On the future of WO (here we go again)
On the future of WO (here we go again)
- Subject: On the future of WO (here we go again)
- From: Hugi Thordarson <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 15 Mar 2019 10:51:48 +0000
Hi all.
In preparation for the coming WODay in Frankfurt, I'd love it if you'd be open
to having a discussion on the status and future of WO, so we can enter the
coming work prepared.
I'd like to begin by sharing my own thoughts on the matter, based on my current
stack and experience. It's a rehash of something I posted to our Slack
yesterday, may sound revolutionary and will no doubt be controversial, but I
think some outside-the-box thinking is required at this time. This is lengthy,
sorry about that…
--
In the past few years I've been working towards minimising the use and effect
of WO/Wonder on my stack, so when and if The Time comes, I and my customers
have a migration path forward. Among the things I've done is move from EOF to
Cayenne and from Ant to Maven (to make using 3rd party jars, including Cayenne
easier), both of which have turned out to have been very happy decisions which
I wholeheartedly recommend, regardless of anything else you do.
I love working with my WO/Cayenne stack, which is currently only "polluted" by
the following frameworks:
-- WO:
* JavaFoundation (indirectly through WO, I never use foundation classes in my
code unless absolutely required by WO)
* JavaWebObjects
-- Wonder (I consider Wonder "polluted" since it depends on WO/EOF)
* ERExtensions (only the WO stuff, not the EOF stuff)
• Ajax
• WOOgnl (indirectly for parsing Wonder-style inline templates)
…and of course then there's the deployment stuff (JavaMonitor,wotaskd,
adaptors).
Given this, here's my proposal for a way forward:
* We abandon EOF (and, in fact, any ORM—this is not meant to be a full stack
effort, initially at least)
* We re-implement JavaWebObjects as required (and the absolutely necessary
parts of JavaFoundation, such as KVC and NSBundle) as a single framework
* We separate the necessary WO stuff from the EOF/D2W stuff in Wonder (as well
as other totally unrelated things like mail sending frameworks, other utility
frameworks and "useful applications") and include it in our re-implementation
* We create a fork of WOLips that knows how to live within the New Universe
* We rule the world
Ideally, what we end with is Just a Web Framework™ with IDE integration (and
nothing else) that can serve as a basis for future development. While
re-implementing WO may sound like a huge undertaking, I actually think it's
smaller than rewriting all of my solutions that depend on it. This probably
applies to more of you.
Now, looking at my own stack I know this proposal might sound a bit
self-serving, but I'd like to hear other opinions. I believe it's a realistic
way forward with (comparatively) minimal development effort. Turns out that WOF
itself is the only part of the WO/Wonder stack that I really just don't want to
live without.
This is something I'd like to do, and if anyone likes the idea and is willing
to participate, I'm confident we can make this work! Doing stuff alone sucks.
Cheers,
- hugi
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