RE: beans and JSPs and stuff... -- JAVA400-L

This was a very enlightening read.  I do see where I am still thinking like
a midrange programmer, but I also see the tendency to assume that if we did
use JSPs, Beans and Servlets that it would all be done correctly and in a
best case scenario.  As we know, this is never the case.

CGI isn't perfect, I'll admit that.  But, in a best case scenario, a lot can
be done.
JSPs, beans and servlets aren't perfect either.  In a best case scenario,
again, a lot can be done.  

But we have to remember that no one is perfect, not every shop as a team of
programmers, another of web designers, etc.. etc... which is seems is the
assumption when comparing these technologies.  

Brad

  

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Joe Pluta [mailto:joepluta@plutabrothers.com]
> Sent: Tuesday, February 27, 2001 10:12 AM
> To: JAVA400-L@midrange.com
> Subject: RE: beans and JSPs and stuff...
> 
> 
> "I tend to use control or attribute files that hold 
> attributes for certain
> pieces of the page.  Also, I use style sheets very extensivley."
> ----------
> I find that people want to design their own pages, or 
> outsource the page development to another firm that 
> specializes in web content design.  What if the customer 
> wants to move to a different application server with 
> different tags?  Or if they simply want to add something that 
> you haven't thought of?  They'll have to go through your code 
> to change that stuff.
> 
> You have two possibilities: a servlet that delivers a 
> complete web page from top to bottom with little or no 
> control by the customer (other than some "attributes" which 
> you've chosen), or a component based design where widgets 
> supply dynamic data in a component manner to be placed on the 
> web page as the designer wishes.
> 
> You methodology is equivalent to the same monolithic 
> programming practices that midrange programmers have used 
> forever: the programmer designs the interface from top to 
> bottom, and when the end user needs a change, they have to 
> ask the programmer to change something and recompile the code.
> 
> If, on the other hand, you deliver flexible data components 
> that can be placed anywhere on the screen, this allows a 
> designer the ability to design the page however they see fit. 
>  The more loosely you couple the widgets with the page 
> content, the more flexible the design is.
> 
> The end user can go to an outside firm that has web content 
> expertise to design the pages.  They simply need to leave 
> "holes" in the website where the dynamic components go.  In 
> my opinion, there's no way you design a professional website 
> without this level of separation.  There isn't an RPG 
> programmer (or Java programmer) out there who knows both the 
> nuances of business programming and the ins and outs of web 
> design.  If you try to do both, you're likely going to be 
> mediocre at one, if not both.
> 
> 
> "Assume you have an engine that allows customer to order 
> t-shirts.  But,
> there are 100 different companies you're acting as a server 
> for.  Each of
> the 100 companies has a different "face" to their website.
> 
> Using JSPs the way I think your describing them means you 
> would need at
> least one JSP for each company, then multiply that by how 
> many "pages" the
> site has."
> ---------
> Absolutely incorrect.  But you might think that, because 
> you're not an expert web designer - you're an expert 
> programmer.  An expert web designer will design a single JSP 
> that in turn uses a style sheet.    For common business 
> functions (such as file maintenance) it's easy to build a 
> common widget that can be plunked into a simple JSP - this 
> gives you many file maintenance progams with one widget.  At 
> the same time, you can set the style by included a style 
> sheet in the JSP, thereby allowing different users to have 
> different styles.  And all of this can be under the control 
> of a web content designer, where it belongs, and not a programmer.
> 
> I don't know if you've ever seen the amount of work involved 
> in creating a really creative and good-looking web site - 
> take a look at http://www.edeployment.com for an example.  
> The number of iterations that went through was incredible - 
> to have to recompile a servlet every time we wanted to make a 
> change in an image or a position would have killed us.
> 
> 
> "Using an attribute file I can use one CGI program (Servlet, 
> eRPG, etc), read
> the attributes for the site and then dynamically build my HTML.  No
> hardcoding (you learn not to do that right away, at least I did)."
> -----------
> Yes you can, and as long as I like what the programmer thinks 
> looks good, then I'm in good shape.  In the real world, my 
> clients each have their own idea about what looks good and 
> what doesn't.  Some want splash screens, some want frames, 
> some want bottom border navigation, some want drop down 
> menus.  Some find their own applets to use.  With the CGI 
> approach, every change like this requires programming - 
> programming that can in turn break the original, working 
> code.  It's a terribly bad design decision to have to 
> recompile the code that delivers dynamic business data 
> whenever you need to change the site's appearance.
> 
> 
> "I find it hard to believe that a non-programmer could do 
> anything more than
> a very simple JSP code, and most sites aren't simple.  When you say
> non-programmer, do you mean someone like my mom (Manager of 
> GNC for the past
> 10000 years), or do you mean a "super user" who understands 
> iteration and
> boolean checks, HTML and web design, but doesn't necesarily 
> know how to
> "program".  I assume you are leaning closer to the latter, 
> but when you say
> "any user" you're really bending the definition to a point that is
> misunderstood by some."
> ---------
> By non-programmer, I mean "web content designer".  An expert 
> web content designer probably has as much or more technical 
> knowledge about HIS area of expertise as you or I do in ours. 
>  It's just that their expertise doesn't involve RPG or Java - 
> it instead involves HTML and style sheets and ColdFusion and 
> Dreamweaver.  While it's feasible for an RPG programmer to 
> become an expert in DDS design, it is not possible for 
> someone to be expert in the wildly disparate disciplines of 
> programming and web content design.  And so, if you want to 
> take advantage of really good web design, you'll need to 
> separate the programming from the web content.
> 
> And this is why CGI programming is bad.  Period.  If you 
> program CGI, either in RPG or in Java (servlets without JSP 
> is essentially CGI), then you are locking your clients into 
> your idea of what a good web page is, and frankly, web 
> content beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder.
> 
> Joe
> 
> 
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