Evolutionary Goo

Drum roll please… Here are my five technology predictions for 2009.

• Google will buy Twitter. Updated 2009-08-14 There was the rumor, but nothing as of late.
• Sun Microsystems will be purchased by one of the following companies - IBM, Google, Oracle or Microsoft. Sun’s current market cap is $2.8 billion. Updated 2009-04-20  Sun agrees to be purchased by Oracle. http://tinyurl.com/c85lfw
• IT departments will hunker down due to the depressed economy. Java, .Net, Oracle and SAP will remain entrenched as the dominant enterprise technologies until the recession is over. Updated 2009-08-14 OK, this was a lame prediction, but its pretty much true for this year. Will next year be the year of polyglot?
• Yahoo will be acquired by Microsoft. With Jerry Yang out, the battle of egos is over. Updated 2009-08-14 So far I have this one wrong, but not completely, as Yahoo and Microsoft make a big search deal. Will the merger still happen?
• Google Android, Amazon and Mozilla Songbird will force Apple to rethink its music download business model. Updated 2009-01-13 Apple is going DRM free. http://news.cnet.com/drm-free-itunes-store-to-haunt-apple/

I couldn’t finish the year without writing one last post about JEval. A new maintenance release is available. For whatever reason JEval’s download rate had more than doubled over the last couple of months. The number of downloads has now exceeded 1500.

Einstein has so many great quotes. Almost as many as Yogi Berra. This one I just discovered the other day and I think it fits in perfectly with the Christmas season.

“There are two ways to live your life - one is as though nothing is a
miracle, the other is as though everything is a miracle.”

Enjoy the miracle. Merry Christmas everyone.

Sorry for the delayed post. Things have been very busy lately. Besides, I just don’t get around to writing as many blog articles now that I use social networking applications like Twitter and Facebook.

The most difficult part of writing this article was getting started. I didn’t want this article to be another taxonomy of Java web frameworks like my original article. Instead, I wanted this article to present a pragmatic way to select a framework that is easy and matches the things that you and your team find valuable to software development.  Let’s get started.

Instead of looking at the numerous features of web frameworks, I’m instead going to focus on three high level categories. They are “safe choice”, “cutting edge” and “rich user interface”.

Safe Choice
If you work for an enterprise where going with the tried and true is looked upon more favorably than taking a risk on something new, then you fall in to the “safe choice” category. Another motivation for going “safe” is that you want a standard set of Java and web technologies to work with. Since JSF is a Java specification, many of the major JSF implementations will work here. If you go down the JSF path you will most likely end up looking at JBoss Seam to work as a middleware solution for your JSF front end. There are a lot of folks out there that do not like JSF. If that is the case then your best choices are Spring MVC and Struts2. With Spring MVC you will most likely also be looking at using the Spring Framework and Spring Web Flow for your middleware. The Spring suite of software libraries is immensely popular these days and their penetration into the enterprise has been immense. Struts2 is for those who feel like it is the best migration path for existing Struts applications. Remember that Struts2 isn’t really a Struts upgrade. It is actually the wonderful WebWork framework that has been refactored, renamed and adopted by The Apache Software Foundation to be to the formal replacement for Struts.

Cutting Edge
If you work in an environment where management is more tolerant of trying new technologies, you are on a team that has a ton of Java web experience or you are simply excited by trying new things, then selecting a “cutting edge” framework may be for you. Without going too much into these frameworks, I will simply list out some of the popular frameworks that fall into this category. They are: Tapestry, Stripes, Wicket, Ruby on Rails on JRuby and Grails. These framework are either not adopted to the extent that the “safe choice” frameworks are, or they employ the use of dynamic languages. An interesting choice in this category is Grails, because it is written on top of Spring MVC, which is a “safe choice” framework.

Rich User Interface
Do you need a rich user interface instead of a more standard HTML one? Do you want a full AJAX interface instead of one with small amounts of AJAX mixed in? Only you will be able to answer these kinds of questions based on your business and technical requirements. If you answer “yes” to either question, then you are in what I consider the be the “rich user interface” category. And by definition if you want a rich user interface, then you have already left “safe choice” category. I don’t have as much experience in this category, so I will tread lightly. Choices in this category include Google Web Toolkit, Echo, ICEFaces (also a JSF implementation) and the new JavaFX.

Conclusion
There are countless choice, but selecting a Java web framework doesn’t have to be hard. You just need to know your environment and values that are important to you. Not making a choice at all will make selecting a framework hard, so don’t let this decision take too long. Regardless of what Java web framework you end up selecting, the days of using only one framework is a thing of the past. If your selection isn’t working out or if you think some other framework is a better choice for another application, then by all means select a different framework. Good luck.

Last night I attended the inaugural meeting of the Lambda Lounge. The meeting was great. Not only was the attendance high, but the enthusiasm and energy level was also very high. Its fun to go to events like this when everyone is so excited to be there. I particularly enjoyed the beginning of the session when everyone told a little about them self and what they are currently working on. There is so much cool stuff going around St. Louis.

For information on the Lambda Lounge, what it is and when it meets, click here.

For a great write up on last night’s meeting by the person who founded the group, click here.