Hi all,
Great to see some JC discussions going on :)
Uhm, here is my two cents. Let's all do whatever we can to get a
straight answer from Apple about the core JC being depreciated or
not. Cliff Tuel NOT being the WO Apple person on the list anymore, I
do not know whom can be directly contacted with this question. Clff
however suggested that bug reporting (http://bugreport.apple.com)
might be the right channel to get an answer through, by indicating
that the 5.4 release notice is not clear enough on the point of JC.
Next to that, if you know whom from Apple can be directly approached
about WO, please do it.
About the library I am working on, I can not make any promises as of
yet, our company needs to know if in the future the pure Swing WO JC
will be an option. If so, I will continue working on the (to be open-
source) library. The currently published version will receive some
major changes, but is a good base to comment or contribute ideas to.
As for the people using D2JC and IB approaches... The library I am
working on is meant to allow very streamlined interface and basic
data process definitions (in that sense being similar to the IB's
visual programming approach), but completely Java oriented. My point
being, it *might* be possible, by people who understand and use the
D2JC and IB file conventions, to create a conversion script/program,
to convert your current apps to pure Swing + EOF code. IF this will
be desired, I can contribute to the Swing (EOF bound) code generation
part of it. Uhm, to me this kind of sounds like more trouble then
it's worth, but I'm not doing D2JC nor IB, so I don't have a clear
picture. The same *might* be applicable to Paolo Sommaruga's
approach, if he (they) would choose to switch to pure Swing + EOF. I
know this all sounds like an enormous amount of work (and it is), but
if WO JC is not doomed, I am willing and committed to invest a whole
lot into it.
Next, a question was raised about publicizing the "Java Client, the
3rd way" tutorial I wrote, feel free to do whatever you like with it,
link to it, publish it on other sites or whatever. Let me know
however if you think something should be changed, added, removed
etc., I am very glad to help, though I am currently way to busy to
activate myself much over it.
So, my concluding point: let's just GET SOMEONE FROM APPLE TO TELL US
IF JC IS GOING DOWN TOTALLY. Before that, I doubt anyone is willing
to do much more then speculate.
My best,
Flor
On Nov 01, 2007, at 15:33, David Avendasora wrote:
Mike Schrag stated in the "State of the Union" thread:
<quote>
* My understanding is that JavaClient stuff is technically still
there, but there's not very good tool support for it. NetBeans
project file support for Entity Modeler would allow the combination
of Entity Modeler plus the Swing designer tools from NetBeans,
which would probably be a good platform to start from for that
(Swing builders in Eclipse I think mostly suck still?).
</quote>
If anyone outside of Apple could know what the true _current_ state
of WO is under the hood, it would be Mike - note, I'm not saying he
_does_, just than if anyone could, it would him). He also seems to
have a pretty good understanding of the tools for some reason... :)
I don't think anyone, even at Apple, knows what is _going_ to
happen to the JC libraries that haven't been depreciated. I think
that it may take hearing from the development community as to what
they use and want to determine it's future. Please don't be quiet!
I don't know if the new javaEOGenerator supports Java Client
classes or not, I haven't had a chance to look yet, but with the
tool soon-to-be open-sourced, I'm sure it can be added if there are
enough people needing it. Other than that, I don't think there's
any other WO-specific tools required for doing a Swing/SWT/etc
Client. Am I wrong?
As far as ways to continue JC development without D2JC and Nib-
based options, please read Florijan Stamenkovic's turorial on how
to setup Swing-only UIs: "WebObjects Java Client, the 3rd way" at
http://web.mac.com/flor385/eSwamp/software/wojc_tutorial.html
Building off this tutorial, he's been working on a WO Java client
data-binding library that stands completely separate from D2JC and
nib-based development. You can then put a Swing, SWT, or other UI
on top of it using standard (Non WO-Specific) tools. If the JC
libraries are still in WO, then this solution should be a big step
to simplifying JC development without any relying on any
depreciated technologies. Here's the basics of how far he's gotten
so far:
1. Event firing EO class (com.havaso.util.eof.ClientEO class)
Quite straightforward.
2. EOFDataSource interface and implementations (the
com.havaso.util.eof.data package)
These are basically EO container classes, made to either store or
proxy EOs, listen to their changes and provide event firing support
of their own.
3. EOFBinding interface and three implementations (viewing,
editing, adding)
Classes that interact with EOFDataSource and / or binding groups
(EOFAddGroup, EOFEditGroup) to provide EOF data to end objects that
will consume it (for example user interface models and such).
Deferred editing and adding included.
4 Support classes for the above:
a. KeyPathChangeMonitor - quite important, check JavaDoc for more
info
b. ClientDataObject interface and implementations - used by
bindings to enable deferred adding and editing
c. ValidationHandler interface and basic implementations - used by
EOFBindings to handle invalid values
The stuff provided above should make it relatively easy to build
concrete Swing, SWT and other client tech specific binding
implementations, and thereafter to make filthy rich client apps
quite reliably and simply.
I know I'm planning on digging into it soon because a large portion
of my application is D2JC, which will need to be replaced.
He sent it out to a bunch of us JC people a few weeks ago, but
hasn't gotten any feedback on it yet. He is currently Internet-
challenged due to where he's living. I'll get his permission to
send it out the library. Anybody who wants it, email me off-list.
Long live JC!
Dave
On Nov 1, 2007, at 12:54 PM, Jarda Hanuš wrote:
And I have EXACTLY the same question. We develop and maintain
quite a huge application with two frontends - html WebObjects for
extranet users and Java Client for intranet. For JC we used the
NIB-Based IB development, although with quite a lot of hacks to
force it to work the way we needed. Now we have about 50
interfaces to rebuild.
And we have to decide, where to go from now on.
- Whether try to continue the JC way, using the *distributed* wo
libraries together with some third party GUI builder for Swing or
SWT or even GWT interfaces (by the way - if you, Dave or John
would give me just some few hints about the bindings of these
libraries with pure Swing or SWT interfaces, I would greatly
appreciate that). Personally I think that this would be a bit
easier to code for the moment, but definitively we need to know
what will happen with all these .distributed. libraries in the
future.
- or whether go the WO app server + Web Services + not_WO client
(for example Flex) path. This seems to me a bit more complicated
for the moment, as we would need to completely change the client
side logic, and add the Web Services layer to the server. Also I
have some little doubts about the performance of this solution.
But it would free us from this *will it be or will it not be*
(deprecated) dilemma, at least as long as the whole WO world is
not deprecated ;)
So, please, if somebody has an answer concerning the future of JC
internal libraries, let us know!
Thanks!
Jaroslav
Okay, I have the same question as John and Flor, and I don't
think it's been answered yet. For those of you NOT doing regular
Java Client (I guess there a few ;) there have been THREE ways of
doing WO JC development in the past:
1) D2JC
2) NIB-Based using Interface Builder
3) Straight Swing (not using NIBs, rules files, or any other
cool, but depreciated tech)
1 and 2 have be obviously depreciated, even if they can be
tricked into working. That's not the question.
The question is, is #3 still a viable option? Saying either 1 or
2 still work with some hacking only confuses the question. Are
the libraries that maintains the editing contexts on the client
side and their communication back to the server-side
UNdepreciated, or is it included in the libraries depreciated as
part of D2JC and Nib-Based JC?
Does anyone have a definitive answer to this? (please don't
invoke curses such as "AJAX" in your answer!)
Thanks!
Dave
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