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Re: Beginners question: three-tier app with cocoa client
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Re: Beginners question: three-tier app with cocoa client


  • Subject: Re: Beginners question: three-tier app with cocoa client
  • From: David Avendasora <email@hidden>
  • Date: Sat, 22 Apr 2006 07:21:41 +0100

While iTunes itself may be a cocoa/carbon/whatever application, so is Safari. The part of iTunes that interacts with the Music Store certainly doesn't act like a regular Cocoa application, it acts like a, wait for it, web application.

The UI for the store is entirely contained within the right-hand pane, and almost anything you click on sends a request back to the server and loads a new page. There isn't anything in the UI of the iTMS portion of iTunes that can't be done with HTML/JavaScript. Gmail and Google Maps has far more user interactivity without loading/ reloading than iTunes does.

While the iTMS is not an HTML-based web application it acts just like one. Instead of the server sending HTML to iTunes it sends XML. iTunes then processes this XML to create the UI you see. This site explains it well with just a few words: http://www.aaronsw.com/2002/ itms/ and here's someone that wrote their own front-end to the iTMS: http://nanocrew.net/software/sharpmusique/

On the issue of non-web-based WO front ends, I am working on a Java Client WO application right now and it has been an eye-opening experience.

<vent>It is far more difficult, there is far less documentation, and there is far less support for it. On top of all this, you still need to know many of the same things that someone developing a web-based WO application would need to know, there's no training classes, third- party books hardly even mention that there is way to develop a WebObjects application other than web-based, let alone help with it.</ vent>

Despite my venting, I recommend that if you REALLY need the interactivity of a true application, go with the Java Client. Writing a true client-server application where there is logic/data-processing running on both the client and the server is much more complicated and will generate far more network traffic than writing a web-based application where all the processing is done on the server. Creating a web-based application using AJAX is just going to present you with the same data-synchronization issues as a Java Client application. With Java Client at least you have tools provided by WO to help with tasks such as keeping data in sync between the client and server portions of the code. And if you application is simple enough, you can even get by with using Direct to Java Client which will build the UI automatically for you based on your EOModel.

As an additional benefit, your Java client application will be cross- platform.

And I could use a little company around here! ;)

Dave





On Apr 21, 2006, at 8:51 AM, Frank Herzog wrote:

Or, to put it in other words: I've read that WO is the technology behind the iTunes Music Store. The iTunes application itself is pure Cocoa, I guess. But what is actually connecting the two?

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 >Beginners question: three-tier app with cocoa client (From: Frank Herzog <email@hidden>)

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