Re: Question about WORepetitions
Re: Question about WORepetitions
- Subject: Re: Question about WORepetitions
- From: "Jerry W. Walker" <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 7 Mar 2007 22:55:44 -0500
Hi, Tom,
Welcome!
You seem to have gotten good answers to your technical question, so
let me address your aside.
First the bad news:
Apple has not upgraded WebObjects significantly for several years,
not since they converted the entire set of frameworks to Java around
the turn of the millenium.
At last summer's WWDC, they announced that they were deprecating the
development tools for WebObjects. The reason for this was that the
tools needed the JavaBridge (a technology that allowed Java programs
to call native Cocoa methods and vice versa) and they were
deprecating the JavaBridge. So, eventually, Xcode (perhaps),
EOModeler and WOBuilder will no longer work for WebObjects development.
Now the good news:
Apple was a good 10 years ahead of the industry when they brought
WebObjects out. I think they're still ahead, but the industry has
caught up in some areas. The underlying technologies (of object
oriented web tools and a solid RDB persistence layer with good
middleware) are still way out in front of the crowd.
Apple has not deprecated the WebObjects Frameworks. Nor will they in
the foreseeable future. The reason is that they are critical to
Apple's online efforts which include the iTunes Music Store, the
Apple Store (online), the Apple web site, and just about everything
else Apple does on the web.
And why would Apple deprecate the tools while using these
technologies as critical components in their business? Because it has
become increasingly expensive for Apple to maintain tools to support
a Java environment when the rest of their efforts are focused on
Cocoa and because of the thriving open source community that has
built up around WebObjects.
People who use WebObjects long enough to master it tend to be
disappointed by other web technologies. So they tend to come back and
contribute. Many of their efforts have been open sourced and the
single largest open source umbrella of WebObjects code today is
Project Wonder. ( http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/
Programming:WebObjects/Project_WONDER/Overview )
Right now, there are open source replacements for Xcode (Eclipse/
WOLips) and EOModeler (Entity Modeler). Eclipse also provides editors
that allow you to build WOComponents easily, though there could be
improvement yet there. There is also a Rules Editor under Project
Wonder for editing the rules used in a DirectToWeb application (if
you're not familiar with DirectToWeb, Google it, it's WebObjects' way
of generating a full blown web application for you based only on an
EOModel).
So, WebObjects is alive and well and looks to remain so for years to
come. However, it is shifting (with Apple's blessing) from Apple
support to WO community support and seems to be thriving in the new
environment. You are asking your question on the primary WebObjects
development mailing list and I'm sure you'll find that if you've done
your homework and still need an answer, you'll get it here.
Regarding books on WebObjects, there are some out there for which
you've already received recommendations. I think that anyone who
started writing a WebObjects book over the last year, however, is
rethinking and rewriting it based on the open source tools rather
than on the Apple tools. You will probably see such newly written
books appearing within the next year.
If you wish to know more about the WebObjects shift from Apple
support to Community support, it has been discussed at GREAT length
on this and other mailing lists. Try Googling for "WebObjects is
dead" or "Will WebObjects survive" or some other such phrase. There
are those who believe that WebObjects is doomed as there were those
in the late 1990's who believed that Apple had NO HOPE of surviving
as a company. You will not hear an apology from either group, but one
of those groups has already been proven wrong and the other is being
proven wrong.
Good luck in your exciting new WebObjects career.
Regards,
Jerry
On Mar 7, 2007, at 12:24 PM, Tom Davis wrote:
Hi all,
I'm new to WebObjects and I need a little help. I need to iterate
through a group of EO objects. I'll call them 'baskets' for
example. Each basket object has a to-many relationship to
foodObjects. I used a repetition to iterate through all the
baskets and present a popup asking the user to select one of the
foodObjects from each basket. This all works fine. The problem
I'm having is that I don't know how to get the result (a
foodObject) of each popup back into an array or something so my
code can make decisions based on which item was selected in each
basket. I assigned each WOPopup 'selection' to aSelectedFoodItem.
Any help would be great. Thanks!
Just an aside. I am curious that it seems very difficult to find
much support or information online or in books concerning
WebObjects. Apple seems to sporadically update the little
information they have at the developer site. There are only a
couple books published in the last few years and not any well
developed, loaded websites. Am I looking in the wrong places or is
WebObjects a dying technology? Am I wasting my time pursing this
technology instead of something "hot" like ruby on rails or
something like that? Don't get me wrong, I think WO is the coolest
fully developed solution I've ever played with. I am just afraid
that Apple is going to pull the plug on it just as I'm starting to
get good at it.
Tom
_______________________________________________
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.
Webobjects-dev mailing list (email@hidden)
Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription:
40gmail.com
This email sent to email@hidden
--
__ Jerry W. Walker,
WebObjects Developer/Instructor for High Performance Industrial
Strength Internet Enabled Systems
email@hidden
203 278-4085 office
_______________________________________________
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.
Webobjects-dev mailing list (email@hidden)
Help/Unsubscribe/Update your Subscription:
This email sent to email@hidden