On Nov 16, 2008, at 5:14 PM, Emmanuel Lecharny wrote:
David Jencks wrote:
I can't say I regard xbean-spring as an ideal solution, but I don't
really understand why people think its any harder to use than plain
spring.
Because it is !!! Instead of having a single file where you have all
you need to get connected to the source, you have to permanently go
back and forth from conf to source, guessing what could be the class
associated with a name in the conf file, and what can be the
attributes you can configure.
I understand that figuring out what class relates to what element is
more difficult at the moment with xbean-spring. IIRC the default is
to use the java package in the namespace and the class name as the
element name. I thought lots of namespaces would be harder to use
than a single namespace, maybe this was not a good decision. Quite
possibly it would be better to have a few packages with the
configurable objects and namespaces for each.
I'm confused about your claim that it's harder to figure out which
attributes you can configure with xbean-spring than with plain
spring. Without looking at the xsd or the class I don't see you have
any way of telling in either case. If you look at the class its
pretty obvious in either case. With xbean spring you also get a
schema that most editors will use to provide context-sensitive
suggestions about what elements or attributes are allowed: this is not
possible with plain spring AFAIK. If you can explain further I'd like
to understand what the problem is.
Unless you are changing the tree structure of the configuration
javabeans you don't even need to change the "annotations" to get
the updated schema, just build....
We don't change the annotation. Never. However, that does not make
things easier.
at which point you can use your favorite xsd-aware editor to check
on the validity of your xml configuration before you start up the
server and discover you misspelled an attribute name. What am I
missing?
well, I don't have any favorite XSD editor, and I don't have time to
absorb the messy XSD syntax. That's one of the reason I find it
overkilling.
Xsds are a pretty horrible language, but I admit I don't find them
that hard to understand. But with most editors (idea and I'm sure
eclipse) if you tell the editor about the schema it will provide
validation as you type and context sensitive hints about what is
allowed. I find this a lot easier to use than having to consult the
class (or the schema) to find out what is allowed.
May be it's just me, but from discussions I had with other projects
as well, XBeans may be a cool techno, but certainly not something
which makes developpers life easier. IMHO.
I hope I'm not being too much of a nuisance here.... I don't think
xbean is the last word in configuration, but I am leaning towards jaxb
based xml <--> configuration object solutions which have the same
basic features as xbean spring so I'd really like to understand if
there are fundamental problems with this kind of approach of having an
xml domain specific language for component configuration.
thanks
david jencks
Sorry, David, I just dislike xbeans, it makes my life miserable when
it comes to manipulate ADS configuration...
--
--
cordialement, regards,
Emmanuel Lécharny
www.iktek.com
directory.apache.org
