[Opensource] Réf. : [Opensource] Newbie Questions from a Struts Guy

[Raul DAVIDOVICH]

Hello,

      You can use expresso's ability to build XML directly from
controllers, then, according to your needs, use different XSL templates for
producing any kind of output you need (HTML, WAP, PDF).

for example, you can use a linked style
/MyController.do?style=xml&xsl=whatever

or directly in your controller: response.setStyle("xml"); and confiure the
different xsl's to use.

You can also manage this from the struts-config.xml file for your
application


there's a bit more information about this in chapter 13 of the expresso
developer's guide.


as for your questions:

1) it depends on the needs of your client. At a first sight, it seems to be
a good option, since it's lightwaight, stable and scalable, and it can work
with the EJBs. For example you can use entity EJBs to map your data, use
expresso's SecuredDBObjects to access them from insode expresso, and use a
session façade as an enter point who will delegate to expresso's
controllers.

2) Expresso incorporates struts. the main difference is that you use it
indirectly.. almost without knowing struts is there..

3) If you master struts, expresso won't be a big deal to learn, since it
shares several concepts. There are many utility classes that you learn
easily with the JavaDocs, and the DBObjects are quite similar to EJBs.
Personnally, I spent a week to get started with the EDG, and some articles
(there are two written by Peter Pilgrimn, and published in
theserverside.com), and in two weeks I was already developing with it. In
addition, if you can afford it, the commercial support will help you a lot.
Anyway, when working in a team, the learning curve is much lower than
working alone (my case)





Hope this helps

Best regards

---------------------------------------------------
Raul Davidovich
Responsable Informatique
Cvitkovic & Associés Consultants

(33) 1 45 15 40 68
(33) 1 45 15 40 41 Fax
-------------------------------------------------------
http://www.caconcology.com


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  |       Pour :    opensource at jcorporate.com                                                                                   |
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I'm a Struts guy that's curious about Expresso. I'm doing some consulting
and my client wants to build an EJB-based Web application that can produce
output for various devices, such as HTML and WAP. JavaServer Faces seems to
fit the bill nicely, with it's library of server-side components that can
have different types of renderers, but JSF is not nearly ready for prime
time. So I've been entertaining alternate solutions such as Struts actions
that transform XML files with XSLT to produce the required markup or
perhaps a library of custom JSP actions corresponding to the Struts html
actions that can render different markup based on some parameter. I would
also like to take advantage of Expresso's workflow. Then I saw on the
Expresso website that Expresso is "A popular application development
framework comprising a library of server side components...", which sounds
a lot like JSF.

I have a few Expresso questions:

1. Would Expresso be a good fit for my client?
2. Do I use Expresso standalone, or do I use it in conjunction with Struts?

3. What's the learning curve like for Expresso? I can appreciate that it
"reduces project cost and time to production", but that's after all of my
developers have climbed the Expresso learning curve. What's that learning
curve like? Is it comparable to Struts?

Thanks,


david


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