build quite a large application using Flex/Spring.

For the main AS (/Flex) framework I was thinking of using Mate, Swiz, Spring AS or any combination.

Swiz and Spring AS seem very similar to me so I was wondering is somebody could explain me the differences a bit.
It seems to me that Swiz' development is a little bit ahead of Spring AS but I'm not sure if that is correct.

The only advantage of Spring AS I see is that it uses an external xml file which can be edited whithout recompiling. Though I love all Spring products and would be nice to have some more pro arguments for using it.

And would it make sense to combine Spring AS to Mate? It seems that they use a totally different strategy but maybe thet fit nicely together as witch all very flexible Spring modules.


I already read this nice comparison of frameworks but it's missing Spring AS:
http://www.insideria.com/2008/12/fra...ntroducti.html

Thanks in advance for the upcoming replies!

Jochen

[cherreman]

Hi Jochen,

external xml/properties configuration is definitely a plus in my opinion. Further, Swiz (and Mate) are based on MXML so they are Flex frameworks, while Spring AS is an ActionScript framework.

Building a framework based on MXML of course has the advantage that you get all the benefits of the IDE. However I think this is just a matter of tooling support. I will be talking with the developers of Spring IDE in a few weeks and we will discuss the possibilities for it to support Spring AS XML. If you don't know Spring IDE, think of it as a set of tools inside eclipse to work with application context files (editors, graph visualizers, etc.)

Furthermore, Swiz and Mate (and Cairngorm and PureMVC) are also architectural frameworks in the sense that they describe how your components fit together and how they communicate. I always have the feeling that this good to get started (it gives you a safe feeling) but that it makes it hard to handle corner cases in your architecture without breaking the "rules" of the framework. Spring AS does not try to enforce any rules on you and does not try to be too prescriptive in how you build your application.

We do have an mvcs package at this time which is highly experimental, but again these are only small building blocks that can be used in different scenarios/architectures depending on your needs.

- Christophe

[Dr.Drane]

Hello Christophe,

Thanks for your fast reply! As Spring IDE is implemented in my MyEclipse this sounds very interesting.

I already started my project using Mate yesterday and was indeed thinking of using Spring AS for the custom corners.

Looking forward to check out your mvc code, perhaps you already have something available on fisheye that could use some beta testing?

Have a nice day!

Jochen

Ps: I'm a BEJUG member and yesterday proposed them to contact you as a possible speaker. But don't know if they will consider it as your sproject is actually AS and not really JAVA based.

Hi Jochen,

external xml/properties configuration is definitely a plus in my opinion. Further, Swiz (and Mate) are based on MXML so they are Flex frameworks, while Spring AS is an ActionScript framework.

Building a framework based on MXML of course has the advantage that you get all the benefits of the IDE. However I think this is just a matter of tooling support. I will be talking with the developers of Spring IDE in a few weeks and we will discuss the possibilities for it to support Spring AS XML. If you don't know Spring IDE, think of it as a set of tools inside eclipse to work with application context files (editors, graph visualizers, etc.)

Furthermore, Swiz and Mate (and Cairngorm and PureMVC) are also architectural frameworks in the sense that they describe how your components fit together and how they communicate. I always have the feeling that this good to get started (it gives you a safe feeling) but that it makes it hard to handle corner cases in your architecture without breaking the "rules" of the framework. Spring AS does not try to enforce any rules on you and does not try to be too prescriptive in how you build your application.

We do have an mvcs package at this time which is highly experimental, but again these are only small building blocks that can be used in different scenarios/architectures depending on your needs.

- Christophe

[cherreman]

Hi Jochen,

the mvcs code is available in the SVN repo, so feel free to check it out and play around with it.

I have been using this in combination with view autowiring and the Presentation Model pattern. If time permits, I'll blog an example before I leave on holidays.

- Christophe

PS: I'm also a BEJUG member but haven't made it to the last sessions. I'll let you know when I'll attend a sessions so we can meet. I have also talked to Stephan and he might arrange a talk. We'll see ;-)

[Dr.Drane]

Hi Christophe,

Will have a look at mvcs code this week at work. And would be nice to have a talk as you're also a BEJUG member.

Take care and greets!

Jochen

Hi Jochen,

the mvcs code is available in the SVN repo, so feel free to check it out and play around with it.

I have been using this in combination with view autowiring and the Presentation Model pattern. If time permits, I'll blog an example before I leave on holidays.

- Christophe

PS: I'm also a BEJUG member but haven't made it to the last sessions. I'll let you know when I'll attend a sessions so we can meet. I have also talked to Stephan and he might arrange a talk. We'll see ;-)