I just saw nice little demo about Oracle ADF Rich components: http://download.oracle.com/otn_hosted_doc/jdeveloper/11gdemos/adffaces/adffaces.html.
Looks really cool, nice and easy but of course its just a demo :). I would like to ask if someone actually uses it for a production app, how they compare to popular open source alternatives like RichFaces or IceFaces etc.
How about a deployment to a different server than weblogic?
We use ADF Faces. It is quite good. They have all the basic components(input text, output text, input file, date pickers, tables, etc) and some advanced components(graphs, tree,tree tables, etc). The layout components are also good and will suffice for most use cases.
But as with any JSF component, ADF Faces Components are hard to modify. For instance, if you want to add, say, a placeholder text, on an input text then you need to resort to fragile hacks.
I would recommend ADF Faces for enterprise apps where the ability to alter and fine tune UI components is not as important as fast and low cost development.
Also, ADF Faces isn't just a component framework. It is a full ViewController framework. Check out their Task Flows and you will be amazed.
We also use ADF Framework for our current product where we migrate our existing form based product to the new framework.
The major benefit that I'd like to point out in ADF is the way they promote declarative programming. I have to admit being a strong java developer, I have the tendency to go and add my own programmatic handling, but for someone who is used to forms, they will find it easy to learn the basics.
A strong feature that I also like to point is the way they clearly defined the MVC architecture. Model = BC, Controller = TaskFlow, View = well this one is obvious. Kudos to ADF the way they designed the taskflows as you get to have a visual representation or better put, a story of your design as well as your logic.
I am not sure about using a different server as ADF along with JDeveloper gives quite a load of features which allows you to configure directly to your server and be able to test on your intergrated server as well, with this I mean more on the security side as well as authentication piece of it. So even if you are able to migrate all the libraries needed, you might still be missing out in some of the other technologies that can be easily integrated with a weblogic server. (such as webcenter, soa etc.)
Related
I am trying to use angular schema form, http://schemaform.io/ While I find it great, I think it is too much like a platform solution and I am having to dig into the code to truly understand it in order to get it doing what I need with custom decorators. I am also finding the 'shema=' vs 'form=' to be very confusing.
I am now leaning towards the 'roll your own', Can anyone recommend using another package other than angular-schema-form or going the home grown route to maintain control? I have a hard time relying on 3rd party products when I don't fully understand them (or would code them differently) or if they will suite our needs.
So any options out there besides schema-form or any good starter packages for a home grown form generator using angularjs?
Angular Schema Form at its core is a template manager to reduce effort and manage re-use easily via config. You are more than capable to make your own Angular components and pass information to them via the UI Schema.
To elaborate on the differences JSON Schema is a standard for defining data models and the UI Schema (form) definition in ASF is specifically for the presentation layer, this also includes overrides of some data model properties.
There is no point in rolling a custom solution when knowing the internal workings of an open source offering provides you the ability to contribute and improve the library which is an even better result that everyone doing their own thing and re-inventing the wheel each time.
Is there a way, given a database or some other source specification for an application, for an entire WPF or Silverlight / XAML application to be generated that emits best practices?
For example, assuming I have a well-normalized database (or some other kind of base specification for an app), is there a tool that can create a well-formed MVVM application. This would include...
XAML (Views) for all of the tables (list and edit) with no code-behind
ViewModels that emits properties extracted from the db schema along with commands or behaviors for all of your standard CRUD operations
Models built with the repository pattern (or some other db abstraction) with interfaces that emit the table design and relationships and a default implementation of your choice (sql, sql ce...whatever).
An ideal tool like this would only do a "first pass" of the application after which the developer would make all necessary changes and modifications.
I don't think there is any such tool but it seems like a tool like this should be possible.
Another related question, in the absence of such a tool (or even if there is one), what tool(s) are best used to get me from a database design (or some other kind of base specification for an app) to working app.
What STEP-BY-STEP process do you take to get from design to basic working application in a couple of hours?
I am just trying to figure all of these practices and patterns and I am getting a pretty good grasp of the pieces but not sure what workflow to use to make it all work together quickly but still allows unit testing of separate concerns.
Thanks in advance.
Seth
Not sure if this is what you are looking for, but you can use LightSwitch
From a process perspective, I build and test my ViewModels first. That allows a division of labor between designing and wiring up the UI and pulling data into the ViewModel.
Couple of year ago I when to work for company as web developer. It has my first Sirius web development job, (ASPx/C#) so it has very exciting and I learned a lot about that world, from the developer point of view.
In that group we had a concept for the pages where loaded in the page UC’s (User controls), I don’t know if it’s the same in every web development team with every language, I’ll assume it is so.
The contract ended and I came back to develop win32 “winForm” application.
But since them I have tried to apply the same principle for my win32 development I learn there, meaning having bunch of UC’s (Visual User controls) that I load in the form.
They are regular visual components, not loaded in the toolbox, code is available in the project, but the component is not developed in the form, they are loaded there.
I would like to know opinions about this approach, what other are doing similar or better to this And improvements that can help us to speed up development and increase code reuse, because that is what this is all about.
If you're using the layout components in Winforms, this might be an acceptable approach although I think the thing that distinguishes the web and Windows Forms (note: NOT WPF!) is that in the former you do a lot of "compositing" which is why the UserControl concept is so useful whereas in the latter you operate on very sophisticated controls (e.g. 3rd party - in my last gig we used an incredible grid control via a small company called Infralution)
The main problem I would see is with layouts since the rendering model is a little different than the web. I know nothing about your application but if it "works" that is what is most important. I assume in this case you use things like the FlowLayoutPanel and the TableLayoutPanel properly.
If you want to go a more canonical route, take a look beyond simply creating components at how you can use the inheritance model to composite your application in a more robust way - having a base Form class that has containers for where your "UserControl" type components go and then using some kind of interface based dependency injection to swap them out while the application is running.
Finally, take a look at some of the open source Windows Forms applications out there to see if you're being too hard on yourself since common UI and reusable components are a goal in every application. Even though I've always thought Microsoft's Patterns & Practices stuff teetered towards being bloated, there are some good ideas and you should study some of the approaches of the Composite UI Application Block they put out.
Okay, not finally, there's one more thing I'd like to add: take a long hard look at WPF which will bring back a lot of the concepts from your web development days and give you that kind of power in a desktop application.
I'm wondering if there are any applications, preferably freeware, that can take a database configuration, and, with as little hassle as possible, create web forms for inserting data easily.
I'm finding it hard to express exactly what it is I'm after. Maybe I can talk a bit about what I need.
I have a configuration database that, at least usually, contains "the truth" about the servers in our system. It contains stuff like zone names, hostnames, different configuration items, etc, over multiple tables. Right now we're using simple INSERTs directly when adding new servers or other stuff, handling the keys and IDs ourselves. The crux is, they don't want us to develop a simple web form thingy to handle this, instead they want a tool that can generate the web form thingy. Did that make sense?
I'm not sure if anything like this exists or is reliable, but, I thought that if anyone knew, it's this community. Thanks!
As many have already stated, it depends on what technology you're working with:
.Net 3.5 - Dynamic Data or Subsonic's Scaffolding control
.Net 2.0 - Subsonic's Scaffolding control
PHP - CakePHP
Ruby - Rail's Scaffolding component
"with as little hassle as possible"
have you checked things like PHP/MySQL Web Database Application Code Generator 10.02 ?
or phpmyedit ?
seems to me that what everybody else proposed so far requires a fair amount of coding...
Also, have a look at phprunner. It is not free, but looking at the screenshots, it seems to fit your requirements.
ASP.NET has Dynamic Data, that I think fits your description.
There's also SubSonic. Both are free and open source.
Tried Dynamic Data?
Besides ASP.NET dynamic data, you could also have a look at SubSonic
With PHP, if you have the ability to name the tables and columns as you see fit, you could try CakePHP framework, and specifically the scaffolding feature. With scaffolding turned on, the code will create CRUD forms from the schema for you.
Here's the link for learning about SubSonic & Scaffolding http://www.subsonicproject.com/web-forms-controls/the-scaffold/
, enjoy ;)
One more link from the SubSonic forums http://monk.thelonio.us/post/Scaffold-Enhancements-in-SubSonic-21.aspx
You can try Adminer Editor
Adminer Editor is both easy-to-use and user-friendly database editing tool written in PHP. It is suitable for common users, as it provides high-level data manipulation.
i have played around with dynamic data website. is there something similar for winforms.
if there isn't anything out there for doing the same with winforms than the question would be why not? we have a massive ERP application that we want to migrate from AS400 to .Net
Winform application. my initial thoughts were to have all the maintenances be as simple as Dynamic Data Website project.
I would think that WPF would be a better starting point then WinForms, as it has support for style to say how item of data are displayed.
Dynamic Data makes it easy to edit your DB on the web. For desktop (and web) apps take a look at the new Microsoft LightSwitch:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/lightswitch/gg441300
LightSwitch doesn't use Windows Forms. Rather it creates a Silverlight App that can run both on the desktop and the web. Pretty cool.
Dynamic data is using the routing functionality of the MVC framework. In Windows forms we don't have this approach of fetching data with URLs from a server.
I am not sure how this model could fit into Windows forms.
I think it's pretty hard to create something like dynamic data for Windows Forms.
My biggest concern is here, once you created that Framework, how do you configure it? I mean if you want to change 1 form to be a bit different than the others :-)
I think its better to generate Forms for the various tables in the Database context, using a powerful Grid control from one of the big vendors. And then you can configure those.
Remember this is a different approach then the dynamic data one, where no code is generated before compile time
I think the reason you don't see something like this in winform applications is because it's much easier to store a HTML page inside a database and then display it on the screen formatted properly when using a web application because your browser knows how to format the HTML.
You would have to, stored in the database, know where each label and field would go on the form in some sort of co-ordinates fashion (or you could use a layout 3rd party control) but the amount of work that would take might be tedious to do properly.
The dynamic data website I worked on did not take input from the user. It only displayed different web pages to the user and allowed the admin person to easily make changes to the content. If you wanted a user to beable to save data then that would even be more complex because you have to worry about validation, required fields, etc.
If you have lots of users that need to see different information based on their access level then I would just suggest having a table in the database that tells the system whether or not they should see the field on the form. Then use a 3rd party layout panel to format the visible fields.
my 2 cents
As much as Dynamic Data looks simple and cheap enough to access a database it wouldn't work for an ERP system anyways. Business systems are more than moving data between database and the user interface, they require business rule actions when saving data and while retrieving the may require some massaging to ensure meaningful presentation of storage optimized data.
If you still like to pursue this option it would be very easy to create an application that is build on top of Entity Framework.
I'm not aware of a Dynamic-Data-alike, but (having written one before, years ago, for ASP) I don't actually think it would be that hard, particularly with WPF and its templating support.
Actually if you were really clever you could probably 'borrow' the backend from Dynamic Data, and just reimplement the UI as WPF.
Would make a fun little project actually.
Alternative answer: Use Microsoft Access. No really.
Alternative answer #2: So why not just use Dynamic Data then?