AribaWeb: The framework of my dreams?

Could AribaWeb, finally be the framework of my dreams? that for which I have longed for ever since I stopped using WebObjects? The one to finally demonstrate those Ruby guys that what makes Ruby so great is Rails, and what made Java inferior (until before AribaWeb) was its framework, but not the language itself?

So far, it seems that, while not perfect (no client side caching, some Hibernate inherited validation limitations), AribaWeb gets many basics concept right (like programmatic navigation, UI meta generation, runtime UI customization, MVC separation…)

I am simply amazed….

Now someone just needs to integrate AribaWeb with Capuccino, and total world domination would be in their hands.

Ruby is younger therefore better than Java?

I wrote this as a response to From Java to Ruby: Programmer's view, but I couldn't post it because of a bug in that site, so I decided to post it in my own blog:

Isn't this a simplified view of the advantages of Ruby over Java? For example the lack of choice in Ruby means that if the "one Ruby way" to do stuff is not good for you project... you will have to go to other technologies (Java for example). And that can happen pretty often:

• Hibernate has many more options for integration with legacy databases than Ruby's Active Record... almost all databases now have JDBC drivers (you can not say the same about Ruby database support).
• Spring offers integrated transaction handling that makes it possible to switch from JDBC transactions to JTA transactions without changing a single line of Java code (you just need to modify around 5 lines in an XML file) what is the equivalent for that in Ruby?
• Calling stored procedures is not that easy with Ruby... what is the equivalent of HQL (JPAQL) for Ruby... can you honestly say that it can handle all the special cases HQL can... and with the same efficiency?
• With java I can build a web application GWT style, JSF style or plain JSP style... and each style has advantages and disadvantages... do I have all that power with Rails? (Of course, those frameworks can be re-built in Ruby, but the question is, do I have them now?)

I think you are right when you say that it's healthy to start with a clean slate and rebuild based on a cleaner, simpler foundation, but before saying that the new foundation is actually better than the older one, you have to be sure that your new foundation is actually capable of handling all the special cases the old foundation was capable of handling... or remember that maybe if you remove all the abilities the old foundation has to handle special cases you might end up realizing that your new foundation is just a replica of the state that the old foundation had when it was younger. (And even then the older foundation has the advantage that you can use it as it was used in the past, but you can not use a new foundation as it will be used in the future)

Object Relational Mapper vs Business Entity Manager

In my opinion the best two are Hibernate and EOF, I think a mix between them could create "the ultimate" Object Relational Mapper... or the ultimate Business Entity Manager...?

EOF (the best BEM?)

• General Overview
• Manual
  

Hibernate (the best ORM?)

• General Overview
• Manual
  

An interesting topic for analysis could be the limits between an Object Relational Mapper and an Business Entity Manager. Some people think that Hibernate shouldn't evolve to become more like EOF, because it should aim to do one and only one thing (be the best ORM) and other people think that it would be nice to have the services that an Business Entity Manager gives you:

• automatic connection handling
• automatic transactions handling
• multiple undo levels
• real nested transactions
• client and server objects
• distributed non-transactional lazy loading
• etc,etc
  

There are also some people that think that a Business Entity Manager is more closer to the MDA "objective", so I think it is important to take a look at (Using Borland's ECO to develop model-powered applications for .NET) an many related articles, the specially interesting thing for me about ECO is its OCL support (that can be used, for example to configure constraints that help ensuring that only consistent data is saved into the database... it is kind of a Design by Contract for the domain model)

IMO the Active Record pattern is getting too much popularity (perhaps thanks to Ruby , but I think it leads to an anemic domain model ) and Domain Model based in Business Entity Managers is not as popular (thanks to the problems in EJB1 and EJB2) but it is important to remember that EJB is not the only way to build an Business Entity Manager, there are ways to build Business Entity Managers that are a lot more lightweight and user friendly than EJB, (just investigate more about EOF and ECO)