I think the biggest problem is with developers.
I've been involved with several EJB projects, and have watched many other EJB projects from the side lines. Many EJB projects are highly successful, and use the technology very appropriately. In these cases EJBs were utilized correctly (in conjunction with other J2EE features) in order to solve some highly complex problems, in truly less time than it would otherwise have taken. Unfortunately, many more projects using EJBs are failures - or near failures. I don't think at all that the problem is EJBs. The problem comes from one of the following: 1) CTO (or some manager) gets the idea the EJBs are cool (after reading a BEA press release) and decides that his team's next project will be done using EJBs - without any thought as to whether EJBs are the correct tool for the Job. 2) Developers decide that they want to use EJBs because they're all the buzz, and they want in on the excitement. The problem is, they're in-experienced (I'd say anyone who's done fewer than 3 EJB projects is very inexperienced), so they use all of the various EJB constructs in very in-appropriate manners (for example, making dozens or even hundreds of entity beans . -- when ever you see a project with more than a couple dozen beans, red flags should go up immediately - maybe the project DOES justify as many as it has, but probably not.) I'm currently working on a project that involves bringing together multiple independent contractor groups. Someone up-high made the decision to use J2EE because of messaging and transactionality needs. I agreed with the decision. However, most of the teams involved with the project think "J2EE" means "Everything is an EJB", and my life's been hell ever since. When we started talking about architecture, I asked the *lead* developer of one of the other teams if they'd had any thoughts on the application's architecture, and his answer was "I just thought we'd make a bunch of EJB objects". -- AMAZING! This is why people end up with the idea that EJB = BAD, even though this idea is just furthering their own ignorance. EJBs are definitly not the solution for implementing many, many applications. However, for many applications they are a gift from heaven James At 2/22/2002 11:45 AM +0000, you wrote: >No, I wouldn't say that the combination of Struts and EJB is problem prone. > >The problems lie mainly with EJB and are in the following areas.. > >1) EJBs are only useful/applicable is certain situations. Incorrect use of >EJBs (i.e. dictated by management when inappropriate) is a source of a lot >of issues. >2) Incorrect usage of EJB types by designers. Studying the design patterns >and using the right type of beans for the right task is essential. >3) Inexperienced developers. The EJB spec is large and the learning curve >steep. > >The problems addressed by EJBs are non-trivial, and the method of >programming them is different to that which most programmers will be used >to. Hence the problems that are being reported. > >I do think that people like Vic stating 'EJB=bad' is extremely unhelpful >(and is probably more a reflection of the fact that they have not looked >into the subject deeply enough to understand why it is incorrect). > >Also 'EJBs are for newbies' could not be more wrong. EJBs are about as much >for newbies as the javax.swing.text packages are! > >BTW: I ended up getting a copy of the Monson-Haefel book for each of my >developers, and I would recommend that development teams get a copy of the >chosen EJB reference text for each developer, as it seems to be important to >help the developers immerse themselves in the technology to be able to make >it work. > >Hope that helps > david > > >----- Original Message ----- >From: "Yu, Yanhui" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >To: "'Vic Cekvenich'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; "Struts Users Mailing List" ><[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Cc: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Sent: Thursday, February 21, 2002 8:27 PM >Subject: RE: EJB = bad = MS.net > > > > Hi, > > > > I am involved in a pretty large project (we have not really started coding > > yet). As far as I can tell, we seem to go with Struts + WSAD + EJBs & >Java > > + JSP. Am I right to interpret that you mean the combination of Struts >and > > EJBs are problem prone? Please help me to clarify on this. Thank you >very > > much, > > > > Yanhui > > > > > > > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: Vic Cekvenich [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > > Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2002 11:42 AM > > To: Struts Users Mailing List > > Cc: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > Subject: EJB = bad = MS.net > > > > > > Home page of Jakarta has this > > http://jakarta.apache.org/site/news.html#0130.2 > > on this: > > http://www.mail-archive.com/general%40jakarta.apache.org/msg03376.html > > > > I agree. Doing EJBs is bad on many levels and creates more problems. > > Avoid EJB if you want to stay in Java. > > > > Alternative is to just use Struts + TomCat + RowSet (or DAO if you are > > doing something simple or small) and done. This is the sweet spot. MVC > > is all you need. > > > > Alternative, do EJBs and your organization WILL switch to MS .NET on the > > next project, leave J2EE, and you have to learn VB.net. > > > > EJBs are for newbies. (If you need middleware (very rare) use SOAP) > > > > lol, > > Vic > > > > > > > > -- > > To unsubscribe, e-mail: ><mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > For additional commands, e-mail: ><mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > > > > > >-- >To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
