The Portal Framework Roadmap

[Shamsul Bahrin Abd Mutalib]

It is very important for developer in moving quickly and lightly in the process of creating business applications.  As its name implies, this Light and Easy framework is currently under heavy enhancement to make it easier for developer to create applications in an agile environment.  For this purpose, we have this philosophy: “do not think about database but only think about java classes”.  Traditionally application developers will start from ERD (designing a database entity relationship diagram), but now we will start creating application right away from just java classes. 

Therefore, here are what has been going on:

- Implementing persistence API in the framework.  By using persistence classes, no more will developer worry about databases.
- The use of scripting language (GROOVY) for modules development.  Scripting laguage will make programming works to be done much faster.
- Implementing the SOA.  But we have gone further then just SOA, we have been upgrading the framework to be WSRP enabled.
- We are in the planning to make our portal to be JSR286 compliant.

[panji_alam]

Thanks Mr Sam for the introduction.

Anyway, there's a lot of plan to enhance the framework. I'll give some official plan and milestone in short time but for this post let me explain WHY ANOTHER JAVA FRAMEWORK?

Yeah, i know, for the first time u will feel uncormfirtable to see yet another framework. I can feel that because im just like you when i become Java/J2EE Progammer for almost 10 years. More and more framework come and each framework claim their framework is better and have much more features compare with others. I have to learn one approach to another approach to know what the best technology that i can use for my job.

After using various framework and frequently i developing my own framework, i realize that sometimes i make something simple become complex(Antipattern?). At the same time i use another programming language especially scripting language like PHP(since 1998 - PHP 3, i know sound ugly but thats my history) and of course Ruby language for my system Admin tasks to replace my perl scripting language (I still like Perl but the code is always ugly). Then Ruby on Rails(RoR) appear on the stage. Im amaze with the RoR idea. I start using RoR for several project that facing short development period but still using Java as my major programming language.

At the same time more and more framework come at the same time. POJO concept was back instead complex bean, Spring become better framework, EJB3 become megastar and Grails born, inspired by Ruby on Rails. I still remember the time im using JBOSS when it just ejb container and almost called EJBoss but Sun asking them to eliminate EJB word because it was reserved by Sun. I still remember the time that im using Spring, some people just think Spring just simply another MVC framework.

So, back to my point, WHY ANOTHER JAVA FRAMEWORK? My answer is i want to combine most of the features that i like from Ruby on Rails/Grails, Spring, EJB3 and other frameworks into one and at the same time, developers that using this framework don't have to worry to understand every single concept when the want to try the framework. I just want to give an opportunity to any developers that want to use some good features but its hard to learn and to understand every single concept behind that features.

Here is list of features that we are working for a time being and not limited to :

- Portal framework with portlet container(JSR168 and will upgrade to JSR286)
- Rich Client frontend
- Integration (Web Services/axis 2 and WSRP version 1 - will upgrade to version 2)
- Embedded EJB3
- JPA (OpenJPA) for persistency so programmer didn't have to worry about database side so much.
- Groovy (Cool Java scripting language for AGILE development)
- MVC framework (I know other frameworks already have it)
- Ajax build in (prototype and scriptacolus)
- Inversion of Control (IoC) (Using PicoContainer)

So, what so interesting about all of that? Programmer don't have to worry to know all that features because LEBAH  framework already take a control. No messy XML configuration or complex configuration. No need to create this file and another file for some requirement and bla-bla-bla. Programmers just write the code. Thats all. Bit by bit naturally they will understand what the technology that they using.

Thats our target. Its really hard to find some programmers that understand almost all concept by themself but every projects need more programmers. Hopefully with this LIGHT and EASY framework, it will solve that issue where even fresh graduate can joint the project and can use all of the great features that we have in the framework. That's all from me.

Adios Amigos

Mahyuddin Husairi a.k.a Panji Alam