Re: IBM/MyFaces JSF vs. Tapestry

>For example, the fact that Tapestry uses SPAN tags to identify their
elements is a bit of genius on their part.
Yeah, and one of the cool things about they way they use tags is that in
your template or mockup page you can put test data in there and when the
page renders it removes the mock data with what the component obtained from
it's data source.  This makes it much easier to conceptualize a page when
data is put in there (especially for multi row tables).

Another thing I am really enjoying Java 5.0's Annotation features. Makes it
easy to do stuff like mark variables for persistance:
http://jakarta.apache.org/tapestry/tapestry-annotations/index.html#Persist


It's interesting how a specification will come out from the big players and
it will end up having too much complication built into it. Then a more honed
approached will be taken by a third party and blow the specification
technology out of the water. I think this is what Tapestry has the potential
to do to JSF and it is what Hibernate has done to EJB 2.0 (note that I am
paraphrasing and have not used EJB 2.0 but do use Hibernate for all data
access).

It took me awhile to figure out the approach Tapestry was taking (mostly
trying to clear the JSF mindset out), but now I am having some "ah ha!"
moments and am starting to like it.

Here are some interesting Tapestry supporting technologies.

https://trails.dev.java.net/ - Trails allows you to build a CRUD application
in literally seconds based off of your "domain" objects. It is interesting
in that it uses dynamic "injections" to get data from the data source to the
end page. I have only used it once, but it appears to let you override
functionality only where you need to, otherwise it does the rest of the work
for you.  I am a bit skeptical about this one just because I like to see the
code, but it does hold promise.  This has come about because of the Ruby On
Rails phenomonon in the past year or so.

http://tacos.sourceforge.net/ - This takes Tapestry and integrates AJAX into
the mix which makes for some REALLY useful functionality (at least in my
mind).  Check out the FloatingPane example here: http://tinyurl.com/8gxof.
Notice how it brings up what appears to be a new window but if you click on
the "parent" page it doesn't lose focus on the child. This made me think of
F4 prompts that we have grown to love on the iSeries because they are so
easy to use.  

Anyways, hope some of that info was useful.
Aaron Bartell
http://mowyourlawn.com/blog


-----Original Message-----
From: web400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:web400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Joe Pluta
Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2006 5:44 PM
To: 'Web Enabling the AS400 / iSeries'
Subject: Re: [WEB400] IBM/MyFaces JSF vs. Tapestry

Ah, Aaron, I'm glad you're the guy posing this question!  You know that I'm
no friend of frameworks because in my mind they tend to clutter the process
rather than simplify it, and they also tend to lock you into the frameworks
designer's way of thinking.  I've counseled in the past that people who are
determined to use a framework need to look at other options.  Tapestry is
one of those other options, and a very good one in my book.

For example, the fact that Tapestry uses SPAN tags to identify their
elements is a bit of genius on their part.  WYSIWYG editors tend to ignore
spans, which means you can put a real example of what you want inside the
tag.  I wish that JSP expressions had the same concept.

Anyway, please let me know how it goes.  It looks like there's a pretty
strong base of Tapestry users out there as well as a lot of documentation,
books and tutorials.

Joe


> From: albartell
> Sent: Thursday, February 16, 2006 1:54 PM
> To: web400@xxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: [WEB400] IBM/MyFaces JSF vs. Tapestry
> 
> So, my question, has anybody else gone down the JSF route and switched 
> to Tapestry like I am attempting to do?


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