Re: Struts

From: Dean, Robert

Struts is dead.

No, it isn't.  It wants to go for a walk.  Some people want to beat it
over the head, but it doesn't want to go on the cart.

Oh VERY good.  Much better than my Keith Richards analogy...

They are taking a new technology and calling it Struts 2.  It's not a
revision like RPG IV or even a new version like RPG /free.  It's a new
product.  Migration from Struts 1 is not particularly easy, especially

the

JSPs.

No, they're not.  If they were, it would have been out last November when
the announcement was made.  No, they're taking a new technology and making
it into a new Struts because it matched up nicely with their roadmap.  It
makes use of common services, including the Tag Libraries and Velocity
templates (which technically no longer require Struts).

This is a real stretch.  In any case, Struts 1 is now a branch technology,
which means for all intents and purposes it is dead.  I don't care how many
people still use it, the numbers will be steadily dropping, not climbing. 

So, regardless of what anyone says, your Struts 1 applications are now
officially outmoded.

This is an odd comment coming from someone in the iSeries development
community.  From an iSeries developer, you'd expect the (far more
pragmatic) view of "it's not outmoded until it stops working or I can't
maintain it anymore."

Struts 1 has an upgrade path to Struts 2.  It does not have an upgrade
path to Tapestry, Cocoon, WebWork, Stripes, JSF, Wicket, etc.

That's because I know full well RPG will be being actively supported and
developed by IBM five, ten, maybe even twenty years from now.  Struts 1 will
have lost nearly any development momentum within two years.  I could be
wrong, but I'd be willing to wager a REALLY nice dinner on it.  Of course,
two years from now we might all be Walmart greeters...

The bottom line is that Struts is the most widely used framework by some
of IBM's most important customers (financial institutions), and the
support should be updated to the latest versions.  It'd sure make
WebFacing less painful to customize.

My bottom line is that Struts is last year's news.  Struts 2 is probably
going to do more to splinter the community than to strengthen it, but even
if I'm wrong there is no reason for WDSC to spend any time supporting Struts
1.  I have a hard time finding a reason to support Struts 2, but I suppose
that if it does get standardized it might make sense.  I don't know.

I'd still tell anyone who was making a decision from scratch to go with JSF.

Joe