|ANNOUNCE| Struts Workflow Extensions V0.6

[Matthias Bauer <Ma...@livinglogic.de>]

Hi all,

my colleague Alexander Lamm and me have implemented an extension to the core 
struts framework which provides rudimentary control flow between actions. It has 
received some considerable rework since the prior version we published and can 
now be configured much more flexible, including multiple parallel workflows.

With its help you can easily (per configuration in struts-config.xml) do the 
following:

- prevent the user from hitting the browser's reload and back buttons which can 
lead to form resubmission and data inconsistencies

- easy definitions of (what we know from non HTML GUIs as) "modal" dialogs in 
struts web applications

- centralized user authentication

- maintenance mode for the whole web application

- and some more...

The file README.TXT which I attached to this mail includes a detailed description.

Ted Husted was so kind to put the code on his Resources Page: 
[http://husted.com/about/struts/resources.htm]
 From there it can be downloaded as a .tgz file that includes all the sources 
and documentation.

One word to the workflow enhancements that are planned to be incorporated into 
Strtus 1.1: Unfortunately I did not have the time to follow the discussions on 
struts-dev as closely as I would have liked to do. So I don't know how much of 
the concepts are similar. The issue here was: We needed some simple workflow 
control for our applications and we needed it now. The planned workflow 
extensions, Craig and others are working on are still far from being finished, 
because they obviously are intended to be much more generic. So we decided to 
implement something that works for us now.

What I want to say is just this: We don't want to compete with the workflow 
extensions some other people are currently working on. If you want, you can just 
view it as an intermediate solution. And yes, I would like to see some of our 
code and concepts be reused for the workflow in Struts 1.1 but don't know if 
this makes sense.

In any case: Your feedback is very welcome.

--- Matthias