Re: WebObjects 5.4 is out.

You and your lucky GMT+10 :)  Now that Leopard is officially released, I can actually comment on some of these things.  I can't 

• Combined Component Template Parser that reduces .wo components to single .html files

For people who are used to Wonder's, this is not the same implementation.  With 5.4's template parser, there are a couple notable differences:

1) 5.4 requires you to choose between using wod + html or inline.  You cannot mix and match within a single component like you can with Wonder's WOOGNL parser.

2) 5.4 DEFAULT syntax is, for example,  <wo:WOHyperlink action = ""/> with brackets rather than $doSomething like WOOGNL.  However, there is a configuration setting to switch to use $ if you'd like.  WOLips supports parsing bracket-style as well as offering completion for them.

3) The definition of which parser you use is an application setting.  This means that you cannot mix and match parsers among frameworks.  So if you want to use Wonder's parser, you cannot mix it with 5.4's (and vice versa).

4) WOOGNL framework does not currently work with 5.4.  I have a 5.4-compliant version ready, but due to some API changes, it requires changes to the Project Wonder build system.  Going forward, we will at the very least have to have separate 5.3 and 5.4 builds of WOOGNL, and probably the nightly build server will offer a separate complete 5.3/5.4 build.  I don't know what the timeframe is for addressing the build system issue.  In the meantime, I may just provide a custom build of WOOGNL for 5.4 that is not updated automatically for now.

5) The new 5.4 parser requires valid XML template files.

• AJAX request handler for enhanced page caching

This is basically ERXAjaxSession merged into core.  Currently Ajax framework does not make use of the core version, however, and will continue to use the ERXAjaxSession variant of this code.  It's unclear right now what will happen with Ajax framework with respect to the core versions.  It may be that we provide something like what we are planning to do with WOOGNL and switch out to use the 5.4 version on 5.4.  Obviously this increases testing requirements on us, though, because we'll have to test against 5.3 and 5.4 vs just using the overridden one in ERXAjaxSession all the time.

• Entity index management in the model

Entity Modeler supports specifying these.  If you happened to notice a few months back "Entity Indexes" appeared in Entity Modeler and someone asked "Nothing appears to use thing" and I said "Weird .. Yeah .. Nothing in the runtime DOES appear to use this.  That's very strange."  Well, now that makes more sense.

• Improved the synchronization with the database

Wonder migrations should benefit from this as well as Entity Modeler SQL generation (which calls through to EOF to perform generation).

• Support for enum in attribute conversion

There are a couple extra changes that have to be added to the Entity Modeler UI to support this and I think I have NOT added them yet (I can't recall offhand).  This will go in very soon.

• JavaMonitor

JavaMonitor and wotaskd are going to get their asses handed to them by Project Wonder when we slurp up this source code :)

• Tools (EOModeler, WebObjects Builder, Rule editor)

No more WOBuilder, Rule Editor or EOModeler .. they are gone.

I think this should not come as a surprise to anyone.  The writing has been on the wall for many months now that you need to transition over to the Apple recommended tools, and those tools are WOLips, Entity Modeler, and Rule Modeler (from Project Wonder).  Rule Modeler is hands-down-no-question-just-better, and honestly I suspect anyone doing real D2W development has been probably using that already.  Entity Modeler, I believe, offers almost everything that EOModeler has (except for the graphical layout view <which is coming> and the database explorer <which I'm contemplating>) as well as LOTS of things that EOModeler doesn't offer.  WOBuilder is just a great religious debate, but the arguments are getting weaker with every WOLips release.  At this point, however, it doesn't matter what your opinion of WOBuilder is, because it's gone, so you really just need to get onboard and help make things better if you're not happy with the current tools (or smile and enjoy yourself if you ARE happy with the new tools ;) ).

-Will Eclipse/WOLips work the expected way on 10.5? It's easy to try of course, but I'm sure some at WWDC as already stress test this setup and have a valuable insight:)

EOGenerator, EOReporter, and DBEdit no longer work on Leopard.  There are two alternatives that WOLips has for EOGenerator that are written and both fully working but neither is committed.  I expect that one of them will be officially committed in the next week.  I can't comment any more on this one at the moment, but suffice to say that there IS a fix for this coming very soon.

-If we develop on Leopard and deploy on Tiger, should/do we have to check the "WO 5.4" checkbox in Eclipse? what is it actually doing?

WO 5.4 checkbox switches the validator to require valid XML templates.  It's basically a much more strict validation.  I believe it also enables support for bracket syntax inline bindings.

-Should we keep the Tiger WO Frameworks on the development machine to prevent any issue as we'll be deploying on Leopard only in 2 month (so the deployment will stil be done on WO5.3 on Tiger)?

Yes.  Absolutely.  WO 5.4 = WO 5.4.0.  Like any .0 release, it does and will have problems.  You should never develop and test in against a different build than you deploy on.  It's a sure fire way to shoot yourself in the foot.  ESPECIALLY 5.3 vs 5.4.  API's are different.  There are things you literally just can't compile against both.

-If we work on WO5.4/Leopard and deploy on WO5.3/Tiger, what issue should we get ready to handle?

You should get ready to handle not doing this :)  Copy the WO 5.3 frameworks so you can choose to switch to them.  There is not a nice process for this right now.  I have a script that switches them out, but I think Anjo has a slightly nicer way where you can just change wobuild.properties to point to 5.3 or 5.4.

Have a great WO54:)

ms