Re: Aribaweb RoadMap

[František Kolář]

Hi Oswall, 

I can not really speak on behalf of Ariba, but I can assure you that  starting the development with Ariba is the right choice. There could be maybe a painful start if you really decide to use its real potential but at the end it will pay off. 

There are so many hidden enterprise features. and I can really say its really full enterprise stack (as you can read my opinion in blog or any where else not really fan of the persistent stack ) but the rest is super advanced.. 

We started our bigger internet project and I still see it was right choice that none of the framework around does not give us things what AW can.  As part of the commercial product  we also have pretty good feed back corporate side where we do allot of trainings how to do the effective development in AW and their productivity creating wizard that follows a process of any forms compared to other framework such as wicket ( used allot now in the companies.. ) is incomparable.  

The branding part is one big story of this system can be customized pretty fast.  Just check out these pictures (ignore the language - btw. it's czech ;-) ) before and after as I  just finished the branding for whole app. only 10 days  - one person -  about 30 screens. . 

I can go even father. I can create brands, name them give them even version and for one group of people you show 1 UI and for other completely different one. .. etc. there is even more. 

I think the framework is open and flexible  that you would not have any problem to push the UI into mobile phones. even in HTML 5 - some parts.. 

Regards, 

Frantisek 

On Apr 9, 2013, at 4:08 PM, Oswall Verny AC <sist...@gmail.com> wrote:

Regards,

I'm interested in aribaweb to develop applications. It looks excellent.

I would like to see, what is the roadmap aribaweb.

New versions and if possible for applications for mobiles.

thanks

Oswall

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[Oswall Verny Arguedas C.]

Hi Frantisek,

Thank you very much for your reply.

Your app is awesome.   You convinced me to use Aribaweb.

I think it is very useful for business applications Aribaweb for my.

How you manage the large calendar widget?

I have some experience in OpenXava framework.  And I like the JPA API and groovy.

Starting with Aribaweb, install and change the database to Postgresql.

Watch the screencast "Creating a Database application with MetaUI".

Something is wrong with my setup, only form controls have DONE button. 

However in the screencast, I see the OK and CANCEL. How I can handle?

What is the difference between METAUI and METAUI-JPA. It seems that the two frameworks using JPA?.

Could I use METAUI-JPA  production applications, or should I use some combination?

Again, thanks for your great response and wide application.

Oswall

2013/4/10 František Kolář <fran...@kolar.pro>

[František Kolář]

Hi Oswall, 

Calendar is custom widgets. But its not only one, starting from custom meta tabs with icon and with count indicator, file components with support file drag and drop from desktop, enhaced wizard and so on. 

Its hard to describe here when you do not see any pics or website for it, but depending on the support level we offer [whether its development phase or production support ], we offer also custom widgets as part of package. 

So far we offer:

  - Advanced admin console

  - Framework for master data load

  - Custom Meta tabs with Icons  and count indicators

  - Custom tabs with count indicator ( the count is in the brackets )

  - File Upload component where you can turn on drag and drop support

  - Custom MetaForm with more styling

  - Bank Account chooser widgets

  - Address chooser widgets

  - Custom binding to any storage, not only hibernate and its ObjectContext wrapper

  -  Metrics

  - Admin support for deployments

.. and many, many more.. which are current in the raw state used in the products and not externalized to be generic and polished so we can offer them to the others. 

You should not see any complication between MetaUI and *JPA. 

Basically MetaUI is the UI machinery that can dynamically render for you different kinds of UI components based on meta data rules (*.oss)

Where as MetaUI-JPA: is exactly the same but extends this only UI component** to DB support. Adding some support for DB context as wrapper around hibernate O/R mapper. 

Some of us already started to use Meta UI to generate Swing compoents ;-)

Please check out the WidgetsRules.oss and PersistenceRules.oss

Also please check out our blog articles where I am starting from the begging (http://aribaweb.blogspot.cz/2012_03_01_archive.html) and going slowly into advanced topics. I should post something new ;-). Many things that I can blog about  - but its about the time ;-)

We are not using hibernate in production, just design desicion. we are using qi4j and its data stores to connect to graph databases.  But when working with companies they all are using hibernate support.  It is also about policy inside the company. Most of the bigger companies use oracle so its better to use hibernate for oracle or any other RDMS databases. 

The reason why your control has only Done button it means that its in Read-only mode. 

Editable=FALSE

Regards

František Kolář 

On Apr 16, 2013, at 4:44 AM, Oswall Verny Arguedas C. <sist...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Frantisek,

Thank you very much for your reply.

Your app is awesome.   You convinced me to use Aribaweb.

I think it is very useful for business applications Aribaweb for my.

How you manage the large calendar widget?

I have some experience in OpenXava framework.  And I like the JPA API and groovy.

Starting with Aribaweb, install and change the database to Postgresql.

Watch the screencast "Creating a Database application with MetaUI".

Something is wrong with my setup, only form controls have DONE button. 

However in the screencast, I see the OK and CANCEL. How I can handle?

What is the difference between METAUI and METAUI-JPA. It seems that the two frameworks using JPA?.

Could I use METAUI-JPA  production applications, or should I use some combination?

Again, thanks for your great response and wide application.

Oswall

2013/4/10 František Kolář <fran...@kolar.pro>

Hi Oswall, 

I can not really speak on behalf of Ariba, but I can assure you that  starting the development with Ariba is the right choice. There could be maybe a painful start if you really decide to use its real potential but at the end it will pay off. 

There are so many hidden enterprise features. and I can really say its really full enterprise stack (as you can read my opinion in blog or any where else not really fan of the persistent stack ) but the rest is super advanced.. 

We started our bigger internet project and I still see it was right choice that none of the framework around does not give us things what AW can.  As part of the commercial product  we also have pretty good feed back corporate side where we do allot of trainings how to do the effective development in AW and their productivity creating wizard that follows a process of any forms compared to other framework such as wicket ( used allot now in the companies.. ) is incomparable.  

The branding part is one big story of this system can be customized pretty fast.  Just check out these pictures (ignore the language - btw. it's czech ;-) ) before and after as I  just finished the branding for whole app. only 10 days  - one person -  about 30 screens. . 

I can go even father. I can create brands, name them give them even version and for one group of people you show 1 UI and for other completely different one. .. etc. there is even more. 

I think the framework is open and flexible  that you would not have any problem to push the UI into mobile phones. even in HTML 5 - some parts.. 

Regards, 

Frantisek <Screen Shot 2013-04-10 at 4.30.18 PM.png>

<Screen Shot 2013-04-10 at 4.30.24 PM.png>

<Screen Shot 2013-04-10 at 4.28.25 PM.png>

<Screen Shot 2013-04-10 at 4.28.09 PM.png>

<Screen Shot 2013-04-10 at 4.27.58 PM.png>

[Oswall Verny Arguedas C.]

Hello,

Where disable read-only mode?

All modules or classes give me the same behavior

Thanks,

Oswall

2013/4/16 František Kolář <fran...@kolar.pro>

[František Kolář]

The best would be if you send some code to look at  so i can see what you are trying to do ;-)

Regards

František Kolář 

 

2013/4/16 František Kolář <fran...@kolar.pro>

Regards

František Kolář 

<btn_viewmy_160x25.png>

[Oswall Verny Arguedas C.]

/* Persona - model class  */

package app.model

// I used option 6   MetaUI-JPA with database

//Database is Postgresql and Linux is OS.

import ariba.ui.meta.annotations.*

import javax.persistence.*

import java.util.*

@Entity @NavModuleClass

class Persona

{

    @Id @GeneratedValue

    private Long id

    String title

    @Trait.RichText

    String description

}

2013/4/17 František Kolář <fko...@fadamo.com>

[František Kolář]

Right and then you need to have some AWL file no ? Where you declare the co ntext..

Fk

Sent from my iPhone

<onlyDone-.png>

[OttyDotty]

Hi Oswald,

Regarding a roadmap and committing to AribaWeb, have you read through the earlier messages in the group?  There are some significant issues that have cause most people to dump the API and move on to more active open source solutions. The key points are as follows:

1) There is no roadmap, there is no active open source development going on

2) The original author has left Ariba and has not made any comment in the forum for years.

3) The cancel button is missing (you can make it visible) because there is a fundamental flaw in the JPA design, Search the earlier discussions for details.

4) Ariba is a commercial organisation that "benevolently" released their API. Not quite true, because the JPA implementation has never been used by Ariba in their commercial products sine they have a very different ORMS layer in their products,

5) Ariba was purchased by SAP a years ago, SAP is unlikely in my opinion to allow their staff to release their commercial development work on AribaWeb to the open source community. SAP's track record on this is pretty clear.

Frantisek has been very helpful with new users and seems like he is commercializing things a bit,  I wish him the very best with this but as someone that has been doing commercial development with Ariba's commercial products for round 13 years,  I'd advise you to find a different platform/API that will be actively developed in the open source community. It's now a dead duck.

Scott

[František Kolář]

Hi Scott, 

In my personal opinion its all about usage. The truth is there is not much documentation like most of the open source projects but on the other side I can not say I miss anything. We have source code and these kinds of documentation is more detailed and give you

more information. True something high level would be nice. 

1) The way it worked so far and I hope it will be  - that Ariba develops things on their side and always pushes updates, fixes. In one way is good. But basically works in the same way as Open source. 

   ** If you want to develop something for e.g. Tomcat you must became part of the committer group - so you must get in. The same here. You just sign up a doc to Ariba that you want to participate on this project and you are in..

2) I would not say that when Craig F.  left it would not make any more difference. Do you feel when e.g. Richard Öberg left JBoss as one of the Original Author that something changed ? No he created other great products.. 

3) As I said earlier AW is mainly UI layer and you should keep that mind. THE JPA part is just add ons  as I see it. But its easy to replace it with something else. If you think about serious app you do not use hibernate right ;-)

4) True True, They release mainly The UI part AW and this JPA is not part of this framework (at least I do not count it in). The ORMS in the Ariba product is heavy duty and you would not want to use it anyway in your project.  

Unless you want program in XML. 

5) Who knows what will be outcome out of this. 

True. I started to commercialize it a bit but everything is part of our project and platform. This why you do not see  any website that is promoting the AW services.  I actually I could . tru tru..;-). 

I think it does not really matter whether I worked or anyone else in past on Ariba product or anywhere else. 

- You need to understand the technology you want to use first its pros and coins - otherwise you not able to use it. And this applies for every single framework out there or even any products. Using things just they are cool its not good. 

- Once you underexpectationstand it and you have some expectation then you can use it.

- The same it goes with programming languages. They are some concepts behind it that are really old and if one understand it then you can switch between C#, C++ Objective C, Java - you name it.  

- I do not see it in the way that I use wicket or GWT because they are cool and you have many resources on the web and in corporation its started to be more and more used.  I have this problem and what are the best match to solve my problem. 

And if one will have issue with this framework then I can guarantee that you will have issue with other ones as well. Of course depending how much functionality you are using...

Nothing is perfect ;-) Just out of forum of apache open source product how many issues are discussed on weekly basis.. 

Regards

František Kolář 

[OttyDotty]

Hi František I was just trying to give Oswald a summary of the facts.  Too many people have spent a lot of time trying to get up to speed with this framework only to then find out it's not what they expected it to be. Just read the previous comments, by people, its pretty consistent. Regarding the JPA implementation, new users need to understand that it is quite flawed, instead of letting them waste their time trying to use it. Better they forget about it and design their own. Personally I did just that and built my own connector for Oracle which works a lot better (No I can't release it). Regarding 5, I previously worked for Ariba and since leaving have been doing development for commercial organisations using Ariba, so I know the company history pretty well. Now take  look at SAP, watch what they do when they acquire companies, they have a pretty consistent track record. Actually I expect Ariba as a product will disappear in  the next few years so forget about them pushing out new releases. AribaWeb has no mobile support so would you really commit to it right now?  There are so many other open source frameworks available that do what AribaWeb does without the limitations.  What it nice about AribaWeb is the declarative nature of the framework, but since there is no documentation you need to know the code anyway.  If you like declarative frameworks, look at QT, I'm not putting down the framework, I use it myself. I just want newcomers to understand what they are looking at before they end up like so many new comers, pissed off and out of time. Scott

[František Kolář]

Hi František

I was just trying to give Oswald a summary of the facts.  Too many people have spent a lot of time trying to get up to speed with this framework only to then find out it's not what they expected it to be. Just read the previous comments, by people, its pretty consistent.

True - its a reality but its not that bad;-) 

Regarding the JPA implementation, new users need to understand that it is quite flawed, instead of letting them waste their time trying to use it. Better they forget about it and design their own. Personally I did just that and built my own connector for Oracle which works a lot better (No I can't release it).

Yeap - Using hibernate ;-) ? Or you implemented Field-value bindings on your own + objects context - managing on your own local thread state ? Just post it and call postgress SQL  connector so nobody knows. I won't tell ;-) 

Regarding 5, I previously worked for Ariba and since leaving have been doing development for commercial organisations using Ariba, so I know the company history pretty well. Now take  look at SAP, watch what they do when they acquire companies, they have a pretty consistent track record. Actually I expect Ariba as a product will disappear in  the next few years so forget about them pushing out new releases.

Can not really comment on this. Once  everything disappear ;-) Depending how often you re-engineer your platform.  

AribaWeb has no mobile support so would you really commit to it right now?  There are so many other open source frameworks available that do what AribaWeb does without the limitations.  What it nice about AribaWeb is the declarative nature of the framework, but since there is no documentation you need to know the code anyway.  If you like declarative frameworks, look at QT,

The truth is no real support.Right.  But do you expect framework to support HTML 5? 

We are building mobile support out of AW. Depending on the agent we plan to show different AribaBasicPageWrapper.html that is brandable. This could be quick fix but not really to let framework to generate for all devices. Write once and run everywhere..

I am aware of QT  - was using it to wrap  some Tool utilities on LInux. Quick UI without any coding.. - almost..

The similar to AW is webobjects. 

I'm not putting down the framework, I use it myself. I just want newcomers to understand what they are looking at before they end up like so many new comers, pissed off and out of time.

I know...  This why I wrote it really important to understand what do you expect out of it. e.g. Do you expect end to end UI or do you expect really a platform. I do not really need so much new releases except some security fixes the reset we do ourselves anyway..

Scott

[František Kolář]

See we are creating an activity on this forum ;-)

Regards

František Kolář 

 

[ottydotty]

Ha ha ha yes we are, unfortunately only about 5 people will even view what is on the list.

I should say that one of the uses I find for AW is that  I can throw together a functioning POC very quickly. But before you can really use it you need to spend the time to understand it,then find solutions to its limitations that suit your requirements. Maybe I use it because I am so familiar with Ariba products and some of our stuff is used by Ariba clients to the UI is familiar to them. Were this not to be the case i think I'd use QT or one of RichFaces/IceFaces as we do for some of our apps.

Scott

[František Kolář]

JSF ?

hmmm. ;-). I would never go for jboss seam. I wrote couple years ago one portal application for tenders/aution (aka ariba sourcing) and never again.

I happy for AW ..

Regards

František Kolář 

[Thomas Abraham]

Hi Frantisek and Scott,

Just to let you know that people are reading your exchange, keenly too, and enjoying it!

 

I'm not an out-and-out techie like either of you. We are a small bunch of social entrepreneurs using AW to build a Hospital Management System for charitable Indian hospitals. (We have 8 rural hospitals using our product right now). For folks like us, with limited UI design skills too, we are happy with AW because it gives us some simple, intuitive UI which programmers can create without a proper designer. (Frantisek, your designs were just terrific: was everything due to new components you created, or are there simpler ways of branding?)

 

The reason we started on AW is simple: I worked at Ariba for several years before turning to this current venture. I was a part of the AN engineering team, although not as a programmer. Scott, I was in India - which is why we probably never met.

 

I kind of agree with Frantisek that the framework has a lot of what is needed for a web app. We have not delved into mobile apps yet, but I guess when we need to we will do what Frantisek has done already. We now have  3 years of work on AW, so we cannot think of migrating to any other framework. But as Scott says, newcomers could probably do a better evaluation of available frameworks. For someone like me, ease of learning and availability of good UI components would take precedence over the back end. Ariba does not use hibernate, but then it is still one of most common open source ORMS products, as Dave Finlay of Ariba once noted.

 

If Ariba can release the latest inhouse label of AW to production, as I think they wanted to do, at least as long as there is Ariba and it uses AW for its products it should keep everyone interested. But in the last couple of releases, I found that there were build errors: localisation templates were missing in the aribaweb downloadable jar, and even some scripts were missing in the tomcat/bin folder. This makes it difficult to consume the latest release without risk.

 

So on the whole, not much to complain about AW - except that more activity would have been good on this forum. For that, we need to thank Frantisek and now Scott!

 

Keep going, guys!

Thomas

 

[Oswall Verny Arguedas C.]

Greetings all,

I think AW is a very promising framework and according to what I read, is being used in important applications currently in production.

The issue happens to AW, I already lived with VisualFox for desktop applications. Microsoft bought it to eliminate it in favor of VisualBasic.

Although AW community is small, but professional.
Due to Apache license, it is possible to work it like a fork or similar, without relying on a company that does not appreciate.

It is the idea on the table.

Thanks for the replies.
Oswall

2013/4/18 Thomas Abraham <tho...@gmail.com>

[František Kolář]

Guys, 

Whether you want or not AW is special framework that is really different than the others. It is highly specialized and you really must go thru several other frameworks to appretiate its power. Ok. 

Does not have support for build in HTML5, Ok. you can not use jquery rarther plain javascript(due to the binding syntax), but this is really small details details for which you can have easy workaround. 

Regards

František Kolář 

[ottydotty]

Hi Thomas,

I do recall your name as I had a team in Delhi even though you would have been in Bangalore.  I was actually on of the people that helped set up the Bangalore TSS team, which alas has continued to be the weakest link, a pretty typical Indian call center. You'll not recall my name as I use a nom de plume on social networks.

My point seems to be true though that those using AW already have Ariba experience, maybe we have been brain washed :) 

If I look at 9R1 and OnDemand, there are some differences with to what is available in AribaWeb, nothing particularly special except the drag and drop piece, which I believe Frantisek mentioned he had implemented. For use these are not big differences and frankly I don't really care if there is a new release because we are just adding what we need as we need it. 

Scott

[František Kolář]

But Frantisek implemented using this;-) http://fineuploader.com

In 9r1 is not support for DnD is its? Excepts some activeX components for word documents..  

Regards

František Kolář 

[ottydotty]

No the drag and drop of portlets which AW has not implemented.

[František Kolář]

Ohhh. this. one.

its not that hard. with drag/drop containers. but thru its in 9r1

Regards

František Kolář