Re: WebObjects Foundation
Re: WebObjects Foundation
- Subject: Re: WebObjects Foundation
- From: Chuck Hill <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2006 13:20:52 -0700
On Aug 22, 2006, at 8:01 AM, Michael Warner wrote:
I found this post to be one of the most spot on. Senior WO
developers have stepped up on the list, post WWDC 2006. That is
both praiseworthy and
reassuring. Yet the fact remains that apart from the important
issues of lack of marketing and of built-in, up-to-date user-
interface and other convenience tools,
the difficulty of learning adequate and best-practice ways of
manipulating existing code, for the beginning or journeyman WO
developer, remains a paramount
consideration.
If I may wax old-school for a moment -- actual, physical books can
make a huge difference in this situation.
I will argue (from some experience) that the situation makes a big
difference in publishers wanting to publish books. Books on WO and
Wonder are not going to make them popular. WO and Wonder being
popular will drive the demand for books which will then get written.
Publishers don't like to invest money in books if they don't have a
reasonable expectation of selling them.
Unlike some of the existing web-based
information-sharing tools, books are expected, except for errata,
to be very accurate -- even authoritative! I'm looking here at
Addison-Wesley's "The Java Developer's Guide to Eclipse." 2nd
Edition. The book (not chosen at random) including the extensive
index, is over 1000 pages long. And that is just for an IDE.
For a code-base as extensive as WebObjects, especially if Project
Wonder is included, several volumes would need to be written.
Imagine browsing your local Barnes and Noble shelf and running
across the 5 volume series 'Developer's Guide to WebObjects' each
volume as thick as the Eclipse Guide mentioned above. Imagine
each volume being something like the Joshua Marker book on steroids
-- with clearly stated steps and helpful diagrams, even on advanced
topics.
Is this do-able? Very much so.
IME, no not really.
How about getting Apple and O'Reilly perhaps to sponsor such a
project?
What is their motivation?
How about asking a handful of WO experts to assemble teams of
writers, each with practical experience in a particular branch of
the code base, to write a chapter or two? Start with a 'core' book
and branch out from there. Learn from the limitations of each of
the existing WO books. To be a contributor to such an enterprise
would (a) make a carefully thought out contribution to the WO
community, (b) be a feather in one's cap if done well.
I have been thinking about this sort of book for a while, sort of a
Cookbook approach to various topics. I like the idea a lot!
There has not been a lot of interest on the publishers side. If we
manage to get the community organized and populated, then selling
such an idea will be very easy.
Chuck
Two years from now books on the shelf could be a reality. The mere
existence of such books would make a statement, even a marketing
statement, that WO is excellent, reliable, hugely scalable, time-
saving and here to stay.
So, to the senior wo developers out there I make this hip-hop
enhanced plea -- show current and future WO developers, and even
their bosses, 'how to get down' . Do it in clear, concise,
detailed and carefully considered text.
Mike Warner
On Aug 22, 2006, at 7:52 AM, Johan Henselmans wrote:
I am a bit surprised about all this discussion of using non-
WebObjects solutions for a WebObjects site. As far as I know there is
-a WebObjects wiki (http://wodev.spearway.com/cgi-bin/WebObjects/
WODev.)
-a Webobjects CMS (http://sourceforge.net/projects/gvcsitemaker/)
-a Webobjects BugTracker (See Example Applications in Wonder in
http://sourceforge.net/projects/wonder)
three opensource attempts at replicating WebObjects functionality
and API's:
-GSWEB (http://www.gnustepweb.org/)
-SOPE/JOPE (http://sope.opengroupware.org/)
-WOTONOMY (http://sourceforge.net/projects/wotonomy)
a site that collects WO code snippets (http://www.wocode.com)
some site that propagate using WebObjects
with movies of how to use webobjects:
http://rentzsch.com/webobjects/introTo5
http://woworx.visionworxpro.com/
and books
(See some of the sites for links)
So it seems that all the elements that are needed for making a
nice WebObjects presence, make it as open source as possible and
organize a proper foundation are already in place. It is all a bit
scattered, and I think that it would be better to focus on getting
these things nicely organized, and working properly and make sure
that they are kept up to date.
What I miss:
-proper examples (no more 'the rest of the implementation is
simple and is left as an exercise to the reader').
-a real nice and complete implementation of all the possible ways
one can use web objects: HTML, WebServices, AJAX, JavaClient,
DirectToWeb, DirectToJava, with forms, mailings, print reports
etc, preferably for one problem-space.
The thinkmovies example of Apple seems a bit too far off from the
common work-environment for that purpose. I think of something the
northwind database that came as an example with MS-Access (is it
still?), or the Filemaker templates, that are mostly sufficient
for most of the information needs for small organisations, and can
be used right away. Of course, it would be expandable in an easy
way with examples of how to expand it (localizations, custom
components etc). Preferably the example would link up to most of
the popular databases (mysql, postgresql, openbase, frontbase,
filemaker, oracle, ms-sqlserver, db2, etc).
This example (or examples) should be the reason that people start
using WebObjects. A re-implementation of some opensource solution
developed in PHP, J2EE or .NET to prove the efficiency of
WebObjects compared to these development tools would also be nice
(the open source J2EE ERP solution www.compiere.org comes to
mind). For developers/ICT people some kind of asset-bug-project-
time-support-tracking-software selling system would be nice, and
would spread the reputation of WebObjects among the group that
would be capable of steering investment-decisions in the
WebObjects direction.
Johan Henselmans
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