Struts newbie questions

["M.J. Maré" <mj...@webtothemax.com>]

Congrats guys/gals,

Struts looks very good. Although I am only dabbling in JSP and servlets,
I've decided to use this framework for my next application. But I do have
some questions:

- What HTML/JSP editor do you use, that will respect the struts tags. I
would like to do the JSP page layout in a editor like GoLive or Dreamweaver.
I'm currently using NebObjects Fusion for my sites, but that one is not very
suitable fr JSP.

- Why o why are we spending so much time with relational databases, finding
that it's not a good match for OO-programming, and then turning to O-R
techniques? Why not an OODBMS? There must be even be open source projects (I
know of one: Ozone). I realize that this is not Struts specific but since
accessing relational databases was mentioned in the user guide and
OR-mapping in the mailinglist, I couldn't help wondering.

Marcel

RE: Struts newbie questions

[Kevin Duffey <kd...@buymedia.com>]

Hi,

Thanks for the response..I was not aware of this. I apologize..I was going
on the assumption of a few people that came in trying to sell their OODBMS
to us, and we stuck with Oracle 8i.

As for why Struts would include anything to deal with the database..I agree,
I don't see why it would either. Its part of the front-end architecture. The
database should be working with the middle-tier, not the front end..at least
in a 3-tier server-side setup (servlets/jsp, ejb, database).


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Scott Ganyo [mailto:scott.ganyo@etapestry.com]
> Sent: Monday, June 26, 2000 8:36 PM
> To: struts-user@jakarta.apache.org
> Subject: RE: Struts newbie questions
>
>
> > > - Why o why are we spending so much time with relational
> > > databases, finding
> > > that it's not a good match for OO-programming, and then turning to O-R
> > > techniques? Why not an OODBMS? There must be even be open source
> > > projects (I
> > > know of one: Ozone). I realize that this is not Struts specific
> > but since
> > > accessing relational databases was mentioned in the user guide and
> > > OR-mapping in the mailinglist, I couldn't help wondering.
> >
> > This I can't really answer, other than that they are VERY
> > immature products
> > thus far. I heard of Object Design..I think thats it, and they
> > have had some
> > bad reviews on its performance. I don't see whats the big deal.
> We have a
> > "generic" class that takes a "schema" we make up that maps our
> classes to
> > the fields of the database table. When we store an object, we
> simply pass
> > along the object.Class to the method which maps the fields via
> > the schema to
> > the database table.
>
> This is not true.  Check out GemStone.  They have been doing Object
> Databases for about 15 years!  Also, the performance of an OODBMS can be
> much faster than an RDBMS under certain circumstances (especially wrt.
> complex object models).  We use GemStone and the performance is excellent.
>
> I don't understand why structs would include any kind of O-R stuff.  It
> seems a bit out of scope to me... but I could be wrong.
>
> Scott
>
>

RE: Struts newbie questions

[Malcolm Davis <ma...@nuearth.com>]

Talking to several OO database types, 'POET' seems the most mature
'Java' OO database product.

Date wrote an article several years ago saying the pure relational worked
well with OO languages; the issue was that pure relational systems do not
exist.  RDBM manufactures are caught up in standards and SQL.

Is grouping data in related sets similar to grouping functionality in
related classes, good type cohesion?

Malcolm

-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Ganyo [mailto:scott.ganyo@etapestry.com]
Sent: Monday, June 26, 2000 10:36 PM
To: struts-user@jakarta.apache.org
Subject: RE: Struts newbie questions


> > - Why o why are we spending so much time with relational
> > databases, finding
> > that it's not a good match for OO-programming, and then turning to O-R
> > techniques? Why not an OODBMS? There must be even be open source
> > projects (I
> > know of one: Ozone). I realize that this is not Struts specific
> but since
> > accessing relational databases was mentioned in the user guide and
> > OR-mapping in the mailinglist, I couldn't help wondering.
>
> This I can't really answer, other than that they are VERY
> immature products
> thus far. I heard of Object Design..I think thats it, and they
> have had some
> bad reviews on its performance. I don't see whats the big deal. We have a
> "generic" class that takes a "schema" we make up that maps our classes to
> the fields of the database table. When we store an object, we simply pass
> along the object.Class to the method which maps the fields via
> the schema to
> the database table.

This is not true.  Check out GemStone.  They have been doing Object
Databases for about 15 years!  Also, the performance of an OODBMS can be
much faster than an RDBMS under certain circumstances (especially wrt.
complex object models).  We use GemStone and the performance is excellent.

I don't understand why structs would include any kind of O-R stuff.  It
seems a bit out of scope to me... but I could be wrong.

Scott

RE: Struts newbie questions

[Scott Ganyo <sc...@etapestry.com>]

> > - Why o why are we spending so much time with relational
> > databases, finding
> > that it's not a good match for OO-programming, and then turning to O-R
> > techniques? Why not an OODBMS? There must be even be open source
> > projects (I
> > know of one: Ozone). I realize that this is not Struts specific
> but since
> > accessing relational databases was mentioned in the user guide and
> > OR-mapping in the mailinglist, I couldn't help wondering.
>
> This I can't really answer, other than that they are VERY
> immature products
> thus far. I heard of Object Design..I think thats it, and they
> have had some
> bad reviews on its performance. I don't see whats the big deal. We have a
> "generic" class that takes a "schema" we make up that maps our classes to
> the fields of the database table. When we store an object, we simply pass
> along the object.Class to the method which maps the fields via
> the schema to
> the database table.

This is not true.  Check out GemStone.  They have been doing Object
Databases for about 15 years!  Also, the performance of an OODBMS can be
much faster than an RDBMS under certain circumstances (especially wrt.
complex object models).  We use GemStone and the performance is excellent.

I don't understand why structs would include any kind of O-R stuff.  It
seems a bit out of scope to me... but I could be wrong.

Scott

RE: Struts newbie questions

[Kevin Duffey <kd...@buymedia.com>]

Hi,

> Struts looks very good. Although I am only dabbling in JSP and servlets,
> I've decided to use this framework for my next application. But I do have
> some questions:
>
> - What HTML/JSP editor do you use, that will respect the struts tags. I
> would like to do the JSP page layout in a editor like GoLive or
> Dreamweaver.
> I'm currently using NebObjects Fusion for my sites, but that one
> is not very
> suitable fr JSP.

I use HomeSite, although I hear Dreamweaver is part of the WebGain Studio
package which includes VisualCafe, DreamWeaver and a UML tool in one IDE. I
don't know much about it though..I can't seem to find anything on it. I am
really interested if these "JSP" claimed editors will really do what JSP
editors should do..that is, be JavaBean aware and allow a "component" bar
full of JavaBeans that we can add to them, then drag/drop them in a GUI
fashion and be able to "place" their properties on the page so when
used..the dynamic content shows up. More so..TagLibs should also be
supported as part of the "TAG" bar, included with the <BR> tag, etc. Lastly,
I think they should have built in HTML->XML type of conversion, so that IF
we want our JSP pages to return XML output to use an XSLT engine with a
style sheet, we simply tell the IDE to turn all "non-compliant" html tags
into compliant XML ones. Thus, ALL <br> tags become <br />, <img src...>
tags become <img><src>/path/image.ext</src></img> etc. Something like that.
Those are the things we need for quick development of pages that are "java"
aware along the lines of J2EE. Until editors like that come out, I can't see
doing JSP specific capabilities in any way other than the "hard-coded"
methods, thus not utilizing any GUI advanatages a web page editor gives.

> - Why o why are we spending so much time with relational
> databases, finding
> that it's not a good match for OO-programming, and then turning to O-R
> techniques? Why not an OODBMS? There must be even be open source
> projects (I
> know of one: Ozone). I realize that this is not Struts specific but since
> accessing relational databases was mentioned in the user guide and
> OR-mapping in the mailinglist, I couldn't help wondering.

This I can't really answer, other than that they are VERY immature products
thus far. I heard of Object Design..I think thats it, and they have had some
bad reviews on its performance. I don't see whats the big deal. We have a
"generic" class that takes a "schema" we make up that maps our classes to
the fields of the database table. When we store an object, we simply pass
along the object.Class to the method which maps the fields via the schema to
the database table.

But, as we move to WebLogic, we will probably use TopLinks and a UML tool to
do these things for us anyways.