However, as you say, many people don't follow that model completely (for whatever reason, probably just because it's easier and quicker to break that separation during a project's development), so in that regard, yes, I think it could possibly get people in that boat up and running with Web Services faster.
But whether you did a good job architecturally or not, I think this still may give you an easy path to exposing things as services without changing any code. I know there are tools out there for exposing EJBs and such as services, and non-EJB classes to, Axis comes to mind, but I think for all such solutions there is either (a) code changes that have to be done to make it work, or (b) a higher learning curve to deal with.
For instance, I know a guy here that wrote an EJB and then wanted to expose it as a service. He went with Axis to do it. If I recall correctly, he didn't really have to change any code, but it still took him something like two weeks to get ti working. Maybe it was just him being dense, but my read on it at the time was that it was just more difficult than it could have been.
I think if you have a Struts-based application, you already have a large portion of the infrastructure available to expose it as a service (assuming SOAP over HTTP, which I think it's fair to say is how the vast majority of Web Services are served). You have the server obviously, you have something that understands the underlying protocol, you have the code set up to handle incoming requests, etc. In my mind, this is just strapping a very small piece onto the side of that infrastructure and your all set.
So, with a solution like this I think you can get at least rudimentary services up and running, based on existing Struts-based applications, with little difficulty. There are certainly limitations, and certailnly it wouldn't be suited for every purpose, but for the simpler situations I think it may be a good option. I never thought I was working on an all-encompassing solution anyway, I didn't expect everyone to jump on this like it was the greatest thing. I only expect it to be of limited use (although hopefully less limited as time goes on and it develops a bit).
But your point is valid certainly, and for a properly architected application, this may in fact ironically be less useful than for an application that maybe isn't architected as well :)
Frank
From: Duncan Mills <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Reply-To: "Struts Developers List" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: Struts Developers List <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: Struts Web Services Enablement Project Date: Fri, 04 Jun 2004 08:38:09 +0100
Frank forgive me here, but playing Devils Advocate, if you have clean MVC separation then surely the last thing you want to do is to expose Actions as Web Services.
It is reasonable to want to expose Business Service Providers such as EJB, or TopLink beans as Web Services but that's up in the model layer, what's the point in pushing the access point down into the Controller code?
Or do you see here a solution for all those folks who've not followed best practice and have intermingled Controller functionality with Business logic..?
Regards
Duncan Mills Senior Principal Product Manager Oracle Application Development Tools
Frank Zammetti wrote:
Hello devs! This is my first time posting here, and my first attempt at contributing to an Apache project. I hope I'm going about it properly! :)
In short, I have a little project going with the stated goal of allowing a Struts developer to expose any existing business logic, as implemented in Struts Actions and their subordinate helper classes, as Web Services, and do this with NO changes required to any existing application code, and as little change to Struts itself as possible. Simplicity is the key to this!
Today I released a second version of this project to the user's mailing list, and after some feedback I think it's at a point where I'd like to make you all aware of it, and get some higher-level feedback. It's certainly far from complete at this point, but I think even now it's in a useful form.
My hope is that eventually it will be good enough to be included in the base Struts distro, but that's obviously a long way off, if ever.
With all that in mind, please at your convenience visit http://www.omnytex.com/strutsws
There you will find some more detailed technical information and a download which contains everything you need, including a simple sample webapp demonstrating the whole mess.
I thank you in advance for any time you spend on this!
Frank W. Zammetti
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