It sounds like you might have re-invented (aspects of) Spring: http://www.springframework.org/
Perhaps without the explicit IoC part, though. ;-) -- Martin Cooper On Mon, 17 Nov 2003, n. alex rupp wrote: > Hello, all. > > I've been meaning to drop in for quite a while. I've been following Struts for > a couple of years and using it with few complaints or questions. Earlier this > year I hit some roadblocks in an application design, downloaded and read the > entirety of the source code and took some issues with the architecture. > However, since Struts' feature offering is top-notch and since the servlet > framework community is rife with division, I decided not to be an ass and > complain about it unless I was willing to back it up with some CODE. Instead, I > went shopping. I checked out webwork, read the entirety of Rickard's code, and > even forked off a small branch for my purposes, but came to similar conclusions > about the design. > > But again, I didn't think it would be productive or polite to force the issue to > either of your two communities. It's been my experience that a lot of people > will gripe and criticize other people's software--especially the most popular > and used software, but they'll never add a lick of positive, constructive > feedback in the form of living code, the ultimate contribution to our little > society. Code speaks louder than words. > > So anyway, while working on clientware for the MX4J and Geronimo projects this > autumn, I designed and wrote a servlet framework from scratch to handle my > needs. It has an aspect-oriented workflow engine that can add crosscutting > system logic (like form processing, L10N, security, logging, etc) dynamically at > runtime (without having to mess around with the bytecode). It can trade actions > across classloader boundaries, enabling web applications to span across multiple > .WAR files. This allows users to drop in a new .WAR with new metadata and new > actions, which updates the application workflow at runtime across all modules in > the application namespace. It handles workflow versioning and version rollback > (in case you make changes you come to regret). It does instance pooling of all > components and sequences. Every aspect of the system can be managed with JMX at > runtime. To my knowledge, it should work with every type of Presentation > technology. The concerns of the underlying framework are separated from those > of the feature platform. Almost every component in the core framework and the > corresponding feature platform ultimately implement one of three interfaces: > DataSource, Workflow or Action; I didn't even try to reconcile with the MVC > antipattern because I don't think it reflects the needs of the technology. > > All end-user interaction with the framework is done through a simple client > package. The configuration file is dirt-simple and is processed into metadata > beans in the framework which are pooled and used to direct workflow. > > Basically, it's just really neat and I'm having a lot of fun working on it : ) > > The reason I'm telling you all this is because I designed it so you could > implement your entire feature platform (form processing & validation, i18n, > resource bundles, whatever) on top of it, without much difficulty. Of course, I > don't *expect* you guys to do this, but it's possible and probably wouldn't be > that tough. Same goes for WW and other frameworks. So now (surprise) you have > even *more* options. > > (I also noticed that you guys are working on a chaining implementation. Since > my core framework performs this, I thought I should finally get in touch.) > > It's licensed under the Academic Free License (the ultimate business-friendly OS > license), and I've got the beginnings of a web page up for it at > http://shocks.sf.net. There are API docs and sample code available, although > the framework is in alpha and I'm still refactoring the core components. (Oh > yeah--the core is pluggable, too, in case we decide to hate it later on ; ) > > If this interests any of you, please drop me a line. I've got some test > applications running successfully against it, and I'll be using it to build a > management console for Geronimo. If there is any way I can help you guys out, > please let me know. If not, good luck and > > Kind Regards, > -- > N. Alex Rupp ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
