> Migrating to REST models & Web 2.0, and such might seem tempting at > first, but also assumes that non-Javascript browsers are no longer > supported, which is a problem as Jahia is quite popular in large > administrations, that usually do not evolve their IT systems rapidly.
Hi, I'm well aware of that, but your assumption isn't quite true: * if you move to GWT, that's sure, your back-office won't be degradable and that's a real problem. In my opinion that's the major point for not using GWT but rather stick with Prototype and eventually Scriptaculous. * With well designed framworks such as Rails (works on the JVM too and Sun heavily stands behind it with 4 dedicated engineers and a fast growing community!), building a Web2.0 site that degrades nicely into an accessible site is quite easy. Take the "form_remote_tag" form the Rails API here: http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActionView/Helpers/PrototypeHelper.html there is a fall-though URL for javascript disabled browsers: so either you update a div with an AJAX request, either you send to an other page while factoring the controller logic and the URL semantic! Rails is simply full of such handy hooks. I can't see any J2EE framework approaching. You can read the Ajax in Action book if you want to find out more about inobstrusive and degradable AJAX. * about a RESTFul CMS: several advantages: * easy automate functionnal testing * easy to be crawled by an external search engine. Currently with Jahia, when a content is found inside a container list, we have to put a filter in that container list so that you actully find the content you were looking for, cause it's hardly found with a unique URL! I do believe, solutions like Google Ajax Search can compete with Lucene and y'll have all this for free at least on a public website once you are REST. Being REST doesn't mean you can't have some extra presentation views that aren't REST (Ajax panels typically that actually request REST URL's to update the titles). * no complex Web Services, everything stays simple * integration with CMS and specific code is a headache currently. The portlet stuff isn't that good. The main reason is that good web apps aren't portlet. Let's take a good blog engine like Mephisto, it's not a portlet and no porlet is competing to it. With a RESTful approach integration can be achieve via HTTP. That might be less standard, that's easier, easier to deploy on several machine and to integrate heterogeous solutions. With a RESTful CMS you could directly plug in into a Netvibes like portal, and again, being degradable is possible, that's even easier when you keep the code base small and well factored. > The database model is also undergoing a lot of tuning recently, and some > major changes. XML is not necessarily a good solution because parsing > can also be a heavy operation when the load on the server becomes > important, especially when mixed with remote database access. Well, I said that cause in the company I'v been working for last year, Amadeus, the GDS air travel leader, they benched a lot the DB and ended up in doing that. It's clear it has to be benched but sometimes, the number of joins you can avoid is worth the XML parsing and even zipping CPU overhead. Anyway, this was just a suggestion, I'm not saying that in your case I'm sure it's a win. Overal, given the improvements you did to the Data Model layer and DAO layer from Jahia 4 to 5, if you can do as good with the View and Controller layers from now on, then I believe that becomes a sustainable solution. Nice to hear you have such plans. Take care, Raphaël Valyi. _______________________________________________ dev_list mailing list [email protected] http://lists.jahia.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dev_list
