New project with Seam, does it have to be a suicide?

[ziphyre]

Hi,

We're starting a new project, and I'm willing to implement it as a Seam project. These 2-3 weeks have been mostly a research time. Since I'm unfamiliar with Java EE, I tried to get used to different technologies like EJB, Hibernate and Web Services, the concept of a application server etc... It was not an easy period of time for me. The more I read, the more it seemed to me a suicide to enter the JAVA EE world as a lone developer having nobody to direct me to the right path. But the beauty of the architecture and the designs really facinated me.I think I'm being sentimental about Java, and the common sense tell me to go with PHP or .NET. But alas! The desicion has been made. But I got still some questions:

1. The performance of www.seamframework.org seems to me a little bit slow, and I don't think it's my connections fault. Does it related to Seam and JBoss AS, or to the hardware or to the bandwidth?


2. Are there any benchmark results or comparisons of sites running on Seam / JBoss AS and on other platforms (PHP, .NET)


3. Are there any website out there running on seam? (except this one)


4. On this new project, there will be a lot of AJAX communication and I wonder which technology should I choose? Richfaces or ICEFaces? For me, most import things are ease of use and integration and the amount of support which I can take from out there (Documentation, examples, tutorials, forums etc..)

Thank you

[admin.admin.email.tld]

1. a little bit slow?  I've seen javascript errors while editing a new topic and uploads just hang.  I'm in North America and the servers are apparently in Europe but Bauer is looking into this AFAIK.

2. good question, I don't know.

3. good question, I don't know.  Seam 1.0.0.GA was released June 2006 so it's still a relatively new technology.  Our company is a big telecom firm that is currently using Seam for new app dev.  I'm sure there's others out there but there are not too many Seam related job postings on dice.com.

4. we have had pretty good experience with Richfaces and it's supported by JBoss.  Documentation and forum support is very good.

[jbalunas.jbalunas.jboss.org]

1. The server is hosted in Europe and there has already been several topics on it.  They are working on improving it.  Christian is best person to answer about performance.

2. There are some blogs with performance comparisons with other tech.  We will be working on some official performance metrics in the near future.  Although keep in mind the differences in the frameworks and goals of the technology.  Seam is a component based stateful context framework.  Some of the others are not and you will need to write a lot more code to do what Seam does.

3. There are several large projects that we know about and probably many more we do not.  Big Lots (retail store) as a very large inventory/communication application running in hundreds of stores with local/remote servers controlled via a master server.  See JBW presentation on it - very cool :)

4.Depends on what your needs are.

[mmichalek.mmichalek.micros-retail.com]

Jay, do you have a link for that JBW presentation?

[jbalunas.jbalunas.jboss.org]

Here is the link to the JBW presentations, but I do not see the one from Biglots.  I pinged one of the guys there about it, but most of thee talk was demo.

http://www.jbossworld.com/downloads/presentations/

[keithnaas]

I'm one of the architects on the Big Lots project that presented at JBW - Thanks for the plug, Jay!

Unfortunately, I can't post the presentation online yet due to legal issues.  However, I could send it to your personal email address.

We have multiple Seam applications in use, some old ones using Seam 1.0, the Inventory Management app that Jay is referring to on Seam 1.2.1, and new Flex work with Seam 2.

The Seam 1.0 app has approximately 50 users.  It has been running since July of 2006.  We had very few support issues at the time, and I don't think we've had a support call on it in the last 6 months.

As presented at JBW, the Inventory Management suite is running at @900 stores (the target is @1450).  We do have occasional issues related mainly to the touchscreen devices we use, browser issues, and the Ajax functionality we take advantage of - maybe this is why we are now using flex for complex stuff.  The suite is probably used by up to 5 people at a time at the store with a jboss server at each store. 

[jnusaira]

To answer two of your questions.

1. Speed
- I do not have any performance numbers to give you, but from what i have seen in development with Seam there is nothing noticeably slow about it. We use Seam at work and while the front end is small, we do QUITE a bit of transactional throughput using the JPBM and MDBs quite a bit. We are getting some perm gen errors, but that has nothing to do with using Seam.

2. As far as ramp up. Well. yeah thats going to be hard for anyone. And to be honest ANY framework will be the same. Ruby on Rails the hailed fast to learn framework or Grails both are VERY easy to get up and running with a Hello World/CRUD app in a few minutes. Like every framework there is lots to learn.

My advice. Use seam-gen to generate your project, will save tons of headaches (you've probably done that) Also I'd invest in understanding the difference between Stateless and Stateful SB, i see many new clients use them inappropriately. In addition invest in a good JPA book, since you are going to need it. I actually like Pro EJB3 by apress. There are some great hibernate books too, but you may get confused in some of the differences between Hibernate and JPA.

Btw ... for the last questions. I only briefly played with IceFaces a year ago and wasnt as fond. I'd probably stick as a newbie to Richfaces, its more supported by JBoss, and there is some fairly good doco on it.

good luck.

[ziphyre]

Keith Naas wrote on Feb 22, 2008 05:34 PM:



Unfortunately, I can't post the presentation online yet due to legal issues.  However, I could send it to your personal email address.

I'd be glad if you could send it to ziphyre at gmail com

Thanks

[ziphyre]

Thanks for all the replies...

[mmichalek.mmichalek.micros-retail.com]

Keith, I'm also interested in the JBW presentation.  My address is mmichale AT kent DOT edu

Thanks a lot.

[www.supernovasoftware.com]

Please send me a copy of the Big Lots presentation

to mailing.listatsupernovasoftwaredotcom

It sounds very interesting.

[admin.admin.email.tld]

please send a copy of big lots presentation to

[e-mail]

thanks!

[augba]

Hi Keith,

Pls send me  copy of the Big Lots presentation

ka underscore manoj at hotmail.com

It sounds very interesting!

Thanks in advance
Manoj

[svadu]

Any chance you could send me a copy to siarhei DOT dudzin AT gmail DOT com ?

Thanks,

Siarhei

[hubaghdadi]

Well I'm not an expert but IMVHO if you are completely new to Java EE, I think you should spent a respectful amount of time studying/evaluating Java EE before starting serious development.

My favorite books are:
EJB 3 In Action and Java Persistence With Hibernate.

RichFaces documentation is so detailed (BTW, it is so powerful too).