Wakesoft

[Gonzalo Diethelm <go...@vtr.net>]

Could anybody familiar with the Wakesoft Architecture Server
provide comments, opinions or flames regarding this framework?
I'm particularly interested in comparisons between this thing
and other frameworks, including Avalon.

Just in case: http://www.wakesoft.com/

Thanks in advance,


-- 
Gonzalo A. Diethelm
gonzalo.diethelm@aditiva.com


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Re: Wakesoft

[Peter Donald <pe...@apache.org>]

On Sat, 28 Sep 2002 14:11, Gonzalo Diethelm wrote:
> Peter, thanks for taking the time to write that very enlightening reply!
> I'm asking about Wakesoft because in one of the projects I work for, a
> consultant who is usually well respected seems to be pretty excited
> about this framework; I fail to see its virtues, but before dismissing
> it I wanted to get other opinions.

If it happens to match your domain or can be customized to do so they can be 
great toolkits. If it doesn't they are PITAs ;)

> > The worst development project I worked on used a similar toolkit
> > that provide
> > to be inflexible - which resulted in us doing 4-5 times more work
> > than if we
> > coded it up ourselves.
>
> Would you care to share with us the name of that toolkit?
> Or maybe via a direct message to me?

It was years ago, in C++ and came out of academia. Unfortunately it came from 
someone who lacked real world experience in the domain. We weren't allowed to 
dump it for political reasons ;(

> > In contrast, the best project I worked on used a similar toolkit
> > and it saved us massive amounts of time.
>
> Same thing for this: could you share the toolkit name?

It was a custom toolkit built special purpose for the project. Essentially 
just read an xml document into an object model and then used that model to 
perform persistence, network distribution, client side caching, replication 
etc. 

I doubt any specific toolkit could have done what we needed;
* versioned objects that may have "branches" 
* may be distributed across multiple servers
* had specific conflict resolution rules when multiple servers synchronized
* icky mapping into relational database
* very particular clientside caching semantics

I guess it would be possible to build a generic toolkit to do this and 
annotate using "attributes" and customizable transformers but I have never 
had the time to do it ;) You would also need to be able to attach specific 
"features" onto each object on model. ie My current project has "actions" and 
"querys" associated with each object which is unique to this project.

> > My last 4.5 projects have used a MDA style
> > approach at least for certain aspects of the system and mostly
> > worked well
> > but we customized each model to specific domain.
>
> Was this using any specific framework or tools?

Not really. I recode the same thing over and over - lots of ugly copy n paste 
coding. As each model tends to be relatively domain specific it tends to be 
best to do it this way until a generic toolkit is found or built.

> In fact, I'm
> curious: I assume you use Avalon for most/all your projects;
> other than that, what libraries, frameworks and tools (open
> source or not) do you usually use?

I actually can't use Avalon as much as I would like to ;( 

Other things I tend to use;
* velocity
* xslt
* sitemesh (on sourceforge)
* xdoclet (on sourceforge) - however I will probably migrate to qdox/vDoclet 
if they can offer better stability than xdoclet.
* a customized torque 
* struts (though moving away from it now).
* ant

Will eventually use OJB 

> > *------------------------------------------------*
> >
> > | You can't wake a person who is pretending      |
> > |       to be asleep. -Navajo Proverb.           |
> >
> > *------------------------------------------------*
>
> Love the sayings as well!

:)

-- 
Cheers,

Peter Donald
Duct tape is like the force.  It has a light side, and a dark side, and
it binds the universe together ...
                -- Carl Zwanzig 


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RE: Wakesoft

[Gonzalo Diethelm <go...@vtr.net>]

> > Could anybody familiar with the Wakesoft Architecture Server
> > provide comments, opinions or flames regarding this framework?
> > I'm particularly interested in comparisons between this thing
> > and other frameworks, including Avalon.
> >
> > Just in case: http://www.wakesoft.com/
>
> I wasn't able to get to the meat of this framework - I kept encountering
> marketese, white papers, user reports, case studies ... arg!

Peter, thanks for taking the time to write that very enlightening reply!
I'm asking about Wakesoft because in one of the projects I work for, a
consultant who is usually well respected seems to be pretty excited
about this framework; I fail to see its virtues, but before dismissing
it I wanted to get other opinions.

> If source is generated the framework can either;
> a. Require you to subclass things to get functionality (like
> torque allowing
> subclasses of objects)
> b. Require you to modify generated code
>
> My personal preference is to avoid (b) at all costs because it is hard to
> evolve and is basically "wizards" from MS world of development.

Same here.

> Sun has one of these frameworks, I believe Oracle has one. There
> is also a
> large number of opensource ones. One that someone has recommended to me is
> http://www.javanovic.com/ which I think is a Struts centric
> version of this.

Will check it.

> The worst development project I worked on used a similar toolkit
> that provide
> to be inflexible - which resulted in us doing 4-5 times more work
> than if we
> coded it up ourselves.

Would you care to share with us the name of that toolkit?
Or maybe via a direct message to me?

> In contrast, the best project I worked on used a similar toolkit
> and it saved us massive amounts of time.

Same thing for this: could you share the toolkit name?

> My last 4.5 projects have used a MDA style
> approach at least for certain aspects of the system and mostly
> worked well
> but we customized each model to specific domain.

Was this using any specific framework or tools? In fact, I'm
curious: I assume you use Avalon for most/all your projects;
other than that, what libraries, frameworks and tools (open
source or not) do you usually use?

> Anyways this sort of framework is othogonal to Avalon. In fact
> Avalon may be a
> target of that framework (or it could use EJB SessionBeans). If
> you want to
> see how I think it should be done; search back through the Avalon mailing
> list for "Attribute Driven Development" and "Model Driven Development". A
> couple of weeks ago I was yammering on about it ;)

I'm reading those threads right now. Thanks a lot for the feedback.

> Peter Donald
> *------------------------------------------------*
> | You can't wake a person who is pretending      |
> |       to be asleep. -Navajo Proverb.           |
> *------------------------------------------------*

Love the sayings as well!


--
Gonzalo A. Diethelm
gonzalo.diethelm@aditiva.com


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Re: Wakesoft

[Peter Donald <pe...@apache.org>]

Hi,

On Sat, 28 Sep 2002 10:02, Gonzalo Diethelm wrote:
> Could anybody familiar with the Wakesoft Architecture Server
> provide comments, opinions or flames regarding this framework?
> I'm particularly interested in comparisons between this thing
> and other frameworks, including Avalon.
>
> Just in case: http://www.wakesoft.com/

I wasn't able to get to the meat of this framework - I kept encountering 
marketese, white papers, user reports, case studies ... arg!

However I think that I know what it probably looks like. Usually these sort of 
frameworks allow you to define an application model using some high-level 
modelling language (like UML or a derivative). This model is then used to 
either;
1. build a database of model at runtime and use that to "interpret" 
application. (ie I tend to use Commons DynaObject style classes in this sort 
of case) This will also add plugin points where you can write your domain 
specific services
2. generate the source code for the boiler plate code and allow you to 
customize it. Ie generate the Object Model, generate the database/network 
peers. Generate forms to edit objects etc.

If source is generated the framework can either;
a. Require you to subclasss things to get functionality (like torque allowing 
subclasses of objects)
b. Require you to modify generated code

My personal preference is to avoid (b) at all costs because it is hard to 
evolve and is basically "wizards" from MS world of development.

There is a huge number of these frameworks around. Many are very specific to 
particular domains or technologies while others are more generic. Many more 
are emerging to deal with things like making 2-tier or 3-tier a deploy time 
concern. Using EJBs or not becomes a deployment concern etc.

Sun has one of these frameworks, I believe Oracle has one. There is also a 
large number of opensource ones. One that someone has recomended to me is 
http://www.javanovic.com/ which I think is a Struts centric version of this.

In Apache there is not anything like this. If you could extend the Torque xml 
model and use it to gernerate RMI distribution layers, gui forms and so forth 
then it may come close.

Essentially the process ends up being

Model --> Transform --> Write services == Application

(Though some frameworks also have services as part of model).

If Wakesoft allows you to extend their model, add more transforms (I think it 
allows this) then it could be useful. Then it just comes down to how well it 
matches your application domain.

The worst development project I worked on used a similar toolkit that provide 
to be inflexable - which resulted in us doing 4-5 times more work than if we 
coded it up ourselves. 

In contrast, the best project I worked on used a similar toolkit and it saved 
us massive amounts of time. My last 4.5 projects have used a MDA style 
approach at least for certain aspects of the system and mostly worked well 
but we customized each model to specific domain.

Anyways this sort of framework is othogonal to Avalon. In fact Avalon may be a 
target of that framework (or it could use EJB SessionBeans). If you want to 
see how I think it should be done; search back through the Avalon mailing 
list for "Attribute Driven Development" and "Model Driven Development". A 
couple of weeks ago I was yammering on about it ;)

-- 
Cheers,

Peter Donald
*------------------------------------------------*
| You can't wake a person who is pretending      |
|       to be asleep. -Navajo Proverb.           |
*------------------------------------------------* 


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RE: Wakesoft

[Robert <rm...@bull-enterprises.com>]

I'm glad you found this. We have something similar to their product and
our marketing guy has been begging me to find competitors.

I agree a lot with what Peter said, especially about wizard generated
applications and code generators. I'm NOT a fan of generators myself and
have been pushing for our product to not go that route (a tough battle I
must say). From the few minutes I spent looking at it, mostly the API, I
would agree with Peter that it is similar to what Avalon tries to do,
but at a lower, more consolidated level. 

Wakesoft's seemed pretty complete, but I couldn't get a grasp on how it
was configured or anything like that. It looks pretty well thought out
and executed. Of course that doesn't mean it's a silver bullet but I
also would not say it is an incorrect or just plain bad way to go.

- Robert

-----Original Message-----
From: Gonzalo Diethelm [mailto:gonzalo.diethelm@vtr.net] 
Sent: Friday, September 27, 2002 7:02 PM
To: Avalon Developers List
Subject: Wakesoft

Could anybody familiar with the Wakesoft Architecture Server
provide comments, opinions or flames regarding this framework?
I'm particularly interested in comparisons between this thing
and other frameworks, including Avalon.

Just in case: http://www.wakesoft.com/

Thanks in advance,


-- 
Gonzalo A. Diethelm
gonzalo.diethelm@aditiva.com


--
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<ma...@jakarta.apache.org>
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<ma...@jakarta.apache.org>



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