[Ilja]

I'm starting a project where I have to create a website based on j2ee technology, including webservices. Is webobjects worth buying for it?

[gralem]

I will say that I'm not very "up" on WO/J2EE integration. But if your looking for a solid web service provider solution--WebObjects seriously rocks. The price is incredibly low, as well.

Remember this key to WebObjects--the database modeller. From that data model, everything else flows. Your java code, your bindings on your web pages. And from your java code, your web services are designed. And you can do it with *ZERO* sql statements. I have an app running for our clients where I have exactly one "EO" (WO for database) request. WO then fetches (queries) the database as needed depending on what the client does on the site. It's truly amazing.

If you want to not have any custom java code and just get web services into your database, WO has a way to do this right from the data model. Direct2WebServices in WO52. You start up a new D2WS app, point it to your data model (must be build beforehand) and it spits out a ready-to-run web service to access your data. It can be controlled with a set of rules using "Rule Editor"--and you're ready to go.

There are also options for WO Applications to build them for "Deploy as an Enterprise JavaBean container" and "Deploy in a servlet container". Presumably, you can take those built objects and dump them into any J2EE application or deployment.

There are downsides to WO. The web page builder (WebObjects Builder) is greatly lacking from Dreamweavers ease-of-use. But I have found no HTML/CSS/JS implementation that could not be prototyped in DW, then brought into WOBuilder.

It also has a LOT of custom classes. Apple education is nearly a requirement for any serious WO development. So that adds to the cost. And there aren't that many good books on the subject.

So to recap--the WO DataModeller and EnterpriseObjects (EO) frameworks are the key to the success of WO.

WO can basically do anything that java can do, plus it's own special things.

WO works well with others, as a stand-alone Web Service provider or HTML application server (or "presumably" in the J2EE enviroments mentioned above).

Working with others, it also deploys out of the box with Apache (OSX/solaris) IIS (win) a generic CGI (OSX/solaris/win) and NSAPI (solaris). They provide source so you can build your own for other platforms (linux/HP/BSD/whatever).

I love it. I have not found anything that can replace it. I have not found anything similar to it for any similar price. I have not found anything that from the ground up is designed to interoperate with any system you may run (so many development environments are tied to windows or to oracle, etc).

Hope this helps. Please as for more detail on what you expect out of WO and I will try to give some specific insight.

---gralem

[Arkham_c]

I'm not that up on WebObjects, but I do know J2EE. Using container-managed persistence (CMP) beans, you can avoid SQL with J2EE as well. You will of course have to write Java code to process requests to the servlets.

My understanding is that WebObjects is really two servers in one -- one is a WebObjects server and the other is a J2EE server. You can do both with WebObjects, so it might be a good choice regardless of the path you take. I do J2EE development with WebLogic, but WebLogic is very expensive. There are free solutions like JBoss, and affordable solutions like Resin, but I can't speak for the efficiency or performance of those tools. WebObjects is a proven, scalable solution.

[Ilja]

Originally posted by gralem:
Very usefull information Gralem

Geez, forgot about this thread :o

But thanks a million for this information Gralem, very usefull

[Angus_D]

WO looks spiffy, but it has a very steep initial learning curve AFAICT (and I did look a little while back). I'm also not convinced about the way Apple is managing the technology, and several people I know of in the UK WO community have similar concerns and are trying to reduce their dependency on the technology. Make of that what you will...

[gralem]

Originally posted by Angus_D:
WO looks spiffy, but it has a very steep initial learning curve AFAICT (and I did look a little while back).

This is very true. The learning curve is fairly steep. If you know nothing about Java, and then go and learn WebObjects, you'll end up knowing both Java and WO. But if you know Java *REALLY* well, and go into to learn WebObjects, it will probably take you as long as a non-java student to learn WO.

---gralem

[Arkham_c]

Originally posted by Angus_D:
WO looks spiffy, but it has a very steep initial learning curve AFAICT (and I did look a little while back). I'm also not convinced about the way Apple is managing the technology, and several people I know of in the UK WO community have similar concerns and are trying to reduce their dependency on the technology. Make of that what you will...

This may be true, but J2EE has a VERY steep learning curve. You have to have a local interface and a remote interface, and you have to decide about using RMI-OOP or using a localHome and remoteHome. You have to learn about entity beans versus stateful session beans versus stateless session beans versus message-driven beans

On top of that, most J2EE developers end up using a MVC language for presentation like Jakarta Struts, so you have to learn that too.