Re: Feedback on Java Code Generator

Just curious whether anyone has tried out Seam yet from JBoss which  
provides integration of Hibernate/JPA with Ajax-enabled JSF? This  
seems to address the same issues.

On Jan 8, 2008, at 7:52 AM, Jeoff Wilks wrote:

> If you're going to use code generation, consider doing it the way  
> Hibernate, Spring, etc. do it.
>
> 1. You right your code as POJOs, implementing a standard interface.
> 2. You access those POJOs through the interface.
> 3. Have your "code generation" kit extend your POJOs at load-time,  
> implementing the same interface.
>
> That is the opposite of having your classes extend the generated  
> classes.
>
> On 1/7/08, Tim Jowers <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Anyone have input into a Java code generator for quickly putting a  
> database on the web?  The design mantra is vanilla Java code and  
> KISS. Right now I am using JDBC metadata to produce a Data Access  
> Object, Value Object (aka Data Transfer Object), Business Object,  
> and Session Bean (inherits from BO). My goal is not to reinvent the  
> wheel in O-R mapping but to make something very simple. KISS. I  
> guess the industry trends are toward frameworks like AquaLogic or  
> Rails/Grails but this generator simply creates vanilla Java code so  
> it may be edited by a skilled programmer.
>
> What are the main issues with code generators? Feedback desired.
> 1. Generated code is unmaintainable. Yes. Seen that many times!  
> Generated code cannot be customized. So, for now, I'm created quite  
> simply Java code with no special techniques. Even 1.4 compliant (no  
> 1.5 language enhancements are being used).
> 2. Does not fit our framework. E.g. one client is using WebLogic  
> 8.1 which has source-annotated-comments which pre-dates Java  
> annotations. For them I might customize the code to be able to  
> generate webservices and EJB's with the old BEA WebLogic way of  
> doing things. They are considering moving to WLS 10 or maybe JBoss  
> 4.2. The code is vanilla Java code so the programmer can edit the  
> generated code as needed.
> 3. Round-tripping. How to generate the code a second time. The  
> present design I'm advocating is to extend the base class (BO) and  
> edit the new class. This way the generated code does not conflict  
> with manually changed code. Any other ideas?
>
>
> What are the main issues with O-R mapping/mappers? Feedback desired.
> 1. No support for complex relationships. E.g XMLBeans had no  
> capability to manage two tables/two object types. I'm using FK and  
> PK metadata to generated the VO's. I have methods for  
> "shallow" (just the table to object) and "deep" (all related  
> tables  to a hierarchy of objects).
> 2. No support for n-to-m relationships. I saw in the Grails  
> presentation they can create tables based on relational keywords in  
> the script class. Conversely, I think the n-to-m relationships can  
> be separated into three categories such as a lookup table  
> (picklist), an n-to-several, and a true n-to-many. I'm working on  
> defining these further as the real interest is how they are  
> rendered graphically. I have some db investigation code to make  
> estimates on these.
> 3. Does not create a good GUI. I think this is really the main  
> part. A smart user could edit a database directly, but a dumb user  
> needs calendar and other controls plus a workflow to make them  
> productive. I presently am rendering in JSP/HTML and in Flex. I'm   
> also thinking about how to make a workflow builder as the workflow  
> objects seems apparent from the relationships.
> 4. No support for ad hoc queries. I'm supporting ad-hoc queries by  
> the creation of a new BO. Internally the VO's which correspond to  
> the tables used int he query are used.
>
> A few other problems I've run into are:
> 1. Corporate databases are often not normalized. Lots of examples.
> 2. Database constraints are sometimes not defined so not available  
> in metadata.
>
> So far the result is I've been able to make JSP/HTML websites very  
> quickly. My personal style is I tend to hijack the JSP code and use  
> it in custom ways. E.g. http://www.gouno.com/ really is very custom  
> HTML/DHTML/JavaScript but uses the basic Java generated code on the  
> back end.
>
> My other consideration is what GUI framework to support next. I've  
> added support for REST, JSP/HTML, and some for Flex. I'm wondering  
> what is the most popular AJAX framework? DOJO? And also for some  
> reason would like to do a GTK interface since it it a native  
> framework and runs on the major OS's. Thoughts?
>
> Thanks for your feedback,
> Tim Jowers
>
>
>
>
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