Craig McClanahan wrote the following on 1/10/2006 7:37 PM:
Not really. Shale is a completely separate framework that leverages the fact that JSF already provides a controller servlet, plus support for navigation and other simiklar things. It shares no code with the Struts 1.xcontroller framework.
This is one of the major obstacles right now with JSF I believe. It's confusing as heck to try to figure what the heck you need and where in the world you go to get everything to build your application. I'm know Craig you have been more than kind numerous times explaining all the differences and nuances between different related technologies, but it would be nice if when someone new starts using google they can quickly find out what's up - currently this is not the case - not without a LOT of work and/or luck.
Try to pretend you just know a little about the buzz words.. JSF and Shale. Now start googling to try to understand JSF. The Sun site I think is pretty poorly organized. This article http://java.sun.com/developer/technicalArticles/GUI/JavaServerFaces/ there was quite good but it doesn't cover a lot of different things.. I don't think it even mentions MyFaces.
Google further and you find JSF Central which has a LOT of stuff which is nice and it's organized in decent sections, but many of the tutorials or lessons seem to focus on specific aspects, not many I've found just trying to tie together a few common technologies one would use. Maybe there is also an article embedded somewhere there that helps make sense out of all the related JSF technologies but I'm not sure where it would be.
I guess what I'm getting at is there really should be a simple page that dumbs down with a quick overview of what you really might need to get started and what benefits you get involving other related JSF technologies. I know JSF is really a spec and not an implementation, but this in and of itself is a bit confusing, since when you go to the Sun JSF site you are getting obviously some kind of implementation when you download (sheesh I forgot what you download there to get it.. maybe Sun Studio Creator?). I'm also yet to see how you could develop anything meaningful without something like MyFaces or maybe Oracle ADF so really I think someone almost needs to start there. Think if you just started reading about JSP and Servlets.. someone tells you that JSF is a spec built on top of the ServletAPI, but Shale is also built on top of JSF as is MyFaces, but you can also use MyFaces and Shale together for your JSF project, yet you really don't need either to get started. It can get confusing quite quickly - yet the benefit to JSF I thought was that it's going to be easier to get a handle on than say Struts.
Anyway, I'm totally babbling now, but am I the only one that feels this confusion? It's more confusing when you try to think of how you can use these different technologies together (ie Shale and MyFaces).
Now, trust me, I'm not pro Microsoft by any stretch. I haven't even coded a single ASP application (have done some winforms stuff though), but I can see if I was an IT manager why I might simply go "Let's just go with .NET." The reason being, even if it's sort of sucky, at least you know what you are getting (insert 'pile of dog doo' jokes here) and you know what you are working with. Right now a company deciding to go with JSF seems to be akin to telling the developers .. "Hey you need a PC to use to get you job done, go out to newegg and order all your parts you need and put it together." Sure you might end up with a great product, possibly better than the Dell you'll get from a supplier, but I'm not so sure the upfront time to get there is worth it (yet). I think the opensource world needs a balance between providing "too much scattered all over the place" and the MS "one size fits all solution."
Maybe if I wasn't so busy with other things (I know, who isn't busy), I'd get around to helping out to try to clear out the confusion surrounding all these related technologies but I haven't invested enough time to make sense of it all myself yet. If there is an article that explains how they all relate, I think it should be stickied on the home page of JSF Central as that seems to be the second major hit on google when searching for JSF related information.
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