Re: WOBuilder in the future of WO?
Re: WOBuilder in the future of WO?
- Subject: Re: WOBuilder in the future of WO?
- From: Lachlan Deck <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 22 Jan 2007 13:43:33 +1100
Hi there,
On 22/01/2007, at 5:21 AM, Andrew Satori wrote:
Alright, so with the official 'Java-Bridge is dead' status for the
future, what does this mean for WOBuilder and the graphical
creation of WOComponents?
It means that WebObjects Builder, EOModeler, etc are deprecated (as
has been documented) and will be going away to join other software in
the virtual land of the "I was here".
As far as I can tell, that leaves editing the .wo bundles by hand.
While not impossible, it is certainly a step backwards, so my
question is, what is the rest of the community planning on using in
place of WOBuilder?
Bear in the mind...
Deprecated == dying (aren't we all). But deprecated != dead. i.e.,
you can still use it happily today ... and even tomorrow. So if you
really like it and find that it suits your needs 'at this time' then
continue to use it.
The whole reason why things get deprecated rather than suddenly
culled is to give time for replacement tools to arise... the future
looks bright from where I sit in that regard.
Let me put it another way:
- Xcode/WebObjects Builder *never* offered you compile time error
checking of all your components. Sure you could open them up
individually and Validate a single component but even then it
couldn't validate some keypaths or data types. You often only found
out at runtime if something was invalid which isn't always helpful.
Eclipse/WOLips has excellent compile-time (or actually continual)
checking.
In this sense it is streets ahead in providing the fundamentals. All
that is needed is to combine that with another plugin for Eclipse
that already provides WYSIWYG editing and voila.
Likewise, EOModeler in WOLips I think is great. The diagram view, so
far as adding new attributes and relationships I never found as a
highly productive view anyway.... but of course it's nice to have it
there. Again, the great positives that ought to be seen about WOLips
is that the fundamentals are again at least on par with, if not
better than, what EOModeler offered. Sure it's only got the
equivalent of table-view at this stage... but again Apple's EOModeler
still works if you want to use it.
I have certainly previously resisted WOLips/Eclipse stuff (being
comfortable with Xcode etc) but having used Eclipse over the last six
months and now more recently converting my WebObjects projects also
have to say that the positives far outweigh the negatives.
Later on 22/01/2007, Georg Tuparev replied:
I too have mixed feelings about WOBuilder. With all its bugs, it is
still faster to bind a WOString to
Session.observatory.controlRoom.telescope.positioningInstruments.curre
ntPointingModel.declination using WOBuilder then type it.... And it
is less error prone...
WOLips/Eclipse offers auto-completion + Compile-time checking of
keypaths (as mentioned above). So the charge of being more error-
prone is actually not the case at all. It is actually far less error-
prone because the IDE continually shows you up-to-date information on
the validity of not only your java files but the components and model-
files as well.
But it is certainly true that visual editing is nice and fast and
visually offers you the alternatives quickly. I have found the auto-
completion to be equally as fast however and in some cases even
quicker. For example, the bindings on various things in WebObjects
Builder (using the inspector - requires mousing around to choose,
e.g.,, a date format or number format etc). With WOLips my fingers
don't have to leave the keyboard and I get all the same suggestions
via auto-completion...
In summary... as I mentioned, personally I think the positives far
outweigh the negatives, the Apple-tools are still available for use
at this time should you prefer them, but that I can only suggest that
you give WOLips/Eclipse a try for a month. Seriously don't just fire
up the thing and say... 'Oh it's not a Cocoa app, forget it.' Like
any tool, spend some time getting to know it. You might be surprised...
with regards,
--
Lachlan Deck
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