Is Grails what I want?

[stefan.pietschmann]

Hi,

we are working on a rather complex web application (A)and plan to build a separate administration web-app (B) for it. Therefore we plan to build a Facade for web-app A and provide access to it with the help of an MBean via JMX. The admin web-app could be built with Grails, as it seems an easy, powerful and interesting approach. However, the point is that we do not have/need a model, as all data is fetched via the MBean-Facade. As I see it we could call all the functionality and data in the controllers via the MBean and wouldn't even need domain classes.

So does it still make sense to use Grails here.. or rather not? Or am I totally mistaken?

Cheers,
Stefan

[a.shneyderman]

> So does it still make sense to use Grails here.. or rather not? Or am I
> totally mistaken?

Sure, as you wuld still get VC parts out of grails. On the other hand
if your app is really huge (I mean thousands controllers/actions) you
would probably better off with some java based framework as tooling
for Groovy and Grails in its infant state -> so refactoring and
maintanence might get complicated, you would also need a lot of
discipline in development (well you need it with java but not as
much).

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[kate rhodes]

On 3/28/07, stefan.pietschmann <[hidden email]> wrote:

Hi,

we are working on a rather complex web application (A)and plan to build a
separate administration web-app (B) for it. Therefore we plan to build a
Facade for web-app A and provide access to it with the help of an MBean via
JMX. The admin web-app could be built with Grails, as it seems an easy,
powerful and interesting approach. However, the point is that we do not
have/need a model, as all data is fetched via the MBean-Facade. As I see it
we could call all the functionality and data in the controllers via the
MBean and wouldn't even need domain classes.

So does it still make sense to use Grails here.. or rather not? Or am I
totally mistaken?

I wouldn't use Grails for an app like that. Grails is all about making standard CRUD based apps easy. For something like that I'd look into using something like Wicket.

--
- kate = masukomi
http://weblog.masukomi.org/

[Steven Devijver]

Sure you can use Grails. You can access JMX MBeans using Spring JMX,
but I guess we could make that easier in Groovy, something like:

def mBean = "mbean:name=myMBean".asMBean( mbeanServer )

def value = mBean.myProperty

mBean.myProperty = "my value"

mBean.someMethodToCall( 1, 2, 3, "four" )

Steven

On 3/28/07, kate rhodes <[hidden email]> wrote:

>
>
> On 3/28/07, stefan.pietschmann
> <[hidden email]> wrote:
> >
> > Hi,
> >
> > we are working on a rather complex web application (A)and plan to build a
> > separate administration web-app (B) for it. Therefore we plan to build a
> > Facade for web-app A and provide access to it with the help of an MBean
> via
> > JMX. The admin web-app could be built with Grails, as it seems an easy,
> > powerful and interesting approach. However, the point is that we do not
> > have/need a model, as all data is fetched via the MBean-Facade. As I see
> it
> > we could call all the functionality and data in the controllers via the
> > MBean and wouldn't even need domain classes.
> >
> > So does it still make sense to use Grails here.. or rather not? Or am I
> > totally mistaken?
>
>
> I wouldn't use Grails for an app like that. Grails is all about making
> standard CRUD based apps easy. For something like that I'd look into using
> something like Wicket.
>
>  --
> - kate = masukomi
> http://weblog.masukomi.org/

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[stefan.pietschmann]

Thank you all for your replies.

I've already tried the remote invocation of our web-app's mbean interface via grails and it works well. So, it is obvious that Grails can be used. However, I'm still unsure whether the nice support of the VC-model and groovy justify the use of grails, since big parts remain unused.
It would be great to hear some more suggestions on what framework/language you would prefer in my situation, and why.

Best regards,
Stefan

stefan.pietschmann wrote

Hi,

we are working on a rather complex web application (A)and plan to build a separate administration web-app (B) for it. Therefore we plan to build a Facade for web-app A and provide access to it with the help of an MBean via JMX. The admin web-app could be built with Grails, as it seems an easy, powerful and interesting approach. However, the point is that we do not have/need a model, as all data is fetched via the MBean-Facade. As I see it we could call all the functionality and data in the controllers via the MBean and wouldn't even need domain classes.

So does it still make sense to use Grails here.. or rather not? Or am I totally mistaken?

Cheers,
Stefan

[D T-2]

Stefan, to answer this further, I think it may help to know about what
you'll need to do in a little more detail than "a webapp that accesses
MBeans". And it probably would help to also counter-post on the lists of
other app frameworks.

For instance, you probably need:
- authentication/role/user management  [AcegiPlugin]
- navigation tree/bar/menu/panel [no plugins today]
- a framework for easily generating (auto-generating? customizing?) your UI
- ? persistence of user preferences ?
- ? url mapping ? [coming in 0.5 ]
- any other interaction with your backend besides the MBean? [pings,
processes, etc.]
- any scheduled jobs? [part of Grails core]

Anything else?

- Daiji

stefan.pietschmann wrote:

> Thank you all for your replies.
>
> I've already tried the remote invocation of our web-app's mbean interface
> via grails and it works well. So, it is obvious that Grails can be used.
> However, I'm still unsure whether the nice support of the VC-model and
> groovy justify the use of grails, since big parts remain unused.
> It would be great to hear some more suggestions on what framework/language
> you would prefer in my situation, and why.
>
> Best regards,
> Stefan
>
>
>
> stefan.pietschmann wrote:
>  
>> Hi,
>>
>> we are working on a rather complex web application (A)and plan to build a
>> separate administration web-app (B) for it. Therefore we plan to build a
>> Facade for web-app A and provide access to it with the help of an MBean
>> via JMX. The admin web-app could be built with Grails, as it seems an
>> easy, powerful and interesting approach. However, the point is that we do
>> not have/need a model, as all data is fetched via the MBean-Facade. As I
>> see it we could call all the functionality and data in the controllers via
>> the MBean and wouldn't even need domain classes.
>>
>> So does it still make sense to use Grails here.. or rather not? Or am I
>> totally mistaken?
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Stefan
>>
>>    
>
>  

 
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[stefan.pietschmann]

So, to wrap it up, here's the deal:

We have a web-app (A) that - among other things - manages sessions, users therein and their roles and rights, respectively. Now we want to develop web-app B that allows for monitoring A, so that you can see all registered users, all sessions running, all the roles, corresponding rights, statistics and such. We furthermore want to be able to change all of these in B, e.g. administer user details, the roles and rights they have etc.
The separation of web-app A and the administration interface may seem a bit strange, since both are going to be running in the same tomcat (as planned by now). However this is due to B being a students' project, and we don't want them to have to deal with A's internals and would further like to establish some shiny new technologies/frameworks.

So far, so good. We won't need a user management in B, since A will carry this out. An administrator in A should be able to log into B, while a user of A should not. So, persistance is provided by A.
B should feature a fancy Web2.0ish interface, and in the backend it shall (apart from minor preprocessing) just use attributes and operations provided by A over its MBean. So it's more-or-less a View-Controller-App.

As for the rest I cannot say now what is going to be needed in detail, but this should give you a fairly good overview of our plans. I'm not really into many web application frameworks, that's why i'm interested in your suggestions what to use.

Cheers,
Stefan

D T-2 wrote

Stefan, to answer this further, I think it may help to know about what
you'll need to do in a little more detail than "a webapp that accesses
MBeans". And it probably would help to also counter-post on the lists of
other app frameworks.

For instance, you probably need:
- authentication/role/user management  [AcegiPlugin]
- navigation tree/bar/menu/panel [no plugins today]
- a framework for easily generating (auto-generating? customizing?) your UI
- ? persistence of user preferences ?
- ? url mapping ? [coming in 0.5 ]
- any other interaction with your backend besides the MBean? [pings,
processes, etc.]
- any scheduled jobs? [part of Grails core]

Anything else?

- Daiji

stefan.pietschmann wrote:
> Thank you all for your replies.
>
> I've already tried the remote invocation of our web-app's mbean interface
> via grails and it works well. So, it is obvious that Grails can be used.
> However, I'm still unsure whether the nice support of the VC-model and
> groovy justify the use of grails, since big parts remain unused.
> It would be great to hear some more suggestions on what framework/language
> you would prefer in my situation, and why.
>
> Best regards,
> Stefan
>
>
>
> stefan.pietschmann wrote:
>  
>> Hi,
>>
>> we are working on a rather complex web application (A)and plan to build a
>> separate administration web-app (B) for it. Therefore we plan to build a
>> Facade for web-app A and provide access to it with the help of an MBean
>> via JMX. The admin web-app could be built with Grails, as it seems an
>> easy, powerful and interesting approach. However, the point is that we do
>> not have/need a model, as all data is fetched via the MBean-Facade. As I
>> see it we could call all the functionality and data in the controllers via
>> the MBean and wouldn't even need domain classes.
>>
>> So does it still make sense to use Grails here.. or rather not? Or am I
>> totally mistaken?
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Stefan
>>
>>    
>
>  



 
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[pledbrook]

> As for the rest I cannot say now what is going to be needed in detail, but
> this should give you a fairly good overview of our plans. I'm not really
> into many web application frameworks, that's why i'm interested in your
> suggestions what to use.

I would still class this as an MVC application - it's just your model
consists of (remote) MBeans rather than a database. I would quite
happily use Grails in this situation - just beacuse you won't be using
GORM doesn't mean that there's nothing else to take advantage of.
GSPs, dynamic tags, dynamic reloading, auto-wiring of services, jobs,
... You might just want to spend a couple of days taking Grails for a
spin and seeing how you like it and whether it matches your
requirements.

Cheers,

Peter

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[kate rhodes]

um...I was just thinking.... why don't you guys just use web services?
Then students wouldn't be limited to java...

--
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http://weblog.masukomi.org/

[stefan.pietschmann]

Thanks for your opinions and suggestions - we'll give it a try using Grails and JMX. However, I could imagine using Web Services in the future - nice point.