Re: keel, spring and other frameworks

hi Shash

thanks a lot for the detailed answer! i'm beginning now to ask questions :-)

most webapps i have to develop are sort of an administration for any 
data stored in a relational database.
so one of the things coming up every time again, are typical 
CRUD-applications for data saved in one or more tables.

let's say i have just one table with words in a foreign language (for a 
dictionary). the first thing i need to offer is a webapp to create, edit 
and delete records in this one table.

what is the typical way to do something like this in keel? what should i 
do first? after setting up eclipse to develop with the default-set of 
keel-modules, of course :-)

thanks and greetings
stefan



Shash Chatterjee wrote:

> Stefan,
> 
> I think the biggest hurdle you are going to face in Keel is documentation,
> once you get beyond just the very newbie phase.  There are plenty of examples
> in code, but you have to dig or ask questions.  This is likely Keel's biggest
> flaw, one that we have all the intentions of fixing, but it is a slow process.
> 
> As far as differences between Keel and Spring go.  Spring is primarily an
> inversion-of-control container (IOC), Keel uses a IOC container
> (Avalon/Excalibur Fortress).  Spring's container does dependency injection by
> calling setters to provide configuration, in Keel/Avalon you actually have to
> implement a "configure(....)" method to configure your component, which in
> turn can call the setters.  Keel on the other hand, allows you to provide
> custom life-cycles.
> 
> Keel's main focus is on services though, and it provides an abstraction for
> every service (persistence, client/view, scripting, scheduling).  All the
> implementations of each service follow the same interface.  In, Keel, you can
> use native persistence or Hibernate, using the exact same interface to both
> services (or, you could instantiate Hibernate natively, if you so chose).  In
> Spring, you have different persistence mechanisms supported, but they stand on
> their own.
> 
> Keel also supports a common architecture for distributing
> (load-balancing/fail-over too) your app.  Keel makes it very easy to switch
> UIs (Struts versus Cocoon versus Webwork) if you so choose, without changing
> your app.  Keel has a built-in authentication and authorization service that
> applies orthogonally to all components.
> 
> Keel also has an integrated build system, or you could do custom Ant or Maven
> build.
> 
> Keel is not monolithic at all, just the download itself is big; what you
> choose to deploy from there has very fine-grained control. The price is that
> you have to get involved in digging for answers.
> 
> Hope this gets you started....
> 
> Shash
> 
> 
>>hi keel-users
>>
>>i'm looking around since a while to find a java-framework for 
>>programming webapps more easily.
>>
>>until now, i'm using struts, but i'd like to focus on my app and 
>>don't like to build up a "framework" myself just to save things to a 
>>database or build a login-page and protect functions of my app.
>>
>>on the other hand i don't want to have a giant monolithic block for 
>>things that need just 5 percent of it - modularity is therefore also 
>>a serious concern.
>>
>>as a third main focus, i'm a java-beginner with some struts 
>>experience and would be happy about a learning curve, not a 
>>"vertical-learning-line" :-)
>>
>>having these three main "features" in focus, i read articles about 
>>keel, appfuse and spring.
>>
>>i like the philosophy of keel very much, but i had serious problems 
>>to start with it ("focus number three"-problem). most of all because 
>>i didn't see "the big picture" and lack of documentation (sorry 
>>guys; but the began pdf-file is a great step forward! go on with it!)
>>
>>after this "crash" i looked at appfuse (but don't tried it hands-on 
>>yet) to "extend" struts with the components i need - and finally the 
>>appfuse-path was pointing to spring-framework.
>>
>>long story, short question: can anybody outline the most important 
>>differences between these frameworks - or - is there anything else 
>>that's the best thing for somebody like me?
>>
>>i'm some kind of confused what to use for my current webapp and need 
>>some advice. most of all i don't want to invest lots of time just to 
>>realize that i took the wrong framework...
>>
>>thanks for your help and greetings
>>stefan