Re: Is WO dead?
Re: Is WO dead?
- Subject: Re: Is WO dead?
- From: "Jerry W. Walker" <email@hidden>
- Date: Sat, 19 May 2007 18:16:11 -0400
Hi, Tom,
The topic of your email subject has been discussed repeatedly here,
so going to http://search.lists.apple.com/ and entering "WebObjects
dead" will get you way more useful information on that topic than any
of us would be willing to supply here now. If you do such a search,
distinguish between those posts before and after the last WWDC in
which Apple announced the deprecation of the WO toolset. Posts after
that announcement tend to be better grounded in the reality of
Apple's giving up tool support.
Many of us believe that Apple's publicly dropping the tools has put
more life into WO than it has had since about 2001. It has led to a
surge of open source development surrounding the WO frameworks which
Apple is retaining and, ostensibly, further developing. In any case,
Apple's dependence on WO for critical Apple web sites and tools
(including the Apple Store and their iTunes Music Store) argues
strongly against their dropping WO anytime soon.
One of the problems that you will run into as a WO newbie is the lack
of books and examples that use the Eclipse/WOLips tool set. There are
several good books on the market, however, that describe WO using the
Apple tools. You can find a list here:
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Programming:WebObjects/
Additional_Resources/Books
I would suggest downloading the latest Xcode tools to obtain a copy
of the Xcode/EOModeler/WOBuilder toolset. With this in your toolkit,
get one or another of the beginning WO books and try the first few
exercises using Xcode or both Xcode and Eclipse.
Very soon you will need to go to Eclipse/WOLips, but learning WO
tends to be much easier if your tools match those of the exercises
and examples. As you gain experience with the tools and WO concepts,
start migrating toward the Eclipse tool set. In fact, I would
strongly suggest that you not build any production WO applications
using the Xcode tool set anymore.
Many of the contributors to this list are WO heavyweights and tend to
forget how confusing the array of WO tools and concepts can be to the
newcomer. Since you've been developing for the Mac for some time,
Xcode shouldn't be too frightening to you, though it's a bit more
difficult to use for Java than for Objective C development. WOBuilder
tends to (weakly) mimic the behavior of Interface Builder, so that
too should be familiar to you.
Xcode has integrated the CoreData data modeling tools, which were
patterned after the EOF's EOModeler, but the two are not the same and
their underlying models used to be incompatible. So one pitfall to
avoid is Xcode's penchant for opening your EOModels in its own model
editing tool which used to (and probably still does) hose your
EOModel to total unusability. You merely have to change the Xcode
preference for the EOModel editor to avoid that problem, but do it
before it hurts you.
Use this list to help you get up to speed. There are many
knowledgeable, helpful people here. If you do your due diligence in
trying to find answers on your own before using us as resources, we
will tend to be quite helpful.
Regards,
Jerry
On May 19, 2007, at 5:01 PM, Tom Jones wrote:
Thanks,
The WOLips stuff looks great. This is great info.
Thanks again,
tom
On 5/19/07 1:32 PM, "Ricardo Cortes" <email@hidden>
wrote:
Don't forget the open-source WebObjects framework Wonder (which sees
heavy development):
http://wonder.sourceforge.net/
On May 19, 2007, at 1:22 PM, Kieran Kelleher wrote:
You need latest OS X, latest WO (see custom install options on
XCode 2.4.1 installer).
The only community based open source tools which are in use by
majority of WO developers (including those developing WO inside
Apple on apps such as iTunes, Apple Store, etc.) is the WOLips
plugins and Eclipse 3.2.1 (note 3.2 is latest compatible Eclipse)
Follow tutorials on setup here and also join the woproject mailing
list for questions specific to using the WOLips tools:
http://wiki.objectstyle.org/confluence/display/WOL/Tutorials
Cheers, Kieran
On May 19, 2007, at 3:55 PM, Tom Jones wrote:
I just subscribed a few days ago... Ok, so if Apple is not
developing the
tools to do WO development, what are the right tools I should
start to look
at, and do you know if Apple is going to put any weight behind
one vs
others?
Thanks,
tom
On 5/19/07 11:12 AM, "Alan Ward" <email@hidden> wrote:
If you have subscribed to this list for any longer than a week
then
you'll see that this has
been discussed several times before. Apple is not "killing the
product" they have simply
stopped developing the WO tools as most people were not using them
anyway. Other
open source tools exist and Apple continues to support the WO
frameworks.
Alan
p.s. statements contained herein represent my personal opinion and
not necessarily those of my employer.
On May 19, 2007, at 11:49 AM, Tom Jones wrote:
Hello,
I've been developing for the Mac for sometime so I thought I
would
tackle
WO. I really like what I can do with WO but after reading the
release notes
for Xcode 2.4 and a friend of mine mentioned that all of the
WO dev
tools in
the latest Leopard beta were removed it really got me
thinking. Is
Apple
killing the product? I kinda think yes, they have not done
much at
the last
to WWDC's on WO and this one coming up has to IT sessions on it.
So, should I really be learning jsp instead of WO since I'm just
starting
out?
Thanks,
tom
--
__ Jerry W. Walker,
WebObjects Developer/Instructor for High Performance Industrial
Strength Internet Enabled Systems
email@hidden
203 278-4085 office
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