Hello,
I hope I am not repeating anything as I am I coming to this thread a
bit
late; however, I am thrilled to see the points made by Erin, and the axioms
put forth by Richard, are being discussed early in this project.
I would be more than willing to help in this endeavor be it in terms of
documentation, development of administration functionality, sample
applications etc. I truly believe this to be a one of the "afterthoughts" of
many J2EE environments that is often thrown together in the final stages of
project completion. Having worked with IBM for a few years, I know that this
was a top priority for "big blue" with the development and release of
WebSphere 5.0.
Two of Erin's points really stand out in my opinion:
- up-to-date DTDs with useful comments
- useful error messages
I cannot think of a more frustrating aspect of J2EE development than
the
obscurity of the former, and terse nature of the latter. I consider error
messages as sort of a "front line" documentation set that should be rich to
the point of being verbose.
Regards,
Weston Price
On Sunday 10 August 2003 02:28 am, Tim Urberg wrote:
> Let me know how I can help with this...once again, the OpenEJB code base
> already contains a web administration.
>
> Tim Urberg
>
> Richard Monson-Haefel wrote:
> > Erin,
> >
> > I think your focus on User Friendliness is of critial importance. I also
> > think that it should be at the top of our priorities, not something
> > addressed later. This has been my experience with just about all
> > applicaiton servers: they are just too complex. I hate the fact that I
> > have spend hours learning how to run an App server before I can use it
> > effectively. The root of the problem is configuration.
> >
> > Here are some ideas for User Frindlenss
> > 1. Configuration should be done by exception, rather than by feature. In
> > other words, everything has an assumed value unless its explicitly
> > configured.
> >
> > 2. Configuration files are terse to the extreem and are not hiarchial.
> > Instead of using XML, use a english like syntax with very simple rules.
> > For example, the following would set the timeout on a specific
> > deployment.
> >
> > Set ApplicationA.ejb.Account timeout=3600
> > Set ApplicationA.container.InstancePool max_count=150
> >
> > 3. Configuration files can be anywhere and can be split up in any way.
> > This would allow people to centrailize configuration or otherwise use
> > their own policies (e.g. one configuration file or J2EE application, or
> > funtionality or something else). The fact that configuration options are
> > flat (all a the same level) makes it easy to combine many configuration
> > files into a whole.
> >
> > 4. Include a very simple admin cousole that anyone can figure out. What
> > makes this possible is the fact that only exceptions are configured, so
> > you don't have to go through and fill out a bunch of fields everytime you
> > want to deploy an app or start the server.
> >
> > In my opinion Geronimo should have four axioms that drive every technical
> > decision:
> >
> > - User Friendliness,
> > - Conformance
> > - Performance, and
> > -Plugability.
> >
> > These are all at the same level, with no one axiom being more important
> > than the others. Different groups might be responsible for ensuring that
> > all components (parts of Geronimo) embrace all four axioms. These would
> > be gatekeepers to adding new functionality - I don't mean to create more
> > red tap, but only to ensure that we stick to the axioms..
> >
> > Richard
> >
> > Erin Mulder wrote:
> >>I'd like to see a subgroup dedicated to the overall user experience
> >>and would be happy to help out in that area.
> >>
> >>In particular:
> >>
> >>0) A user web site that draws people in and makes it easy to get started
> >>
> >>1) Friendly, comprehensive and -free- user documentation
> >>2) Working examples of all J2EE and value-added features
> >>3) An attractive web console that competes favorably with
> >> WebLogic/Websphere 4) Good command line tools for easy scripting
> >>5) Lots of attention to the developer experience, e.g.:
> >> - up-to-date DTDs with useful comments
> >> - robust hot deploy
> >> - useful error messages
> >> - preservation of line numbering where possible for EJBs/JSPs
> >>
> >>Cheers,
> >>Erin Mulder
> >
> > --
> > Richard Monson-Haefel
> > Author of J2EE Web Services (Addison-Wesley 2003)
> > Author of Enterprise JavaBeans, 3rd Edition (O'Reilly 2001)
> > Co-Author of Java Message Service (O'Reilly 2000)
> > http://www.Monson-Haefel.com
