Clarke, So far, everyone's been very even-handed about not really recommending one framework. And while I won't contradict that (in fact, I'll +1 it), I'll say that I'm very, very comfortable with Model-Glue. I used Mach-II in its pre-1.0 days, and for a while after. And I have less than no knowledge about using its current iteration -- which is very different from the one I used.
But I tried Model-Glue shortly after Joe Rinehart began releasing betas, and it just felt "right" from the beginning. Now, that's a very personal thing, separate from any religious debates about which is "better." And I have a feeling that if you try the various frameworks, you'll fairly quickly find one that clicks for you personally. As I said, for me it's Model-Glue, which is once again being very actively developed, after a period of time during which Joe Rinehart was unable to spend time on it. Now it's being shepherded along by some very smart folks. That said, there are also many people who seem to have found that same kind of comfort with ColdBox. One thing I'd suggest -- aside from the obvious "try-'em-all-out" advice -- is to join the mailing lists for each framework you're considering. Lurking on those lists will give you a perspective on how the developers currently using those frameworks think and work, as well as how actively involved in the lists the folks who are maintaining the frameworks are. Safe to say, all three of the MVC frameworks - including the baby of the bunch, ColdBox - are actually quite mature. To add one more item to the ORM discussion: a critical difference between Hibernate and Transfer or Reactor is that the former offers the ability to design your model first, then create the database from that model. That may or may not be important to any of us. But some folks who've used Hibernate for a good while, and who have lived in object model land for a while, are strong advocates of working this way. Teddy's right, of course: it's entirely possible that Reactor or Transfer may later work with or through Hibernate, to make use of that framework's capabilities. Certainly, Mark Mandel, the developer of Transfer, knows Hibernate through and through. He's already written an Adobe DevNet article on the the CF9 ORM capabilities, even though one could think of those capabilities as competing with Transfer, or making it obsolete. -- Thanks, Tom Tom McNeer MediumCool http://www.mediumcool.com 1735 Johnson Road NE Atlanta, GA 30306 404.589.0560
