WebObjects

[Kieran]

I am guessing that many JavaPosse listeners are users of traditional
JSF and JSP etc. However for those of you who are looking for a really
scalable Web Application framework, look no further than Apple's
WebObjects framework. It is free ... though not yet open source. This
year, Apple ditched the closed source XCode development tools and
endorsed the open source WOLips development tools plugins for Eclipse.
Apparently this is the most popular development toolset in Apple
itself.

WebObjects was one of the first web application frameworks, originally
released by NEXT and consumed by Apple when they bought NEXT. The
global iTunes Music Store is built on the WebObjects frameworks for
example. So far I have not yet met anyone in the community (or in the
mailing list discussions) who has used both WebObjects and some of the
other java web app frameworks that compete with some or all of
WebObjects functionality (Hibernate, Tapestry, Spring, etc.) who has
found any of them to surpass WebObjects.

Apple's development of WebObjects has been pretty stagnant for a few
years, and even still is apparently ahead of the others in terms of
developer productivity, even though the "Project WOnder" open source
add-on WebObjects frameworks have continued to enhance Apple's base
frameworks and even provided bug fixes through patches dynamically
loaded at runtime. Of late there is renewed focus in Apple in
enhancing the frameworks. The community is vibrant and a central
community wiki at http://wiki.objectstyle.org is constantly expanding
with community knowledge, tutorials, and "hot to's".

It is easiest to get started development on a Mac, however there are
many who develop using Eclipse on Windows and there are folks
deploying on Mac (easiest), Linux and Windows apparently.

If you have not tried WebObjects, then look for Getting Started info
on http://wiki.objectstyle.org. I have yet to meet someone who has
regretted learning WebObjects.

This is just an FYI for those who are looking to bring the fun and
productivity back into web app development. WebObjects is especially
suited to those who know java and Eclipse, and have already some web
development experience. Otherwise, beginners may find the learning
curve a little steep in the beginning.

Hope this is useful info to some of the cowboys here on the Java Posse
forum :-)

[Michael Neale]

haven't looked at WebObjects in years, but I used to hear great things
about it. It was way ahead of its time, probably a blast of
sensibility after the horror of J2EE.

On Dec 21, 7:51 am, Kieran <kelleh...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I am guessing that many JavaPosse listeners are users of traditional
> JSF and JSP etc. However for those of you who are looking for a really
> scalable Web Application framework, look no further than Apple's
> WebObjects framework. It is free ... though not yet open source. This
> year, Apple ditched the closed source XCode development tools and
> endorsed the open source WOLips development tools plugins for Eclipse.
> Apparently this is the most popular development toolset in Apple
> itself.
>
> WebObjects was one of the first web application frameworks, originally
> released by NEXT and consumed by Apple when they bought NEXT. The
> global iTunes Music Store is built on the WebObjects frameworks for
> example. So far I have not yet met anyone in the community (or in the
> mailing list discussions) who has used both WebObjects and some of the
> other java web app frameworks that compete with some or all of
> WebObjects functionality (Hibernate, Tapestry, Spring, etc.) who has
> found any of them to surpass WebObjects.
>
> Apple's development of WebObjects has been pretty stagnant for a few
> years, and even still is apparently ahead of the others in terms of
> developer productivity, even though the "Project WOnder" open source
> add-on WebObjects frameworks have continued to enhance Apple's base
> frameworks and even provided bug fixes through patches dynamically
> loaded at runtime. Of late there is renewed focus in Apple in
> enhancing the frameworks. The community is vibrant and a central

> community wiki athttp://wiki.objectstyle.orgis constantly expanding

> with community knowledge, tutorials, and "hot to's".
>
> It is easiest to get started development on a Mac, however there are
> many who develop using Eclipse on Windows and there are folks
> deploying on Mac (easiest), Linux and Windows apparently.
>
> If you have not tried WebObjects, then look for Getting Started info

> onhttp://wiki.objectstyle.org. I have yet to meet someone who has

[Casper Bang]

Very interesting, I seem to remember Joe advocating WebObjects as a
getting-things-done technology. I'll venture the guess though that
your post is filtered mentally by many in here, it is not Java and as
such it can't possible be any good. lol

/Casper

> > community wiki athttp://wiki.objectstyle.orgisconstantly expanding

[Michael Neale]

AFAIK it is implemented in and uses java all the way.

[Kieran]

Yes, it is PURE java. WebObjects is basically a collections of
frameworks .... all written in 100% java. Primarily it has two major
layers. The EOF (aka EnterpriseObjects Framework) layer is the layer
that provides persistence handling and mapping of EO instances to the
relational database. The appserver layer provides the Request Response
handling and WOComponent rendering. WOComponents are objects that
represent pages and partial pages and each basically consists of a
HTML fragment template, a corredponding java class for logic and
optionally some other files such as API, bindings, etc.

Using any utility 3rd party jars is as easy as adding them to the
project and using their classes in the normal way.... HttpClient,
log4j, etc.

[carljmosca]

So what, if anything, is keeping the development from getting to Linux
(or have I missed something in the wiki)?

I did install the Eclipse plugin and I found one reference to
installing WO on Solaris but that's where the trail (and my time)
ended.

[Norman Richards]

I spent some time learning WebObjects a few years back. At the time,
I was relatively new to JSF. Although it was clear the JSF had
problems, I was 100% sold on component-based web development, and I
was astonished to see that the idea was not only not new, but that it
went back to the earliest days of web development. Back when we were
all in love with struts and how wonderful these new action-based
frameworks were, in another corner of the universe there was
WebObjects, doing things that we wouldn't be doing in Java until the
good part of a decade later.

WebObjects really is nice, and it was way ahead of its time. However,
the sad part of the story is that WebObjects has mostly been treading
water since. Besides moving from Objective-C to Java, there really
hasn't been that much going on with it. The Java frameworks have
finally caught up. Using WebObjects, you really feel like you are
using a system stuck in a time warp whereas using JSF or Tapestry (the
two closest Java competitors) feels like you are using something a bit
more modern. JSF has several nice visual layout tools that match or
exceed the WebObjects tooling, and something like Seam (shameless
plug) provides integration and context management options on top of
that that you just can't get in WebObjects now.

That being said, it's very worthwhile to spend a few days to learn a
bit of WebObjects. If you've been primarily a Java web developer,
you'll probably be quite surprised to learn that some of the most
important web development ideas were not only not developed in Java
but we're not even known to the Java development for quite some
time.

[GavinEadie]

I can't speak to development on Linux, though I also can't think of
any technical impediment. In my environment we developed on Macs and
deployed on Linux. However, most for superstitious reasons [actually,
to be sure we're running on exactly the same Java as we built with],
we do build those applications on Linux with ant -- the ant build.xml
files are pretty much the ones that the WOLips plugin uses.

As to missing something in the wiki -- the wiki is a fairly new
endeavor, but quite active and gaps are getting filled, so it's worth
revisiting (and contributing!).

[JimRoepcke]

On Dec 20, 1:19 pm, Michael Neale <michael.ne...@gmail.com> wrote:
> haven't looked at WebObjects in years, but I used to hear great things
> about it. It was way ahead of its time, probably a blast of
> sensibility after the horror of J2EE.

Actually WebObjects was first released in March 1996, they were doing
things right several years before J2EE was first released, nevermind
when it become a true horror.

And it's still moving forward.