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Re: Seeking Advice for Getting Started
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Re: Seeking Advice for Getting Started


  • Subject: Re: Seeking Advice for Getting Started
  • From: "Jerry W. Walker" <email@hidden>
  • Date: Thu, 9 Feb 2006 01:11:12 -0500

Hi, John,

First, some background so you can adjust for my biases: I love WebObjects (WO) and my answers will be appropriately biased. I far prefer Macs to PCs in all that I do, and particularly in my WO work. I was an Apple certified WO trainer.


I believe that it's very difficult for a programmer or a non- programmer to learn WO from the documentation. From my own experience, I would suggest three practical approaches to learning it successfully:


* join a good firm using it and sign on as an intern (probably not very practical, huh, but I've known people who have taken this approach)

* take the Apple WO classes. Take the first week's class, spend a few months playing with it, then take the second week's class (expensive, but best approach)

* get a good introductory WO book and study it all. If that worked and you're still ready to learn, buy _Practical_WebObjects_ for the intermediate level.

Go to this page and you will see brief reviews in the right hand column on the books that are out there:

        http://wocode.com/cgi-bin/WO/WOCode


Having said all that, there are people who have picked WO up from the documentation and from the mailing lists. And... you're in an interesting situation.


The beauty of WO is all about good data modeling and good object modeling. To the extent that you understand and appreciate what these terms mean, you will probably fall in love with WO.

Given that you've got a complete ERD, you are well on your way to a real application because of WO's magical D2x technologies (e.g D2W = DirectToWeb, D2JC = DirectToJavaClient, etc.).

Before I go on, however, let me warn you about two current disjunctions in WebObjects that can trip you up:

* Up until the most recent Apple World Wide Developer's Conference (in June of 2005), Apple supported WO development on both the Mac and on the PC under Windows. They pulled back from that position at the conference. Now they only support WO development on Macs. Many in our community have developed WO projects for years on PCs and continue to do so. WO is Java based, so it's still possible, but it's not easy to get started on a PC today. Worse, I'm not the one to help you, though others on this list can. However, to make your life much simpler, I would suggest going out and buying a Mac Mini for about $499. You could get the larger ones for $599 or $699, but you don't need them for what you're about. You will still need a keyboard, mouse and monitor, but you can generally find those anywhere these days. However, if you are wallowing in cash, then go get the machine we're all salivating over, the MacBook Pro for $2,499.00. This is the new Intel based high end Apple laptop which is being sold right now, but won't be available till the end of February.

* I will suggest that EOModeler is the tool you should start with. It doesn't work on PCs, This tool helps you work with your ER diagram in several ways and has been around for years with little maintenance from about 1998 to 2004. Then early last year, Apple started an effort to replace it from within Xcode, the IDE foundation tool. They released the results of that effort prematurely; DON"T GO THERE. The ER modeling tools in Xcode are not ready for prime time, so be sure you do all your data modeling, for now, with the original EOModeler tool. If you have any problems with that suggestion, come back to the list for more help. None of these tools work on PCs (EOModeler, Xcode or WOBuilder), but Eclipse viably replaces Xcode. It just leaves out the desirable visual tools of EOModeler and WOBuilder.

If you can't or won't buy a Mac, you'll have to ask others on the list how to get started on Windows these days. I haven't done that for a few years.

If you take my "buy a Mac" advice, then this is the path you could take:

First, be sure you have the appropriate tools to undertake this:

* sign up on the Apple web site as a WO developer, it's free and essential

* once you're signed up, go to the Developer tab and click on "Mac OS X Development Tools" under Development Resources

  * click on "Download Xcode 2.2" and on "Tools Downloads"

* install these using the standard installer (you must have admin permissions on your machine to do this)

Then I would suggest the following approach:

CREATE YOUR DATABASE
1. Create a database from your ER Diagram in the popular database of your choice (sans any data), though I would recommend either OpenBase or FrontBase because:


       * their vendors are both WO friendly and WO knowledgeable

* they are professional level DBMSs that are both easy to set up and easy to maintain.

       * you can get a limited developers license for free

Note that I didn't ask you to enter any data. Just create the database schema in the DBMS.

CREATE AN EOMODEL
2. Double click on EOModeler at /Developer/Applications/ WebObjects/EOModeler


   3. Choose Model->New from the menus

   4. Leave JDBC selected in the panel and click Next

5. Enter the information for your connection dictionary as you've set it for your database and click OK

6. Leave only the top two boxes checked ("Assign primary keys..." & "Ask about relationships")

7. Select the tables from your database that you wish to use in your application and click Next

8. Click the Finish button and a complete EOModel will appear on your screen.

   9. Name and save the EOModel in some directory

CREATE A WEBOBJECTS DIRECT-TO-WEB PROJECT
   10. Open up Xcode and choose File->New Project...

11. On the New Project panel, scroll to the bottom, select WebObjects->Direct To Web Application and click Next

   12. Provide a name and location for your project on the next page

13. Click through the next 5 panels using the defaults till you get to the "Choose EOModels" panel

14. Click the Add... button, navigate the Open panel to your new EOModel, select it and click Choose.

15. Click Next, select any of the three "looks" and click Next again.

16. Check the "Build and run" box and click Next or Finish (I don't remember which, won't matter)

Xcode will gather all the information, build your project and provide you with a web based WebObjects application to use your database, including screens to allow you to browse your tables, enter your data and maintain the data from that point forward.

This is a Direct To Web project that figures out how to deal with the database through the EOModel you created. EOModeler figured out how to build your EOModel from the structure of the database you created. I suggested you create the database first, because you are familiar with that technology and have an ERDiagram at hand. EOModeler could have actually created the database for you, but that would have required more EOModeler knowledge than I'm expecting you to have yet.

Once you have all of the above, it's time to start reading the books to figure out what you can do with this gem.

However, find the EOModeler documentation from your WebObjects developer documentation and play, play, play till you know that tool well. It has bugs and glitches, but it's near magical in what it can do. If you use EOModeler to modify your EOModel and database, just restart the application you built and it will still know how to vend your database on the web.

Following this approach will provide you with the excitement of a project whose foundation you understand. That provides a lot better head start than building tutorial projects you're unfamiliar with and whose domain you really don't care about. Once you've played around a bit, you will probably find them more interesting.

Good luck and hope to hear from you again soon.

Regards,
Jerry

On Feb 8, 2006, at 11:27 PM, John Shepherd wrote:
Greetings,
I have just recently become aware for the first time of the existence of WebObjects, and I am intrigued...

--
__ Jerry W. Walker,
WebObjects Developer/Instructor for High Performance Industrial Strength Internet Enabled Systems


    email@hidden
    203 278-4085        office



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References: 
 >Seeking Advice for Getting Started (From: John Shepherd <email@hidden>)

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