For anyone interested in using IBM's GBO (Global Business Objects), I spent some time trying it out, and I wasn't able to use it for various reasons. The developer, Steve Li, was extremely helpful, and offered to make changes for me. Below is my final email to him, and his responses.
==================================================================== ==================================================================== Hi Lance, Thanks a lot for your feedback. To the problems you listed, I gave out my comments just for your reference. Thanks again for your patience on GBO. :) Best Regards, Steve Li (???) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------- User Technologies, IBM China Development Lab, Tel: (8621)63262288-5872 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Lance Frohman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 2006-04-01 ?? 07:51 To Mao Yu Li/China/[EMAIL PROTECTED] cc "'Michele Hwu'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "'Peter Cyrus'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject RE: GBO There were several problems. One was that the GBO libraries were tied to the Sun JSF reference Implementation, one version of Java Server Faces. I am using Apache Myfaces, a different version. You found a workaround, but this is not the best solution. Steve-> GBO is designed based on IBM/Sun JSF implementation, so only workaround is provided. The second is that GBO shows the errors as a graphic icon indicating that a required field is missing. We need a text error message. You offered to correct this. Steve->Thanks for your comments, we will improve. The third problem is that the date chooser tag has a special tool for changing the year. The tool did not work for me. Steve->Is it just unsuitable or is there any problems? It works well all the time. The date chooser does not have any checking, so a user can enter February 31. Steve->We did check on client, while you saw the problem, maybe some javascripts code doesn't work. I didn't find this problem. The biggest problem is that the address object model is not fixed. It just has fields zero through five. And field four could be country or postal code, depending on the Locale. I want to have an address like: Steve->Address is different according to locales (address item is different and address item order is different), and there is no one fixed data structure can describe it, so GBO used a flexible data structure. You don't need care about each address item, just believe it is an Address Object and use it. You can store/recover the address object in DB or other repository. street1 street2 city state postal-code country but I can't do this, because I must specify field0 field1 field2 field3 field4 field5 for countries with state (like the U.S. and Canada) but field0 field1 field2 field3 field4 for countries without state (Europe, etc.). This can't be done. and I think the formatting is wrong, in some countries, the City comes before the postal code, and in other countries, it is reversed. Also, I was having trouble finding documentation. I had trouble find out how to customize the templates. I had trouble finding out how to use the AddressModel and NameModel, etc. I think these need to be fixed - that is the Address needs street1, street2, city, state, postal code and country fields, not field1, field2, etc. Steve-> It's GBO team's fault without providing enough documents. Also, the licensing. Most of the products that I use are open source, like Apache, MySql, Tomcat, eclipse. And Oracle donated their JSF kit to open source. You don't release the source code, so I can't customize the code by extending the classes. And I wasn't even sure if I could use GBO in my application, if I did not get a license. I think you have a really good idea here, you were extremely helpful, and gave fast responses. I think more people would try it out, except they don't want to deal with the licensing issue - I saw another person mention this. Thank you for all your help, Lance Frohman ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- From: Mao Yu Li [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Friday, March 31, 2006 3:21 PM To: Lance Frohman Cc: 'Michele Hwu'; 'Peter Cyrus' Subject: Re: GBO Hi Lance, I'm sorry to know you will give up using GBO finally, but could you tell us a little more reasons about why you give up using GBO besides the functions you required in the forum? If it's only the problem of the functions you mentioned, I think we can add/fix as soon as possible. We'll appreciate your feedback and improve the quality of GBO continuously. Thanks. Best Regards, Steve Li (???) ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------- User Technologies, IBM China Development Lab, Tel: (8621)63262288-5872 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Lance Frohman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 2006-04-01 ?? 05:25 To Mao Yu Li/China/[EMAIL PROTECTED] cc "'Michele Hwu'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, "'Peter Cyrus'" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject GBO We will not be using GBO after all. Unfortunately, it does not fit our needs. Thank you very much for all your help. I appreciate your quick answers. Lance
