I have a couple of lingering issues with Town to fix for v2.0, but am
now thinking ahead to longer-term issues of making the ORMapMaker
stuff more easily integrateable with the various related projects
going on in ASF. A couple of thoughts:
1. Rewrite code generators using XSL or some other template approach
(the current println version is not really readable or maintainable).
In addition to cleaning up the existing code, this would make it easy
for people to contribute new generators (e.g. in XSL) for various
purposes.
2. Generate UI code using a more elegant approach than pure servlets
with embedded html-- e.g. generate code for Turbine, or perhaps an
XML/XSL/XTP based template thing instead.
Town is currently presented pretty much as a stand-alone thing. I
happen to use the Resin servlet engine, which is why Town generates
resin.conf URL mappings. But in principle it could generate code and
configuration files specifically designed for use with JServ, Tomcat,
Turbine, ECS, Cocoon, etc. etc. Where do you think this would be
most useful or appropriate, if at all?
(My goal, if it wasn't clear already, is to generate a complete web
application from a DB schema, and for the generated code to be as
flexible, modifiable, and maintainable as possible).
I already separated ORMapMaker into its own package; but if its scope
gets broader in the future, it may make sense to present it as a
separate product from Town. That is, ORMapMaker could become a
general DB/web app code generation engine, which happens to have a
plugin for making a Town-based O-R map.
Unfortunately, I don't have time to implement a big overhaul myself
anytime soon, since Town now does most of what I need it to do in the
short term. But I do want it to be useful to others also, and
building some bridges to other projects might help in that regard.
Depending on how things develop, it might make sense also to submit
Town to the Java Apache Project.
-David
____________________________________________________________
David Soergel [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Department of Genetics http://www.lorax.org
Stanford University School of Medicine (650) 303-5324
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