Hi all!

I don't know if this is the right forum for this kind of question, but it resolves around Hibernate and is certainly "Miscellaneous".

Question in short:
Whick component framework that supports Hibernate(J2EE) should one go for?
Spring FW or OpenSymphony?

I'm a single database/J2EE developer in an organisation of about 500 employees, and my time is very limited for studying/learning new technologies. But there is a definite need for a web(etc.) framework besides Hibernate's DB one, which I already use (and it's great!)

So.... any opinions/suggestions? Pros and cons for Spring resp. OS?
I noticed that the Adminapp 0.9, distributed w. Hibernate 2.1, uses OpenSymphony? Is this a recommendation?

Sincerely,

/Cantor

I suspect you refer to a MVC Framework? I like WebWork for small-scale Webapps (eg. for one to three developers), when doing larger stuff I would rather tend to use Struts. I never tried Springs MVC Support though.

Personally, I really like spring for all the middle tier stuff. I basically look at it as a buffer between my actual app and its runtime env. Simply centralizing all env reference stuff in a single file makes it easy to deploy my app into the j2ee server by referencing the actual version of that file and to also unit test the app outside the container by supplying a different test-specific copy of that file. All other mapping files stay the same.

For the web tier:

I'm not too comfortable with spring (maybe this is because I started started playing with it).

Tapestry should definitely be given a look. It is very inventive, and a great way to build webapps. The problem is that its a very different programming model then most web programmers will be used to. If you've ever done actual ui development (swing, delphi, etc) you'll be much more comfortable with Tapestry right off the bat.

my $.02

This is really interesting, my head just spins with all the information I'm trying to grab here.

Yeah, Spring and its bean-in-the-context model feels very productive. But I also want to use Hibernate, and both Spring and OpenSymphony supports that.

It is somewhat of a nightmare for me using Hibernate as ORM, Spring as middleware and something else as web tier. Feels like looking for bug double trouble.... and you will have to watch three different forums... ;-)
But I'll make a real effort in examining them all.
Struts feels a bit too complicated actually...as I said, my time is limited.

Sincerely,

/C

As a GUI API I prefer Tapestry. Once you get into the 'swing' (no pun intended) of it you will find that it really is outstanding.

I know what you're saying from a perspective of trying to get started with all this; but once you get into it, I promise you'll love that approach. Use the best tool for the job? Wow, what a concept. :)

I agree with steve, it's really not that bad. Something like WebWork is quite intuitive, and Spring is not that complex too (as long as you don't force all its features onto yourself :)). So I would really try it, I am sure it will be a timesaver in the end.

Thanks all! Great hearing your opinions here, since I'm quite alone at work in my "speciality". Appreciate it!

Sincerely,

/The Cantor