[swcrissman]

I'm a student developer. With Apple's recent special offer, I'm considering getting and learning how to use Web Objects, but I'm unclear on a few things, and would like some help from people who have worked with WO.

In one of my classes recently, we made use of JSP's to build a web application. It sounds like web objects are very similar to jsp's. What advantages does Web Objects have? Is it primarily the construction tools? Is it just the API? I don't fully understand what the difference is between the two technologies. Could anyone distinguish between the two for me? It would be really useful if Apple had a page which distinguished/compared/contrasted WO with other technologies that achieve similar ends.

In one place, the WO page says that apps built with WO can be deployed on any lava 2 platform, and make use of different databases. In another place, it says that while that is true, it's only officially certified for a few platforms, and Oracle 8i. My web host uses RedHat and offers either MySQL or PostgreSQL. How difficult would it be to get WO working on such a setup?

There is also a special offer for OS X Server for students. The OS X Server page says that it includes full WO5 deployment. If I get OS X Server, do I still need to get WO5 to develope, or not? Is that basically just saying that I can, after developing a WO solution, deploy it on OS X Server, or something more?

As I mentioned, I'm a student and am attending classes full time, while working part time. While I'd like to learn WO, there's basically no way its going to be taught in any of my classes, so this would all be on my own. So I'd like to know, what is the learning curve like for WO? I'm familiar with Java, as well as HTML, though I wouldnt say I'm an expert at either. I dont really have any server admin type experience, although I do have fair amount of database experience. Given that, how hard is it going to be to pick up webobjects as a part time thing? Obviously, I dont expect to become a guru, but I would like to put together some web applications, as I feel it would be very informative and useful experience.

Thanks for taking the time to read/respond to my questions. I appreciate it.

Spencer

[lindberg]

Originally posted by swcrissman:
<STRONG>In one of my classes recently, we made use of JSP's to build a web application. It sounds like web objects are very similar to jsp's. What advantages does Web Objects have? Is it primarily the construction tools? Is it just the API? I don't fully understand what the difference is between the two technologies. Could anyone distinguish between the two for me? It would be really useful if Apple had a page which distinguished/compared/contrasted WO with other technologies that achieve similar ends.</STRONG>

They both generate HTML dynamically, but after that they're very different. JSP embeds the code amongst the HTML, whereas WebObjects strives to keep the two separate. The APIs are probably WO's strong suit
-- it's sort of a Cocoa for web development, and many of the same design techniques are used. [It was originally an Objective-C thing, and has gradually shifted to Java. WO 4.5.1 on OSX is ObjC, but WO5 is pure Java.]
WebObjects is probably more geared towards sites that have a lot of code behind them -- it's a pretty robust environment, but is likely overkill for simple sites.

I think there are things for JSP (struts?) that also try to separate the code out, but I have very little JSP experience so I can't comment too well on it.

<STRONG>In one place, the WO page says that apps built with WO can be deployed on any lava 2 platform, and make use of different databases. In another place, it says that while that is true, it's only officially certified for a few platforms, and Oracle 8i. My web host uses RedHat and offers either MySQL or PostgreSQL. How difficult would it be to get WO working on such a setup?</STRONG>

Probably not hard at all. WO5 was supposed to have been certified on RedHat (not sure which version), but I don't know if it actually has yet. But it is pure Java, so it should work fine. I'm pretty sure I've heard of people using it on Linux. The WOAdaptors (http-server plugins -- apache module, CGI, Netscape, IIS) are of course written in C, but I know people do use the apache module on Linux just fine.

WO5 uses JDBC, so anything with a JDBC driver stands a good chance of just working. WO has "plugins" for some databases that deal with some database-specific features better, but I think those only exist for oracle, openbase, and frontbase so far. I'm pretty sure I've heard of mysql working with just the JDBC driver; not sure about postgresql but it's definitely worth trying.

<STRONG>There is also a special offer for OS X Server for students. The OS X Server page says that it includes full WO5 deployment. If I get OS X Server, do I still need to get WO5 to develope, or not? Is that basically just saying that I can, after developing a WO solution, deploy it on OS X Server, or something more?</STRONG>

Right, that's basically what it's saying. You should be able to get the WO dev tools through the ADC program, even the free one I think at the moment. You will likely need to purchase WO though to deploy on Linux. For students I think WO is $99 standalone, or at least it used to be.

<STRONG>As I mentioned, I'm a student and am attending classes full time, while working part time. While I'd like to learn WO, there's basically no way its going to be taught in any of my classes, so this would all be on my own. So I'd like to know, what is the learning curve like for WO? I'm familiar with Java, as well as HTML, though I wouldnt say I'm an expert at either. I dont really have any server admin type experience, although I do have fair amount of database experience. Given that, how hard is it going to be to pick up webobjects as a part time thing? Obviously, I dont expect to become a guru, but I would like to put together some web applications, as I feel it would be very informative and useful experience.
</STRONG>

You can get fairly productive pretty quickly, without having to learn too much of the APIs. There is a lot there though, so it can take quite a while to get familiar with all the ways you can manipulate the product.

All the experience you mention should be very helpful, especially if you've used Cocoa at all -- some of the design techniques come from there and can seem a bit strange to pure Java folk. If you're used to hand-crafting SQL queries it can take some unlearning as well, as WO (well the EOF layer actually) generates the SQL itself, fetches full rows, and turns them into objects with the developer working with those objects. Raw SQL is possible if really needed though.

WO5 is a brand-new product, complete with bugs and new pecularities. I think developers used to previous WO versions are still coming to grips with it a bit, though most things are the same. You might want to join the webobjects-dev mailing list at omnigroup.com if you're interested. I think there's a webobjects-newbies mailing list at egroups.com (or groups.yahoo.com now, whatever).

[larkost]

A couple of extra notes:

Just because it has a JDBC adaptor does not mean it 'just works'. There are a few people working on getting PostgreSQL running (and some reports of sucess), but this requires more knowledge than of EOF than you are going to have to begin with (that is not where you want to attack the learning curve), and I just shudder at the thought of running WO with MySQL (there is NO transaction support!!). My recommendation would be to run FrontBase's eBusiness-Starter license (free.. yes I mean free), it just works.

WebObjects real strength is is the integration of everything. Creating custom database objects, even complicated multi-table ones, is strait forward, and a lot of the nitty-griity work is done for you. Not to mention Direct-to-Java-Client and Direct-to-Web. And EOF (the database objects) rocks.

There is simply no comparison from most jsp development environments to WebObjects, they are not in the same league. There is WebSphere from IBM, but I have not directly worked with it... but that would be as close as you could get.