I see a lot of Spring-Webflux codes in Axon lecture videos.
But I don't know anything about Spring-Webflux, so I'm trying to use Axon without a code for Spring-Webflux, is it a wrong choice?
Axon definitely doesn't try to force you to use Spring WebFlux! The samples have been moving that way, as many benefits reside with the reactive nature of Mono's and Flux's. However, if you feel more comfortable with regular REST, AMQP, or whatever type of communication, Axon Framework will not block you on that endeavor.
If it's a wrong choice is a different topic, though. The samples are intentionally moving that way, as there's an assumption that that form of communication will be (more) standard. If you have time to also try out Spring WebFlux, I'd say it does not hurt to spend some on it.
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I've been programming in Delphi with Midas/DataSnap for quite long time and quite happy with it. Moving to .NET I'm more than happy with the ADO.NET DataSet. For CRUD application, I'm highly uncomfortable with any kind of ORM. Generic data-structure with automatic diff/delta handling get my job done better for me, an average database application developer.
Tried to study Java years ago, and could not find similar idea implemented. The closest I could find is SDO (Service Data Object). I thought it should be widely adopted when I saw it, but I'm wrong. Even the spec is rather old now, I still hardly find many people discuss on it or use it extensively. Assuming from information I can find on the internet, SDO usage is highly passive.
Wondering if it's dying ? Any experience in SDO you want to share ? Manual DTO coding is always better ?
Ok. I see. The answer is "no"
;)
Same for me when trying SDO first time. Old specs, passive feedback... Definitely NO.
I wouldn't recommend using SDO unless it's imposed on you by some other part of the project.
WebSphere process server uses SDO. It's not really a bad API once you learn it. But the spec and the documentation are vague. It doesn't spell out what happens if you ask for a field that doesn't exist, or whether it does type conversions while getting or setting fields, to name two gripes.
I don't think the API defines how to define new types, so that part will be implementation-specific. Type definitions are based on XSD, so you'll be working with those and all of the associated standards.
As others have implied, the API isn't widely used. This means it'll be hard to find people experienced with it, or help using it.
I'm looking for suggestions regarding implementing process flow / work flow management in a PureMVC based application.
Our Flex application includes a number of processes such as account creation, payment processing, etc.
Within our team, there is some discussion of how rigidly we should adhere to the PureMVC model.
Within the PureMVC model, it seems reasonable that the current state in the process could be managed in a Proxy.
Commands are clearly responsible for processing the actions required of each node and for node transitions.
Mediators for managing the UI.
However, I think that there is an important bit still missing here: a ProcessController.
The approaches we've reviewed all seem to either violate the PureMVC model (even just slightly) or make unreadable code.
A proxy would maintain the state of the process. As such, it seems to be an appropriate way to implement the controller. However, this is putting a lot of business logic into the proxy.
The Mediator space makes more sense, but the controller in that space would not necessarily directly interact with any particular UI element but would instead coordinate/delegate to dedicated Mediators.
Yet another model would have us put process transition information into Commands. While this seems to be the best place for that work (given the role of commands relative to proxies and mediators), this approach looks to make some particularly heinous looking code with process transition logic distributed among scores of commands.
So how have others handled this problem?
Thank
Curtis
This is exactly the problem that PureMVC StateMachine Utility (and Finite State Machines in general) are meant to solve.
In a simple XML format, you can define states, valid transitions to other states, and the actions that trigger those transitions.
It is all notification-based, so you send StateMachine.ACTION notifications that cause the StateMachine to execute any entering/exiting guard logic that may be necessary (e.g., only allow exiting the FORM_ENTRY state if all the data valid, or only allow entry into the FORM_PROCESSING state if the user has admin rights, etc.). If a state change occurs, notifications are sent that can be used to organize the view or execute logic upon entering the new state.
Here is a StateMachine Overview presentation that will give you a better idea
http://puremvc.tv/#P003/
I think your idea of 'ProcessController' is probably the better way of doing it. Personally, I'm not a fan of PureMVC and don't use it because it doesn't allow enough flexibility or extension points to help with such problems.
Frankly, it's hard to advise on your issue because I don't know exactly what you're trying to accomplish. I do agree that the concern needs to be handled by one object. If you can, try to create a model that can store the data for the process and have another class just manage it throughout. Not sure if that makes sense, but then again, your problem isn't very clear either.
As an added extra, I would look into Dependency Injection. I'm trying to remember if PureMVC does it (I don't think it does), but with DI it would of been a fairly simple problem to solve. Frameworks like Parsley and Robotlegs are really good at that.
In pureMVC the State Machine Utility is probably the best choice for a process controller - and btw, according to the Implementation Idioms & best Practices doc. for PureMVC, it's perfectly fine to have mediators that don't manage a visible component
Could tools like SWFAddress be used in some clever ways to alleviate an existing client-server architecture. I see possibilities to even introduce REST-like pattern mapping or something like that.
What I am currently doing is following all the Cairngorm guidleines, which has already led to a bunch of commands which all make sense, but inclusing the business delegates, and all that stuff, I am getting into a hard time extending and refactoring the application (and actually layers were supposed to help, tight ... maybe I am not doing it quite right, I admit).
Anyway, what I thought of was somehow reducing the number of application events flying around, and the number of commands responding to them. Actualy, I am quite OK even coupling the view with some logic, if I can get rd of some layer complexity.
What I mean by that: perhaps, I could bind a button click to a url pattern (or use SWFaddress to change the url globally). On the other end, I wll be waiting for changes of the url, reformat it, and pass it onto a service delegate, which has the necessary mappings in mind, so it knows what method to call, or it could even pass the url directly to an HTTPSErvice. The delegate will then deal with the server response, and update the model, which through the bindings will update the view.
I am not going to completely ditch commands. I thing that they are good for scheduling of the internal interactions (within the client itself), but I'd like to abstain from using them for communication with the server.
Am I on the right path ?
Are you apposed to switching to an alternate framework than Cairngorm? You just described perfectly what most people's complaints are about it. I think it mostly exists from the throw back days of Flex development...
Most of the developers I know use a more "modern" framework, usually focusing on Dependency Injection (DI).
Here is a good starting point in analyzing the various frameowkrs in use today:
http://www.adobe.com/devnet/flex/articles/flex_framework.html
and for for further reading...
I personally prefer Swiz, and use it in all my projects. It still focuses on the command pattern, but alleviates a lot of the layer complexity, as you described.
If your questions was how can I make Cairngorm less like... well Cairngorm... then I'm afraid I can't help you there. :)
Cheers and good luck!
When I first heard about ASP.NET MVC, I was thinking that would mean applications with three parts: model, view, and controller.
Then I read NerdDinner and learned the ways of repositories and view-models. Next, I read this tutorial and soon became sold on the virtues of a service layer. Finally, I read the Fluent Validation documentation, and I'll be darned if I didn't end up writing a bunch of validators.
Tonight, I took a step back and thought about what had become of my project. It seems to have become the victim of the design pattern equivalent of "feature creep". Somehow I'd gone from Model-View-Controller to Model-Repository-Service-Validator-View-ViewModel-Controller. You want loosely coupled and DRY? We got your loosely coupled and DRY right here! But I'm wondering if this could be a case of too much of a good thing.
Am I right to be concerned? Or is this actually not as crazy as it sounds? On one hand, it seems crazy to have so many layers. On the other hand, every layer has a clearly defined purpose that makes sense to me. Have your MVC applications turned into MRSVVVMC apps too? If not, what do they look like? Where's that right balance?
If you have one form with three attributes, this is overkill.
But if you have a 'real' application, and the responsibilities of each layer are well defined, I'd consider it pretty reasonable.
It sounds to me like you found a pattern and went looking for a problem. You should find a problem, and use the appropriate tool from your toolbox... not all the tools. Unless this is an academic exercise of course.
I have started design of a ColdFusion application that is entirely web based. Not much use of Flash forms, or AJAX.
The first version is a strict web app. Version 2 will be a Flex front end.
I want to design and build things so that the Flex layer can use existing logic. It's okay if it means I have to do extra work in version 1. I would like to harden the logic code once and not re-factor.
What are things worth considering / designing / implementing now that would greatly aid in being able to design an app in this way?
One big suggestion, depending on where you're coming from (as it's a rather big question), would be to leverage the ColdFusion component (CFC) as much as possible; the CFC architecture is excellent, versatile and powerful, it integrates quite nicely with Flex (and will do so even better in coming versions of Flex and CF), so to the extent you can design your component tier with that in mind, you'll be glad you did.
It's been a while since I wrote CF code, but on the last big project I did with it, I spent a good deal of time designing a functional tier out of CFCs to be used by the plain ol' Web app, much as it sounds like you're doing -- and then later, when it came time to bolt on an Ajax UI for a subsection of the site (it could've been Flex, but in my case, it happened to be a YUI implementation), I created a facade layer of publicly exposed CFCs whose job it was to wrap and expose a specialized subset of the functionality provided by the first tier. Doing so allowed me to leverage and extend existing code in a way unique to the services that needed it, without having to expose the underlying (first tier) CFCs directly.
I'm sure other folks will have many more (and probably more detailed) suggestions, but that's the one big one I have for you first off -- learn, know and use the CF component. Good luck!
I agree with Christian that the best thing you can do is put everything as far as database logic or any other logic for the application in CFC's, and more specifically, I would suggest using webservices. The main reason for this is that it will allow you to eventually have your cf code, which is all of your database persistence and logic on a different server than where you serve the flex applications from, and would allow code reuse for other applications as well. The nice thing too about writing your cfc's as webservices is that you can use them either as webservices or directly as components in Flex using AMF (remote object). Now of course how much those benefits really apply to you depends on your situation, but its a good plan to follow.
But the main suggestion is to think of your application as having a presentation layer and a logic and persistence layer. If you are making a decision, it goes in the logic layer. If you are showing a screen or doing anything with presentation, it goes in that layer. Keeping those things separate will allow you to more easily switch out your presentation layer to flex later on.
Also, it can be useful to trap any errors thrown and return messages as results (with any results, like in a structure) from all methods. Flex has a nasty habit of telling you something went wrong, but not passing along the error information. This will help you to debug and handle any errors that get thrown much easier.
Check out Matt Woodward's presentation on the topic, it's very informative:
And a few general things to add to the answers everyone else provided:
Encapsulate your data interaction in CFCs (typically in Services which delegate to Gateways and DAOs)
In most cases, you'll want to create "bean" CFC's to represent your business objects (users, widgets, etc), these are what will transfer to Flex as ActionScript classes. You'll need to add cfproperty tags to them to make them serializable to ActionScript (case- and order- sensitive!), so pay attention to that when you create them to prevent having to deal with it later, and use one of the code generation tools like the Adobe CF Extensions for Eclipse or Illudium PU36 to do it for you.
Create a remote facade CFC (or set of CFCs depending on how big the app is) that delegates methods to your Services - this is where you set the access for your methods to "remote" - generally the only place you want to do this (it will feel like you're doing a lot of delegating but it pays off to have all your remote services centralized)
As you develop with HTML, treat your remote facade CFCs as your API and make your HTML views as "dumb" as possible. Think of it this way: any logic you write in your CF view will have to be replicated in your Flex view. If you build the project only using your remote API, you'll have a pretty good feel for how Flex will interact with the application.
Check out ColdSpring, it offers a lot of great features for managing all the objects you're going to create!
I don't claim to be an architecture expert and I know I've thrown around a lot of jargon here to keep it short, but some Googling around CF blogs should turn up a lot of info about the design patterns I've mentioned. Good luck!