Re: [xwt-users]Shouldn't the server be as easy.

Hello Eric,

>   I have been watching and playing with XWT for a year
> or so now. Its a great project and I think it has a
> bright future. One of the things that the existence of
> XWT has let me think about is making the server side
> as easy to develop and maintain as XWT makes the
> client side. To that end I am working on an IDE and
> scripting environment for the XMLRPC/SOAP services
> themselves. I have been tinkering with the design for 
> 6 months or so and I have finally started a
> sourceforge project and started coding. 
> 
>  When phase one is done you should be able to code
> your services in javascript (via the rhino engine)
> using an api written in java (much like XWT) with an
> IDE built in XWT. My short term goal is to have a
> working server environment and editing environment in
> as short a time as possible. There after I will add
> enterprise ready pieces like security, checkout of
> services, etc. I will eventually enhance the gui to
> include auto completion, auto indenting, etc.

While I certainly recognize the huge benefits for something like
this for the client side, I personally don't see any benefit in
replicating j2ee/.Net/Zope (or even ASP/PHP, although I don't think
these are in the same ballpark) just so you can use JavaScript. Using
VisualStudio.Net or Eclipse you can already do easy server-side stuff
(check out http://ws.apache.org/xmlrpc/server.html) with auto-completion,
auto indenting, etc, and if you really want to use javascript, I think
.Net will allow you to do so.

We have a restricted ECMAScript version in the engine, with usually limited
stuff implemented  in it, precisely because the GUI can be rather dumb
(presentation, basic validation) while anything that requires
intelligence or trust happens at the backend.

> Hopefully in the long term I can provide an integrated
> IDE for the client applications as well.

As I said, *this* would be massively useful.

>  My main goal is to eventually be able to do my real
> work (at my job) with this environment and XWT. This
> would make my apps much more interactive.

XWT will, on the client side. On the server side it really shouldn't
matter much, and any environment that helps you get stuff done should
suffice (see above).

> I am doing
> the dev work on my own time so I can release it to the
> community, I hope someone besides myself finds it
> useful but even if they don't its going to help me out
> allot ;)
> 
> In any case, I thought it might interest you guys a
> bit. The project is available on sourceforge at
> polar.sourceforge.net. Its not going to be usable for
> a few weeks yet though, but there are pieces showing
> up in cvs already. The project shows a longer
> (sourceforge) history then it actually has because I
> took an old dead project I had on sourceforge and just
> reused the space for this new project.

Don't by any means let my arguments discourage you if this particular
project simply sparks your interest; I'm quite curious where Polar could
go.
-- 
Emiliano