Beginner questions... 2004-05-26 - By Steven J. Owens
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Hi,
On Mon, May 17, 2004 at 12:13:07PM -0700, Laughlin, Joseph V wrote:
> Not sure if this is the right place to post this question.. If it's not,
> please let me know where a better place might be.
>
> My background: Strong object-oriented knowledge, mostly with C++ and
> python. Previous web applications have been using php and mysql. Never
> used Java before.
>
> I'm beginning a fairly large web project sometime soon. I'd like to get
> away from php/mysql, so I'm looking at using J2EE. Being that I've
> never used any Java-related technology before, I don't really know
> what's good and what's not. I've read some good things about JavaServer
> Faces, it looks like it might fit my needs.
Definitely check out JSF, it looks very promising. However, bear
in mind that it's relatively recent, so any weak spots in the
implementation (or worse, the design) have yet to be found.
JSF has a lot of push from Sun behind it, so if your project
isn't supercritical, you'd do well to get ahead of the curve and jump
into JSF. So far the best quick intro I've read of JSF is at:
http://www.horstmann.com/corejsf/
I'm a bit of a servlet purist. I highly recommend reading the
servlet specification, a little less so the JSP specification. Bear
in mind that JSP is essentially a way to conveniently write
output-oriented servlets.
Struts has a heck of a lot of industry adoption, and it does in
fact address a lot of weak points in the servlet spec. The main
problem I have with struts is the same problem I have with JSF, which
is that it imposes its own model overlaying the java web application
model. Which way you prefer to go is up to you.
> So my question is, where should I begin? What's a good IDE (I've never
> used any IDEs before, always vim) for a linux platform? I'd like to use
> Junit as well, so it would be nice if it would also integrated into the
> IDE.
I like emacs with JDE, but that's me.
If you can afford it, Intellij IDEA is fantastic. I hear they
have a christmas sale regularly, half off ($250 instead of $500).
Eclipse is very, very popular and generally considered to be one
of the best.
NetBeans is at least decent, hard to measure it against the
others.
I don't know much about the Oracle IDE, I'd say the main reason
to go with that is if you're already committed to using Oracle DB and
tools.
As for the servlet engine, etc, Tomcat is the reference
implementation and it's what I know the most about, but I hear that
Jetty has a better JSP compiler, and Resin is supposed to be really
slick. Then again, if you want to do this project as a way to build
your resume, Bea Weblogic or IBM Websphere may have demo licenses you
can use.
In general, the main drawback to doing a webapp in java is that
you end up doing a heck of a lot more "busy work". This is true at
the high level (lots of munging XML config files) and the low level
(java as a language is a lot more detail focused (neurotic, perhaps)
than perl or php). On the other hand, I think java tends to deal with
more complex projects better, and you get the benefit of the massive
amounts of java APIs.
I'm interested in your comments, coming from PHP to java. I've
been thinking of picking up PHP for trivial web projects (mainly
because I have some colleagues who occasionally need help with PHP
projects). The main problem I've seen, so far, is that PHP doesn't
seem to have any sort of comprehensive framework, like the servlet
API. Then again, I have yet to put any real effort into this topic,
so maybe there's a PHP framework I don't know about.
I've been working on a java web tutorial, it's still in rough
draft form, but if you read it and bug me with questions and requests
for expansion/clarification, I may get it done sooner. It's at:
http://www.darksleep.com/notablog
Look for "Java Web Applications", it's in four parts. My aim
with this tutorial is more to walk you through the topic, relying on
the reader to be competent and follow through by reading up on
specific topics. As I said, it's rough, but I think you might find it
useful.
--
Steven J. Owens
puff@(protected)
"I'm going to make broad, sweeping generalizations and strong,
declarative statements, because otherwise I'll be here all night and
this document will be four times longer and much less fun to read.
Take it all with a grain of salt." - Me at http://darksleep.com
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