On 10/19/06, Kito D. Mann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Oct 18, 2006, at 5:46 PM, David Geary wrote: > > > If not working on it, I've been thinking about the homepage lately, > > and it strikes me that I don't really know how to spin > Shale. We have > > so many unrelated features that it's difficult to say > "Shale is...". > > The addition of JPA makes things even murkier. Are we one-stop > > shopping for JSF? > > Proving > > ground for JSF 2.0? I know we're a set of services, but that's a > > rather bland description. > > I agree. Until about 4 months ago I only knew very little > about JSF. I had not actually written a JSF app. Now, I'm > in the middle of writing a pretty significant JSF app and > teaching our team of > developers how (and why) to use JSF. So I've gone in head > first :-) > Before I started this adventure I had a difficult time seeing > where Shale fit. Now I'm starting to see the plugin points > where it makes sense and hopefully we will start integrating > Shale into our app in the near future. > > Maybe it's something like a "meta-framework". It's not > really a "framework" as such because JSF is the framework. > But it is some missing parts that integrate fairly seamlessly > with the JSF framework. Missing parts and added value - > things like Clay and Dialog are added value. Things like the > core ViewController provide missing pieces to the core JSF > framework. I like the way "meta-framework" sounds, but it implies something more like Keel (http://www.keelframework.org). Shale's name provides the underpinnings for the verbage we need -- separate layers that can optionally be applied to your application. What's wrong with "services"?
The "one sentence" description I have been using lately that seems to resonate: Shale is a set of loosely coupled application framework services built on top of JSF." If need be, I also emphasize that we're talking mostly about the "MVC controller" part of JSF, and are agnostic about component libraries. Use whatever visual components you'd like, and use Shale's features to make the back end of your application easier to compose.
Maybe some of the missing pieces should be > submitted back as JSRs and we could work ourselves out of a > job in that sense. Or maybe not. Maybe they are not as > universally applicable as it seems at first glance. A lot of us JSF EG memebers are very familiar with Shale, so I'm pretty sure that features like the ViewController and Tiger annotations will make it into JSF 2.0 in some form. > Of course as JSR-299 progresses we may find ourselves in a > different category. There has been talk of building a > JSR-299 implementation when the time is right. I don't know if the category really changes. To me, that's just one more layer...
Agreed. So would a layer implementing the validation annotations (303?) if/when it actually happens. Craig ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Kito D. Mann ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) Author, JavaServer Faces in Action http://www.virtua.com - JSF/Java EE consulting, training, and mentoring http://www.JSFCentral.com - JavaServer Faces FAQ, news, and info
