We are in the phase of evaluating some of the frameworks for portlet development. As of now I know of below 3 options. I would like to know your experiences with them and others
Struts 2
Spring Portlet MVC
Liferay 6.x MVC Framework
Please try to share Pros/Cons in following areas along with what you think is important
Speed of development
Maintenance
Ease of development with Geo Distributed teams
Please suggest any other frameworks which can be used as alternative with some pros/cons
From my point of view, using MVCPortlet and JSPs without Spring-mvc or Struts is suitable enough only for a simple portlet. I would definitely try at least a sample portlet to see how it works if developers haven't done portlets.
The only advantage of using Struts is that the Portal itself is heavily using it because spring-portlet-mvc is relatively new. So that you can learn a lot from variety of examples. Otherwise the technology afaik is dying (regarding portlet development) and if you haven't been working with Struts, the better option for you would be go for spring-portlet. I've been using spring-portlet for more than a year, and I must say that I was amazed how well integrated it is into portlet container and what features are implemented there. You can do practically everything as with spring-mvc (servlet spec), except for some minor support that I found redundant anyway.
Speed of development
an experience developer that knows spring-mvc can create a robust application with only a few spring controllers.
Maintenance
The amount of source code is significantly lesser with spring then struts. Spring-portlet has implemented 268 JSR, so that it saves couple of workarounds.
Ease of development with Geo Distributed teams
I sense you are going for something bigger, so that ask developers about their experience with Spring and Struts and make your choice. Anyway, Liferay is a pretty robust portal solution and to "learn" it and find a way to use it properly is more important issue than how to develop portlets.
Also be interested in developers knowledge of Javascript. If they don't know JS much or you don't have front-end developers, I would probably give a shot to Vaadin or GWT portlets. However Liferay has a very good client-side support and you'll see that a lot of things can be done on client-side in Liferay. JSP tag libraries provides a significant amount of dynamic behavior and Alloy JS framework that is built on top of YUI provides you with a nice environment and it is not hard to use.
EDIT: The comparison of Struts vs. Spring is regarding portlet specification, where (my opinion) struts support is an old Volkswagen and spring is Bentley continental gt :-)
ALSO: The key tool for Liferay portlet development is so called ServiceBuilder, which is a code generator, that generates a significant part of your persistence layer, remote service layer based on domain model and metadata. If you choose to use it, your portlet is automatically Spring based. And I'd recommend to use it, because once you try it, you won't let it go. For instance, to create Ajax calls from client-side to remote services is a question of 2 minutes to set it up and be able to call them and even get the return value. Hibernate setup is fully optimized and ready to use after you run servicebuilder. And much, much more.
It's Really depend on your requirements, since liferay MVCPortlet are just simple sub-classes of the javax.portlet.GenericPortlet, i dont think it's a fair comparison between web framework such as Strut 2 or Spring MVC.
I suggest using Spring MVC or Struts 2 for 168 & 268 JSR portlet if you want cross portlet-container portability or if you have more complex presentation requirements, you should find a list of the pro and cons of the two framework everywhere .
If you requirement are very simple then go with liferay MVCPortlet or even the JSPPortlet.
I have used 2) and 3) but not 1) - I'm not a fan of Struts.
Spring MVC gives you the power of Spring and plugs seamlessly into a Spring back-end as well as allowing the ability to wire to the Liferay Spring services. Provided you use MVC correctly and separate Controller concerns into separate Action classes then this is an extremely scalable and flexible choice and works well when coupled with Liferay.
Liferay's MVCPortlet provides much less in terms of flexibility but when used properly it is still highly scalable and a very useful choice. It also ties in to the Liferay IDE/Liferay Development Studio which provides benefits during development. If you have access to the Liferay Developer training then there is extensive coverage on Day 2.
Overall Spring has the greater benefits but also comes with the larger learning curve and greater risk of doing things incorrectly and hits you harder when done badly. Liferay's MVCPortlets done badly end up looking like vanilla portlets and as such is the lesser evil. Personally I use MVCPortlets for small tasks and Spring MVC for the larger ones.
In both cases 'doing it well' involves correct use of the framwork and annotations.
Liferay also supports Vaardin and have released the new Mail Portlet using it. I haven't used Vaardin but certainly plan on it and have heard good things so far.
From the ease-of-development point, I think the Vaadin is one of the best. The new Liferay IDE 1.2 already includes the Vaadin support making it very easy to start with it.
The same goes for application maintenance and APIs. With Vaadin the application code is simply Java code and that makes it easy to divide the work, and maintain the existing code (OOP benefits).
Already a good number of "add-ons" for Vaadin that demonstrate how the Java code can be "componentized" and development split across the organization(s).
Only downside comes from the fact that the Vaadin libraries are shared with all the Vaadin- portlets in a portal, which means they should use the same Vaadin version to keep the deployment easier.
Anyway, I'd say quite good match for your needs.
Related
I've been developing in ASP.NET for 1,5 years. (I used first Web Forms for a year and when I get a new project I decided to learn MVC) Now I am about changing job where they want me to develop in J2EE or SpringMVC. How long does it take to get practice in those (not to get pro just to reach a level to make good quality software)? I think that those web frameworks are very similar to the web frameworks of .NET I used.
Am I think right? Is there somebody who have changed from .NET to Java (or vice versa)?
I think of it as there are two main things you need to understand in order to build good quality software:
The general principles of the area you're working in
The specific details of the technology you're using at the time.
In the web-space, the principles of ASP.net and the concept of MVC is pretty similar to the concept of the SpringMVC. There are loads of Model-View-* type frameworks, which basically have the same concepts behind them.
You'll have the same set of concerns building an application in Java as you did in ASP.NET - Separate business logic from presentation, connect to a database, appropriate level of logging, security, error management, authentication, etc. etc.
The concepts you learned using ASP.NET you'll be able to re-use in the Java space.
The specifics of how you utilise them will be different (although often, surprisingly similar - compare nunit with junit, Hibernate with nHibernate). It'll take a little while to get to grips with how SpringMVC works and how it's configured, with how to build and deploy a Java project, with the particular structure of the libraries.
But in the end it's the same principles.
Also, particularly in the web space, all of the HTML, CSS, javascript, browser compatibility, user experience is identical. How you include that stuff in your project varies a little, but the actual markup that gets sent to the browser, and the challenges in making it right are exactly the same.
Doing something new like this will help too, because you'll see where the similarities are, and where the differences are. It might help highlight why they're similar.
It would be really good if you got on a project with some experienced Java people on it. They'll have the basics down and be able to structure it so that most of the big risks are managed, so you can get to grips with the technologies and differences to start off with.
Most really good developers can develop in several languages. I recommend you add Java to your list.
There is the requirement, to write a portal like ASP.NET based web application.
There should be a lightweigted central application, which implements the primary navigation and the authentication. The design is achieved by masterpages.
Then there are several more or less independent applications(old and new ones!!), which should easily and independent be integrated into this central application (which should be the entry point of these applications).
Which ways, architectures, patterns, techniques and possibilities can help and support to achieve these aims? For example makes it sense to run the (sub)applications in an iframe?
Are there (lightweighted and easy to learn) portal frameworks, which can be used (not big things like "DOTNETNUKE")?
Many thanks in advance for you hints, tips and help!
DON'T REINVENT THE WHEEL! The thing about DotNetNuke is that it can be as big or as small as you make it. If you use it properly, you will find that you can limit it to what you need. Don't put yourself through the same pain that others have already put themselves through. Unless of course you are only interested in learning from your pain.
I'm not saying that DNN is the right one for you. It may not be, but do spend the time to investigate a number of open source portals before you decide to write your own one. The features that you describe will take 1000s of hours to develop and test if you write them all from scratch.
#Michael Shimmins makes some good suggests about what to use to implement a portal app with some of the newer technology and best practice patterns. I would say, yes these are very good recommendations, but I would encourage you to either find someone who has already done it this way or start a new open source project on codeplex and get other to help you.
Daniel Dyson makes a fine point, but if you really want to implement it your self (there may be a reason), I would consider the following components:
MVC 2.0
Inversion of Control/Dependency Injection (StructureMap for instance)
Managed Extensibility Framework
NHibernate (either directly or through a library such as Sh#rp or Spring.NET
A service bus (NServiceBus for instance).
This combination gives you flexible user interface through MVC, which can be easily be added to via plugins (exposed and consumed via MEF), a standard data access library (NHibernate) which can be easily configured by the individual plugins to connect to specific databases, an ability to publish events and 'pick them up' by components composed at runtime (NServiceBus).
Using IoC and DI you can pass around interfaces which are resolved at runtime based on your required configuration. MEF gives you the flexibility of defining 'what' each plugin can do, and then leave it up to the plugins to do so, whilst your central application controls cross cutting concerns such as authentication, logging etc.
What are some of the advantages in adding Spring into a Flex / AIR application? And When would you recommend using Spring?
If you're writing a Flex app with a Java backend, you'll want to use BlazeDS to handle remoting and/or messaging between the client and server. Spring has support for integrating with BlazeDS and making Blaze a little easier to setup and configure. It's also pretty easy to set up BlazeDS on its own, so if you don't want to learn Spring then you should not be afraid to use BlazeDS by itself.
The bulk of what Spring provides is specific to the Java layer but it will help you write better Java applications. In particular it provides a clean way for wiring up application components, simplifies data access using Hibernate and/or JDBC, makes it easy to do aspect-oriented programming and also has a pretty nice security framework (Spring Security). There's a ton that Spring can do and I recommend using Spring for pretty much any Java backend.
Flex is addressing what happens in the UI. You are likely to need some server-side logic to provide the data for the UI. Writing robust, performant, secure server-side logic from scratch is not trivial. Frameworks such as Spring, EJB 3, etc. really do help with that. The learning curve for modern frameworks is not too steep, getting started is barely more that a few extra "annotations" to the code you knew you wanted to write.
Well worth investigating.
The sum total of learning Flex + Spring + also some DB admin is still quite a lot. You may need to keep your ambitions under control, don't try to fly before you are walking comfortably.
Good luck.
Has anyone successfully used a CMS developed for standard ASP.NET with ASP.NET MVC?
I currently use Immediacy CMS and it seems to be quite tightly coupled with standard ASP.NET, but I'd really like to start using ASP.NET MVC.
Are there any CMS systems out there directed at MVC?
How could I persuade my employer to move to ASP.NET MVC?
I suggest take a look to Kooboo (kooboo.com), a simple to use but powerful for developers. Well documented API and based upon ASP.NET MVC (of course ;-)
N2 CMS has an example site in ASP.NET MVC that I've been playing around with that works quite nicely - note that the code is now hosted on Google Code.
The problem you've got is that many CMS' already do a lot of "routing" in that the pages you are requesting/editing don't actually exist on disk, but are all in a data store of some kind, and there's an HttpHandler or ISAPI Filter sitting in front of ASP.NET to intercept the requests and work out what should be happening.
I have not personally seen any of the big name CMS systems out there upgraded yet to take advantage of many of the new things the .NET framework offers, let alone start working on the MVC framework.
As with all things, a cost-benefit analysis is the best way to convince your boss to do anything. If you can point how how moving towards the MVC framework is going to make some immediate positives (as well as many long term positives) that can outweigh the costs (in time, energy, and money) in the switchover, then you have succeeded.
ASP.NET and ASP.NET MVC are very different beasts in terms of how you develop applications on top of them. Technically, an ASP.NET MVC application is an ASP.NET application with some generic handler that invokes the core MVC framework.
The ASP.NET MVC framework is also relatively new (1.0 just released last MIX) and so it'll take a while before becoming mainstream.
How you can persuade your boss? Talk to him about the positive sides of ASP.NET MVC, and how it will improve his future business. There's plenty of material available to demonstrate that.
I do a lot of work using Immediacy (I used to work there) and I had thought about doing the same thing a couple of months ago. I think that the main issues would result from things like the plug-in handler, the idoc handler and (if your still using it) the ilink hander.
When you enable things like friendly URLS I think this would cause issues if you had similar named methods in your controller actions.
You may be able use some MVC in your project, I could see it working as an admin add-in but I couldn't see it being used to usefully in the main webroot.
I would think a CMS would have to be built using MVC in mind to get the most benefits from using the pattern, instead of trying to make it work in parallel with a pre-existing system API (limited as it is) and making more work for yourself.
If yes, when? and how much time do you think that the process will take to migrate your current projects (if it's the case)?
ASP.NET MVC is not meant to replace WebForms. They are different technologies and are designed for different purposes.
Making a blanket statement of saying that I'll only use one and not the other is a very narrow minded approach, as you're missing the pros and cons of each technology.
Microsoft is commited to both technologies going forward and there are quite a few sweet new features coming in WebForms 4.0.
I'll be using WebForms and ASP.NET MVC, but looking at the needs of the current project so that I make the right decision for the current implementation
I've been using it for a few months now. I absolutely love MVC. Converting existing projects may not be realistic, depending on available time. As I see it, Web Forms simulates windows forms development for the old VB crowd. While MVC doesn’t pretend it’s something it’s not and follows the Http process more closely.
A few plusses I see in MVC
1) It’s testable with unit tests
2) Direct control over Html. We make websites, how do we accept not being able to control all our html?
3) No viewstate baggage
4) No control tree to waste time rendering
5) Automatic binding of a modal from a form post
6) It can be rather sexy
And a few disadvantages
1) No more web controls (and many rich 3rd party controls are lost)
2) Slower to develop in
3) Large learning curve
4) Still in Beta (CTP soon though)
Yes for my new projects. But not for current production software.
Yes, in as orderly a fashion as possible.
MVC opens .NET up to the world of Best Practices for Agile development. It specifically addresses concerns about Separation of Concerns, and coupling/cohesion. It also lets us write more-portable software without creating a dependency on any vendor-specific references or components.
It unquestionably is a successor to WebForms, along with WPF, regardless of whatever PR you might read.
The Wikipedia entry is pretty clear, even before being updated for Microsoft's MVC.
Assuming you prefer ASP.NET MVC to Web Forms, it's worth it for a system that's in active development/maintenance.
They can coexist side-by-side, so it's possible to migrate parts of the application (new ones, or selected old ones) and see how it works out. If it's a success, keep going.
An "all or nothing" migration could be disastrous, though - investing a lot without quick feedback is a huge risk.
WebForms are for rich UIs
These can be done just the same with MVC or Webforms. A year from now rich MVC based toolkits will arrive (technically they're already here if you like YUI, ExtJS, etc.) and make this argument null and void.
migrate your current projects
Migrating an existing WebForms project to MVC doesn't make a lot of sense. What are you going to gain? Using MVC for a new project however can make a lot of sense depending on your requirements.
I was never really fond of WebForms to begin with so getting to work with MVC was like a breath of fresh air to me. I've always much preferred the separation of concerns as I could work on the chunks that I was really good at developing, the logic and the data access, and leave the presentation work to the members of the team who had that natural ability. I think the MVC library makes it easier for teams to work together on individual pages as one person can work on the controller and the other person can work on the view.
All that being said, when I'm working on projects where I don't need to focus as much on the coding and it is more display oriented, I still go back to the WebForms because they are so much easier to implement and get up and running. Both have their places and I don't think one will ever supersede the other.
I've been using ASP.NET MVC for several months now and I prefer it to Web Forms. However, I don't see myself migrating my existing projects to MVC. For me, it would be rather pointless. However, all of my new ASP.NET projects will (or should be) developed using MVC, as it is a much better (and more flexible) framework.
Personnaly I restricted ASP.NET MVC for lightweight Front Office Web Sites.
But still using ASP.NET WebForms for Righ BackOffice Applications to take advantage of rich custom controls and some of other nice features of Web Forms.
Another plus for mvc is that javascript like jquery is much easier to implement, so if you plan on using a lot of js, mvc might be the way to go.
No, there's no reason to. It's an alternative style, one I am not fond of. But that's just my opinion; a lot of people like it and I hope it works well for them.
As already said, they're not mutually exclusive, and I play to make good use of both.
IMO MVC is better for web sites, while WebForms are better for web applications.
For example, this site is a perfect showcase for where ASP.NET MVC is a good choice because of the nature of the site and what needs to be accomplished; other good examples would be a web store, or a project management site (like Basecamp), or a social network.
If you were developing a corporate CRM/ERP system, however, I'd stick with WebForms to get rich controls and a more "desktop-like" programming model, since a CRM application is traditionally the domain of a desktop application.
ASP.NET MVC fits my desired style of development better, but I'm wary of trusting myself to it whilst it's not been RTM. It also is different enough that our legacy code will not work with it. If we had been practising Domain-Driven Development things might have been easier, but ...