Where to start?

[Brian Gorby <go...@gmail.com>]

We are jumping platforms on an e-commerce site originally written in 
classic ASP (shotgun-scattered SQL everywhere, etc). The code has been 
converted, almost verbatim, to Perl, and the site is now running under 
Apache/mod_perl/MySQL.

I would love to convert this into a Struts web-app, so I have been 
studying up on  the different technologies to make this possible (e.g. 
Hibernate, Tiles, etc). This will be my first Java-based web-app.

I've got all manner of information on these technologies, but I don't 
know where to jump in to start.

Where is a good place to begin here? Should I start at the View and work 
my way down, or first program the model and ORM service? Are there any 
design tools that prove overly helpful in determining all of this?

Any input is appreciated!

-Brian



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Re: Where to start?

[Greg Reddin <li...@reddin.org>]

On Oct 5, 2005, at 3:29 PM, Brian Gorby wrote:

> Where is a good place to begin here? Should I start at the View and  
> work my way down, or first program the model and ORM service?

Personally, I'd probably start with the model and ORM layer.  Once  
you get that part written (and tested) it basically provides an API  
to your application.  You can then write Struts actions and view  
components to use your API.

Another approach would be to just write the API to your application  
and a set of mock objects to implement it.  Then your time spent  
coding actions and views will not be bogged down by debugging  
database access, etc.  Once you get the flow of the app done, you can  
throw in the details with data access and all that.

Greg


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Re: Where to start?

[Michael Jouravlev <jm...@gmail.com>]

On 10/5/05, Brian Gorby <go...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Where is a good place to begin here? Should I start at the View and work
> my way down, or first program the model and ORM service? Are there any
> design tools that prove overly helpful in determining all of this?

Check out the MailReader sample app first:
http://opensource2.atlassian.com/confluence/oss/display/STRUTS/MailReader

It has a walk-through.

Michael.

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Re: Where to start?

[Leon Rosenberg <ro...@googlemail.com>]

On 10/5/05, Brian Gorby <go...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Where is a good place to begin here? Should I start at the View and work
> my way down, or first program the model and ORM service? Are there any
> design tools that prove overly helpful in determining all of this?

Most agile development books (XP etc) would advice you to peek a small
set of functionality and implement a vertical prototype. A vertical
prototype is a prototype which represents all layers of your
application (view, presentation logic, business logic, persistence).
So take 2-5 use cases and programm them down, maybe even with
different technologies (ibatis vs hibernate, struts vs. jsf, and so
on, depending on how much time you have). Then you can decide how to
work.

To add a personal note, the above approach works perfectly for me,
since i don't like the top-down or bottom-up approaches, but create a
skeleton, test it, and then add muscles :-)

regards
Leon

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