General comments on Turbine 2.2b1

[Will Glass-Husain <wg...@forio.com>]

Hi,

I've just finished a month working with Turbine 2.2b1, and have a couple of
comments.  (I sent some notes on Torque to the Torque user list).

1.  What is Turbine and how is it different from template systems like
Velocity?  Took me a while to realize that Turbine is simply a framework
that assembles dynamic pages, with an optional security model, a general
purpose database front-end and a nice set of utilities.  It's a great tool
and the price was right.

2.  It's a little hard for new users to get a overall picture of Turbine.
The docs are helpful, but a little scattered.  (Don't mean to put them down,
it's clear there's been some hard work on them).  It'd be terrific if
someone were to write a book with a nice high level view (and offer
seminars) -- be a good way to build the user base.  (and maybe make a nice
living).

3.  The decoupling of Torque was a good step, but it's not complete.  In
particular, the security model (e.g. TurbineSecurity.getUsers) takes the old
Criteria (org.apache.turbine.util.db.Criteria) as an argument.  This was a
significant limitation in my ability to use the security methods.  I ended
up doing queries directly to TURBINE_USER, and writing utility routines that
translated between TurbineUserPeer and User.  (I've attached the code, if
anyone's interested).  A temporary stop gap, but not efficient and doesn't
take advantage of the abstraction layer around the security code.  There's a
few other places like this.  It's also difficult to explain to my clients
why they need to fill in database info twice (in TurbineResource.properties
and in Torque.properties).

Thanks to everyone for being part of this community and this excellent list.

Best, WILL
_______________________________________
Forio Business Simulations
Will Glass-Husain
(415) 440-7500 phone
(415) 235-4293 mobile

wglass@forio.com
www.forio.com