[Opensource] Maturing Framework market

[Sandra Cann]

Raul

Your comments provide clarity especially to those new to expresso :) I
really appreciate the ideas!

Snip
> I guess that with the comming of good JDO
> implementations this should start to change, and there will 
> be much more interest in integrating Exprssso's persistance 
> layer to EJBs..

I see a lot of interest and articles in persistence these days. Read another
article this morning at
http://www.fawcette.com/javapro/2003_07/online/wcheng_07_10_03/. I'm curious
if we can be jdo compliant while also have Expresso bring additional
benefits to compensate for some of JDO's weaknesses? I know Mike has some
concerns? I think it is a good time for the community to discuss JDO and
Expresso.  (more on JDO at http://www.jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=12&showPrint)

> As for the controllers, I'm not sure that many people really
> knows the added benefit of Expresso over Struts

This would make the basis of a great article!!!! (Hint hint) So many people
come to Struts first and don't really understand what Expresso brings. It
would be an article of high interest!

> But what I think the main issue we find face to commercial
> ASs is that Expresso handles most of the things they do, like 
> users, security, logging, batch jobs, mailing...and that 
> seems to annoy some people.. 

That's an excellent idea. What do you think of calling this the "Expresso
Standard Edition"? The Complete edition being more to do with its packaging
with the db and app server. 

> Maybe a "core edition" with just
> the Schema, DBObjects, Controllers, JSP tags and some other 
> tools could be much more appreciated in the market, since it 
> would avoid redundancy of components (don't misunderstand me, 
> I love the complete version, and I'm not ready to change it 
> for any WL or WS.. I'm not saying it's useless, just that it 
> could be completed by a lighter weight version destinated to 
> AS integration).. Perhaps JDO compliance could help too.

The "componentization" effort that is underway could first ensure that there
are no dependencies between the Expresso Core edition and the Standard
Edition. 

> At the moment I'm working on a scientific project using
> Expresso. We are interfacing R (an open source version of S 
> plus, a statistical analysis system/programming language) 
> with a web front-end and a DB back-end. So most of the job is 
> made by Expresso, and it calls R via SOAP (there is a Java 
> interface for making direct calls, but up to now it doesn't 
> work very well in the Java -> R sense). We could do a case 
> study on that if you wish.

Excellent we would love to see a case study!! Send it on.

As for time, I appreciate what you are saying about the baby taking a lot of
time - but oh how delightful it is. Having balance in life is what it is all
about. My JBaby is now 6.5 months old and a monster baby at 25 lbs and 30
inches long. Since folks here on this list often ask - here's a picture
onsite which was taken on our trip in SF for JavaOne
http://www.jcorporate.com/images/pictures/sf_sm.jpg. 

That being said, the community effort is needed in helping Expresso evolve
with new technologies. To all of you on this list who use Expresso and
haven't contributed yet - even a little contribution helps a lot - the
little contributions add up to a lot when leveled across the community. It
burns out key people to have the lead/core developers doing all the work -
so take on one development task and help and it'll make a big difference. If
you use Expresso in a project contributing back is will benefit you 10 fold
I promise.  And it'll make you feel good :).

Some folks don't contribute because they don't know if their code is good
enough - fearing they don't know Expresso well enough - but there in lies
the opportunity because the code review will help you. Our core folks are
the nicest people and most supportive people. They'll mentor you and it
makes them feel good when they see you grep Expresso! I urge you to give it
a shot and see :). 

Cheers
Sandra