Ted, One thing I am not understanding is why we are bouncing requests all
over using various servlets, as in the case of validation. What are the
consequences and or benefits of one servlet triggereing another etc. It
seems as though this can create confusion because you dont know what is
happening. That is, you could end up being bounced all over the place from
servlet to servlet beforwe coming to a rest, and you may or may not know
what exactlly transpired.
Jonathan
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ted Husted" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Wednesday, June 13, 2001 5:39 PM
Subject: Re: General Struts & J2EE question
> The best practice is to first validate the incoming data entry using the
> Strut's ActionForm beans. There is a Validation servlet available that
> automates much of this using regular expressions, and generates checks
> using both client-side Javascript and server-side Java code.
>
> Then, the Strings from the ActionForms can then be passed to your
> Enterprise Beans. Depending on how your EB's are setup you can do this
> with
>
> 1. Data conversion methods built into the Action Forms.
> 2. A generalized helper class.
> 3. Some other methods already available to you.
>
> I'm work with CachedRowSets, which handle most of the data conversions
> for me.
>
> Struts is a very good choice for a data-entry applications, given the
> limitations of HTML forms generally.
>
> I'm rebuilding the data-entry portion of an application now, and should
> be able to share most of the code next week as open source. It does not
> use J2EE directly, but does follow the same design patterns. The view
> portion of this is an online auction for a public broadcasting auction.
> Most of the items are gone (we started with over 5000), but a few dozen
> are still available at < http://data.wxxi.org/wxxi-gavel/ >. This also
> is a Struts application, though we originally transfered the data from
> another application.
>
> My biggest tip is to use templates to design many common classes at
> once. With a data-centric application, many operations are repeated for
> each table, so I'm using a boilerplate form that lets me define several
> related classes with one sweep with search and replace. (At least until
> I get around to writing a real code generator!)
>
>
> -- Ted Husted, Husted dot Com, Fairport NY USA.
> -- Custom Software ~ Technical Services.
> -- Tel 716 737-3463.
> -- http://www.husted.com/about/struts/
>
> Kris Vandenberk wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > I work in a company where 90% of all applications being developed are
mostly
> > data-entry kinda applications (so a lot of data input, validations on
that
> > data ... and readonly views of that data)
> >
> > A lot of our clients 'heard' of J2EE and they insist on using J2EE for
their
> > new applications, which isn't a bad thing, although it is quite costly
for
> > applications only used by a 100 users.
> >
> > This aside, I have a couple of questions:
> > * what is at this moment the best practice (presentation) to develop
data
> > entry
> > applications using J2EE, is struts appropriate, or would you suggest
> > applets, ... ? or a mix, lets say applets for data entry and struts
> > based JSP for read only views ?
> > * does anyone have hands-on experience with data entry kinda
applications
> > built on struts ?
> > * metrics available ? time to develop ? compared to applets ?
> > * pitfalls ? tips ?
> >
> > thanks,
> >
> > Kris
>
