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• Microsoft .NET Web Programming: Web Sites versus Web Applications

  - by SAMIR BHOGAYTA

  In .NET 2.0, Microsoft introduced the Web Site. This was the default way to create a web Project in Visual Studio 2005. In Visual Studio 2008, the Web Application has been restored as the default web Project in Visual Studio/.NET 3.x The Web Site is a file/folder based Project structure. It is designed such that pages are not compiled until they are requested ("on demand"). The advantages to the Web Site are: 1) It is designed to accommodate non-.NET Applications 2) Deployment is as simple as copying files to the target server 3) Any portion of the Web Site can be updated without requiring recompilation of the entire Site. The Web Application is a .dll-based Project structure. ASP.NET pages and supporting files are compiled into assemblies that are then deployed to the target server. Advantages of the Web Application are: 1) Precompiled files do not expose code to an attacker 2) Precompiled files run faster because they are binary data (the Microsoft Intermediate Language, or MSIL) executed by the CLR (Common Language Runtime) 3) References, assemblies, and other project dependencies are built in to the compiled site and automatically managed. They do not need to be manually deployed and/or registered in the Global Assembly Cache: deployment does this for you If you are planning on using automated build and deployment, such as the Team Foundation Server Team Build engine, you will need to have your code in the form of a Web Application. If you have a Web Site, it will not properly compile as a Web Application would. However, all is not lost: it is possible to work around the issue by adding a Web Deployment Project to your Solution and then: a) configuring the Web Deployment Project to precompile your code; and b) configuring your Team Build definition to use the Web Deployment Project as its source for compilation. https://msevents.microsoft.com/cui/WebCastEventDetails.aspx?culture=en-US&EventID=1032380764&CountryCode=US

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• Software Architecture and Software Architecture Evaluation

  How many of us have worked at places where the concept of software architecture was ridiculed for wasting time and money? Even more ridiculous to them was the concept of evaluating software architecture. I think the next time that I am in this situation again, and I hope that I never am I will have to push for this methodology in the software development life cycle. I have spent way too many hours/days/months/years working poorly architected systems or systems that were just built ADHOC. This in software development must stop. I can understand why systems get like this due to overzealous sales staff, demanding management that wants everything yesterday, and project managers asking if things are done yet before the project has even started. But seriously, some time must be spent designing the applications that we write along with evaluating the architecture so that it will integrate will within the existing systems of an origination. If placed in this situation again, I will strive to gain buying from key players within the business, for example: Senior Software Engineers\Developers, Software Architects, Project Managers, Software Quality Assurance, Technical Services, Operations, and Finance in order for this idea to succeed with upper management. In order to convince these key players I will have to show them the benefits of architecture and even more benefits of evaluating software architecture on a system wide level. Benefits of Software Architecture Evaluation Places Stakeholders in the Same Room to Communicate Ensures Delivery of Detailed Quality Goals Prioritizes Conflicting Goals Requires Clear Explication Improves the Quality of Documentation Discovers Opportunities for Cross-Project Reuse Improves Architecture Practices Once I had key player buy in then and only then would I approach upper management about my plan regarding implementing the concept of software architecture and using evaluation to ensure that the software being designed is the proper architecture for the project. In addition to the benefits listed above I would also show upper management how much time is being wasted by not doing these evaluations. For example, if project X cost us Y amount, then why do we have several implementations in various forms of X and how much money and time could we have saved if we just reused the existing code base to give each system the same functionality that was already created? After this, I would mention what would happen if we had 50 instances of this situation? Then I would show them how the software architecture evaluation process would have prevented this and that the optimization could have leveraged its existing code base to increase the speed and quality of its development. References:Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute (2011). Architecture Tradeoff Analysis Method from http://www.sei.cmu.edu/architecture/tools/evaluate/atam.cfm

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• Architecture for interfacing multiple applications

  - by Erwin

  Let's say you have a Master Database and a few External/Internal applications that use WebServices to interface data. What would be your preferred architecture to interface data from and to those applications? Would you put some sort of Enterprise Service Bus in between? Like BizTalk? Or something cheaper? We don't want to block applications while they are interfacing, but we do want to use return codes from the interfaces to determine if we need to take some actions in the originating application or not.

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• Advantages of Client/Server Architecture over Mainframe Architecture

  Originally mainframe architectures relied on a centralized host server that processed data and returned it to be displayed on a dummy terminal. These dummy terminals did not have my processing power and could only display data that was sent from the mainframe. Application architecture completely changed with the advent of N-Tier architecture. The N-Tier architecture replaced the dummy terminals with standard PCs that could think and/or process for themselves. This allowed for applications to be decentralized. Further, this type of architecture also breaks up the roles found within a mainframe by extracting Web Interfaces, Application Logic and Data access in to 3 separate parts so that it can be extended and distributed as the demands of an application increases.

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• The Application Architecture Domain

  - by Michael Glas

  I have been spending a lot of time thinking about Application Architecture in the context of EA. More specifically, as an Enterprise Architect, what do I need to consider when looking at/defining/designing the Application Architecture Domain?There are several definitions of Application Architecture. TOGAF says “The objective here [in Application Architecture] is to define the major kinds of application system necessary to process the data and support the business”. FEA says the Application Architecture “Defines the applications needed to manage the data and support the business functions”.I agree with these definitions. They reflect what the Application Architecture domain does. However, they need to be decomposed to be practical.I find it useful to define a set of views into the Application Architecture domain. These views reflect what an EA needs to consider when working with/in the Applications Architecture domain. These viewpoints are, at a high level:Capability View: This view reflects how applications alignment with business capabilities. It is a super set of the following views when viewed in aggregate. By looking at the Application Architecture domain in terms of the business capabilities it supports, you get a good perspective on how those applications are directly supporting the business.Technology View: The technology view reflects the underlying technology that makes up the applications. Based on the number of rationalization activities I have seen (more specifically application rationalization), the phrase “complexity equals cost” drives the importance of the technology view, especially when attempting to reduce that complexity through standardization type activities. Some of the technology components to be considered are: Software: The application itself as well as the software the application relies on to function (web servers, application servers). Infrastructure: The underlying hardware and network components required by the application and supporting application software. Development: How the application is created and maintained. This encompasses development components that are part of the application itself (i.e. customizable functions), as well as bolt on development through web services, API’s, etc. The maintenance process itself also falls under this view. Integration: The interfaces that the application provides for integration as well as the integrations to other applications and data sources the application requires to function. Type: Reflects the kind of application (mash-up, 3 tiered, etc). (Note: functional type [CRM, HCM, etc.] are reflected under the capability view). Organization View: Organizations are comprised of people and those people use applications to do their jobs. Trying to define the application architecture domain without taking the organization that will use/fund/change it into consideration is like trying to design a car without thinking about who will drive it (i.e. you may end up building a formula 1 car for a family of 5 that is really looking for a minivan). This view reflects the people aspect of the application. It includes: Ownership: Who ‘owns’ the application? This will usually reflect primary funding and utilization but not always. Funding: Who funds both the acquisition/creation as well as the on-going maintenance (funding to create/change/operate)? Change: Who can/does request changes to the application and what process to the follow? Utilization: Who uses the application, how often do they use it, and how do they use it? Support: Which organization is responsible for the on-going support of the application? Information View: Whether or not you subscribe to the view that “information drives the enterprise”, it is a fact that information is critical. The management, creation, and organization of that information are primary functions of enterprise applications. This view reflects how the applications are tied to information (or at a higher level – how the Application Architecture domain relates to the Information Architecture domain). It includes: Access: The application is the mechanism by which end users access information. This could be through a primary application (i.e. CRM application), or through an information access type application (a BI application as an example). Creation: Applications create data in order to provide information to end-users. (I.e. an application creates an order to be used by an end-user as part of the fulfillment process). Consumption: Describes the data required by applications to function (i.e. a product id is required by a purchasing application to create an order. Application Service View: Organizations today are striving to be more agile. As an EA, I need to provide an architecture that supports this agility. One of the primary ways to achieve the required agility in the application architecture domain is through the use of ‘services’ (think SOA, web services, etc.). Whether it is through building applications from the ground up utilizing services, service enabling an existing application, or buying applications that are already ‘service enabled’, compartmentalizing application functions for re-use helps enable flexibility in the use of those applications in support of the required business agility. The applications service view consists of: Services: Here, I refer to the generic definition of a service “a set of related software functionalities that can be reused for different purposes, together with the policies that should control its usage”. Functions: The activities within an application that are not available / applicable for re-use. This view is helpful when identifying duplication functions between applications that are not service enabled. Delivery Model View: It is hard to talk about EA today without hearing the terms ‘cloud’ or shared services.  Organizations are looking at the ways their applications are delivered for several reasons, to reduce cost (both CAPEX and OPEX), to improve agility (time to market as an example), etc.  From an EA perspective, where/how an application is deployed has impacts on the overall enterprise architecture. From integration concerns to SLA requirements to security and compliance issues, the Enterprise Architect needs to factor in how applications are delivered when designing the Enterprise Architecture. This view reflects how applications are delivered to end-users. The delivery model view consists of different types of delivery mechanisms/deployment options for applications: Traditional: Reflects non-cloud type delivery options. The most prevalent consists of an application running on dedicated hardware (usually specific to an environment) for a single consumer. Private Cloud: The application runs on infrastructure provisioned for exclusive use by a single organization comprising multiple consumers. Public Cloud: The application runs on infrastructure provisioned for open use by the general public. Hybrid: The application is deployed on two or more distinct cloud infrastructures (private, community, or public) that remain unique entities, but are bound together by standardized or proprietary technology that enables data and application portability. While by no means comprehensive, I find that applying these views to the application domain gives a good understanding of what an EA needs to consider when effecting changes to the Application Architecture domain.Finally, the application architecture domain is one of several architecture domains that an EA must consider when developing an overall Enterprise Architecture. The Oracle Enterprise Architecture Framework defines four Primary domains: Business Architecture, Application Architecture, Information Architecture, and Technology Architecture. Each domain links to the others either directly or indirectly at some point. Oracle links them at a high level as follows:Business Capabilities and/or Business Processes (Business Architecture), links to the Applications that enable the capability/process (Applications Architecture – COTS, Custom), links to the Information Assets managed/maintained by the Applications (Information Architecture), links to the technology infrastructure upon which all this runs (Technology Architecture - integration, security, BI/DW, DB infrastructure, deployment model). There are however, times when the EA needs to narrow focus to a particular domain for some period of time. These views help me to do just that.

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• Why is Java EE 6 better than Spring ?

  - by arungupta

  Java EE 6 was released over 2 years ago and now there are 14 compliant application servers. In all my talks around the world, a question that is frequently asked is Why should I use Java EE 6 instead of Spring ? There are already several blogs covering that topic: Java EE wins over Spring by Bill Burke Why will I use Java EE instead of Spring in new Enterprise Java projects in 2012 ? by Kai Waehner (more discussion on TSS) Spring to Java EE migration (Part 1 and 2, 3 and 4 coming as well) by David Heffelfinger Spring to Java EE - A Migration Experience by Lincoln Baxter Migrating Spring to Java EE 6 by Bert Ertman and Paul Bakker at NLJUG Moving from Spring to Java EE 6 - The Age of Frameworks is Over at TSS Java EE vs Spring Shootout by Rohit Kelapure and Reza Rehman at JavaOne 2011 Java EE 6 and the Ewoks by Murat Yener Definite excuse to avoid Spring forever - Bert Ertman and Arun Gupta I will try to share my perspective in this blog. First of all, I'd like to start with a note: Thank you Spring framework for filling the interim gap and providing functionality that is now included in the mainstream Java EE 6 application servers. The Java EE platform has evolved over the years learning from frameworks like Spring and provides all the functionality to build an enterprise application. Thank you very much Spring framework! While Spring was revolutionary in its time and is still very popular and quite main stream in the same way Struts was circa 2003, it really is last generation's framework - some people are even calling it legacy. However my theory is "code is king". So my approach is to build/take a simple Hello World CRUD application in Java EE 6 and Spring and compare the deployable artifacts. I started looking at the official tutorial Developing a Spring Framework MVC Application Step-by-Step but it is using the older version 2.5. I wasn't able to find any updated version in the current 3.1 release. Next, I downloaded Spring Tool Suite and thought that would provide some template samples to get started. A least a quick search did not show any handy tutorials - either video or text-based. So I searched and found a link to their SVN repository at src.springframework.org/svn/spring-samples/. I tried the "mvc-basic" sample and the generated WAR file was 4.43 MB. While it was named a "basic" sample it seemed to come with 19 different libraries bundled but it was what I could find: ./WEB-INF/lib/aopalliance-1.0.jar./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate-validator-4.1.0.Final.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jcl-over-slf4j-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/joda-time-1.6.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/joda-time-jsptags-1.0.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jstl-1.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/log4j-1.2.16.jar./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-api-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-log4j12-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-aop-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-asm-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-beans-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-support-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-core-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-expression-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-web-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-webmvc-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/validation-api-1.0.0.GA.jar And it is not even using any database! The app deployed fine on GlassFish 3.1.2 but the "@Controller Example" link did not work as it was missing the context root. With a bit of tweaking I could deploy the application and assume that the account got created because no error was displayed in the browser or server log. Next I generated the WAR for "mvc-ajax" and the 5.1 MB WAR had 20 JARs (1 removed, 2 added): ./WEB-INF/lib/aopalliance-1.0.jar./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate-validator-4.1.0.Final.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jackson-core-asl-1.6.4.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jackson-mapper-asl-1.6.4.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jcl-over-slf4j-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/joda-time-1.6.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jstl-1.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/log4j-1.2.16.jar./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-api-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-log4j12-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-aop-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-asm-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-beans-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-support-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-core-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-expression-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-web-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-webmvc-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/validation-api-1.0.0.GA.jar 2 more JARs for just doing Ajax. Anyway, deploying this application gave the following error: Caused by: java.lang.NoSuchMethodError: org.codehaus.jackson.map.SerializationConfig.<init>(Lorg/codehaus/jackson/map/ClassIntrospector;Lorg/codehaus/jackson/map/AnnotationIntrospector;Lorg/codehaus/jackson/map/introspect/VisibilityChecker;Lorg/codehaus/jackson/map/jsontype/SubtypeResolver;)V    at org.springframework.samples.mvc.ajax.json.ConversionServiceAwareObjectMapper.<init>(ConversionServiceAwareObjectMapper.java:20)    at org.springframework.samples.mvc.ajax.json.JacksonConversionServiceConfigurer.postProcessAfterInitialization(JacksonConversionServiceConfigurer.java:40)    at org.springframework.beans.factory.support.AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.applyBeanPostProcessorsAfterInitialization(AbstractAutowireCapableBeanFactory.java:407) Seems like some incorrect repos in the "pom.xml". Next one is "mvc-showcase" and the 6.49 MB WAR now has 28 JARs as shown below: ./WEB-INF/lib/aopalliance-1.0.jar./WEB-INF/lib/aspectjrt-1.6.10.jar./WEB-INF/lib/commons-fileupload-1.2.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/commons-io-2.0.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/el-api-2.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate-validator-4.1.0.Final.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jackson-core-asl-1.8.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jackson-mapper-asl-1.8.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/javax.inject-1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jcl-over-slf4j-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jdom-1.0.jar./WEB-INF/lib/joda-time-1.6.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jstl-api-1.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/jstl-impl-1.2.jar./WEB-INF/lib/log4j-1.2.16.jar./WEB-INF/lib/rome-1.0.0.jar./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-api-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-log4j12-1.6.1.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-aop-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-asm-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-beans-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-support-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-core-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-expression-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-web-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/spring-webmvc-3.1.0.RELEASE.jar./WEB-INF/lib/validation-api-1.0.0.GA.jar The app at least deployed and showed results this time. But still no database! Next I tried building "jpetstore" and got the error: [ERROR] Failed to execute goal on project org.springframework.samples.jpetstore:Could not resolve dependencies for project org.springframework.samples:org.springframework.samples.jpetstore:war:1.0.0-SNAPSHOT: Failed to collect dependencies for [commons-fileupload:commons-fileupload:jar:1.2.1 (compile), org.apache.struts:com.springsource.org.apache.struts:jar:1.2.9 (compile), javax.xml.rpc:com.springsource.javax.xml.rpc:jar:1.1.0 (compile), org.apache.commons:com.springsource.org.apache.commons.dbcp:jar:1.2.2.osgi (compile), commons-io:commons-io:jar:1.3.2 (compile), hsqldb:hsqldb:jar:1.8.0.7 (compile), org.apache.tiles:tiles-core:jar:2.2.0 (compile), org.apache.tiles:tiles-jsp:jar:2.2.0 (compile), org.tuckey:urlrewritefilter:jar:3.1.0 (compile), org.springframework:spring-webmvc:jar:3.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT (compile), org.springframework:spring-orm:jar:3.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT (compile), org.springframework:spring-context-support:jar:3.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT (compile), org.springframework.webflow:spring-js:jar:2.0.7.RELEASE (compile), org.apache.ibatis:com.springsource.com.ibatis:jar:2.3.4.726 (runtime), com.caucho:com.springsource.com.caucho:jar:3.2.1 (compile), org.apache.axis:com.springsource.org.apache.axis:jar:1.4.0 (compile), javax.wsdl:com.springsource.javax.wsdl:jar:1.6.1 (compile), javax.servlet:jstl:jar:1.2 (runtime), org.aspectj:aspectjweaver:jar:1.6.5 (compile), javax.servlet:servlet-api:jar:2.5 (provided), javax.servlet.jsp:jsp-api:jar:2.1 (provided), junit:junit:jar:4.6 (test)]: Failed to read artifact descriptor for org.springframework:spring-webmvc:jar:3.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT: Could not transfer artifact org.springframework:spring-webmvc:pom:3.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT from/to JBoss repository (http://repository.jboss.com/maven2): Access denied to: http://repository.jboss.com/maven2/org/springframework/spring-webmvc/3.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT/spring-webmvc-3.0.0.BUILD-SNAPSHOT.pom It appears the sample is broken - maybe I was pulling from the wrong repository - would be great if someone were to point me at a good target to use here. With a 50% hit on samples in this repository, I started searching through numerous blogs, most of which have either outdated information (using XML-heavy Spring 2.5), some piece of configuration (which is a typical "feature" of Spring) is missing, or too much complexity in the sample. I finally found this blog that worked like a charm. This blog creates a trivial Spring MVC 3 application using Hibernate and MySQL. This application performs CRUD operations on a single table in a database using typical Spring technologies.  I downloaded the sample code from the blog, deployed it on GlassFish 3.1.2 and could CRUD the "person" entity. The source code for this application can be downloaded here. More details on the application statistics below. And then I built a similar CRUD application in Java EE 6 using NetBeans wizards in a couple of minutes. The source code for the application can be downloaded here and the WAR here. The Spring Source Tool Suite may also offer similar wizard-driven capabilities but this blog focus primarily on comparing the runtimes. The lack of STS tutorials was slightly disappointing as well. NetBeans however has tons of text-based and video tutorials and tons of material even by the community. One more bit on the download size of tools bundle ... NetBeans 7.1.1 "All" is 211 MB (which includes GlassFish and Tomcat) Spring Tool Suite  2.9.0 is 347 MB (~ 65% bigger) This blog is not about the tooling comparison so back to the Java EE 6 version of the application .... In order to run the Java EE version on GlassFish, copy the MySQL Connector/J to glassfish3/glassfish/domains/domain1/lib/ext directory and create a JDBC connection pool and JDBC resource as: ./bin/asadmin create-jdbc-connection-pool --datasourceclassname \\ com.mysql.jdbc.jdbc2.optional.MysqlDataSource --restype \\ javax.sql.DataSource --property \\ portNumber=3306:user=mysql:password=mysql:databaseName=mydatabase \\ myConnectionPool ./bin/asadmin create-jdbc-resource --connectionpoolid myConnectionPool jdbc/myDataSource I generated WARs for the two projects and the table below highlights some differences between them: Java EE 6 Spring WAR File Size 0.021030 MB 10.87 MB (~516x) Number of files 20 53 (> 2.5x) Bundled libraries 0 36 Total size of libraries 0 12.1 MB XML files 3 5 LoC in XML files 50 (11 + 15 + 24) 129 (27 + 46 + 16 + 11 + 19) (~ 2.5x) Total .properties files 1 Bundle.properties 2 spring.properties, log4j.properties Cold Deploy 5,339 ms 11,724 ms Second Deploy 481 ms 6,261 ms Third Deploy 528 ms 5,484 ms Fourth Deploy 484 ms 5,576 ms Runtime memory ~73 MB ~101 MB Some points worth highlighting from the table ... 516x WAR file, 10x deployment time - With 12.1 MB of libraries (for a very basic application) bundled in your application, the WAR file size and the deployment time will naturally go higher. The WAR file for Spring-based application is 516x bigger and the deployment time is double during the first deployment and ~ 10x during subsequent deployments. The Java EE 6 application is fully portable and will run on any Java EE 6 compliant application server. 36 libraries in the WAR - There are 14 Java EE 6 compliant application servers today. Each of those servers provide all the functionality like transactions, dependency injection, security, persistence, etc typically required of an enterprise or web application. There is no need to bundle 36 libraries worth 12.1 MB for a trivial CRUD application. These 14 compliant application servers provide all the functionality baked in. Now you can also deploy these libraries in the container but then you don't get the "portability" offered by Spring in that case. Does your typical Spring deployment actually do that ? 3x LoC in XML - The number of XML files is about 1.6x and the LoC is ~ 2.5x. So much XML seems circa 2003 when the Java language had no annotations. The XML files can be further reduced, e.g. faces-config.xml can be replaced without providing i18n, but I just want to compare stock applications. Memory usage - Both the applications were deployed on default GlassFish 3.1.2 installation and any additional memory consumed as part of deployment/access was attributed to the application. This is by no means scientific but at least provides an initial ballpark. This area definitely needs more investigation. Another table that compares typical Java EE 6 compliant application servers and the custom-stack created for a Spring application ... Java EE 6 Spring Web Container ? 53 MB (tcServer 2.6.3 Developer Edition) Security ? 12 MB (Spring Security 3.1.0) Persistence ? 6.3 MB (Hibernate 4.1.0, required) Dependency Injection ? 5.3 MB (Framework) Web Services ? 796 KB (Spring WS 2.0.4) Messaging ? 3.4 MB (RabbitMQ Server 2.7.1) 936 KB (Java client 936) OSGi ? 1.3 MB (Spring OSGi 1.2.1) GlassFish and WebLogic (starting at 33 MB) 83.3 MB There are differentiating factors on both the stacks. But most of the functionality like security, persistence, and dependency injection is baked in a Java EE 6 compliant application server but needs to be individually managed and patched for a Spring application. This very quickly leads to a "stack explosion". The Java EE 6 servers are tested extensively on a variety of platforms in different combinations whereas a Spring application developer is responsible for testing with different JDKs, Operating Systems, Versions, Patches, etc. Oracle has both the leading OSS lightweight server with GlassFish and the leading enterprise Java server with WebLogic Server, both Java EE 6 and both with lightweight deployment options. The Web Container offered as part of a Java EE 6 application server not only deploys your enterprise Java applications but also provide operational management, diagnostics, and mission-critical capabilities required by your applications. The Java EE 6 platform also introduced the Web Profile which is a subset of the specifications from the entire platform. It is targeted at developers of modern web applications offering a reasonably complete stack, composed of standard APIs, and is capable out-of-the-box of addressing the needs of a large class of Web applications. As your applications grow, the stack can grow to the full Java EE 6 platform. The GlassFish Server Web Profile starting at 33MB (smaller than just the non-standard tcServer) provides most of the functionality typically required by a web application. WebLogic provides battle-tested functionality for a high throughput, low latency, and enterprise grade web application. No individual managing or patching, all tested and commercially supported for you! Note that VMWare does have a server, tcServer, but it is non-standard and not even certified to the level of the standard Web Profile most customers expect these days. Customers who choose this risk proprietary lock-in since VMWare does not seem to want to formally certify with either Java EE 6 Enterprise Platform or with Java EE 6 Web Profile but of course it would be great if they were to join the community and help their customers reduce the risk of deploying on VMWare software. Some more points to help you decide choose between Java EE 6 and Spring ... Freedom to choose container - There are 14 Java EE 6 compliant application servers today, with a variety of open source and commercial offerings. A Java EE 6 application can be deployed on any of those containers. So if you deployed your application on GlassFish today and would like to scale up with your demands then you can deploy the same application to WebLogic. And because of the portability of a Java EE 6 application, you can even take it a different vendor altogether. Spring requires a runtime which could be any of these app servers as well. But why use Spring when all the required functionality is already baked into the application server itself ? Spring also has a different definition of portability where they claim to bundle all the libraries in the WAR file and move to any application server. But we saw earlier how bloated that archive could be. The equivalent features in Spring runtime offerings (mainly tcServer) are not all open source, not as mature, and often require manual assembly.  Vendor choice - The Java EE 6 platform is created using the Java Community Process where all the big players like Oracle, IBM, RedHat, and Apache are conritbuting to make the platform successful. Each application server provides the basic Java EE 6 platform compliance and has its own competitive offerings. This allows you to choose an application server for deploying your Java EE 6 applications. If you are not happy with the support or feature of one vendor then you can move your application to a different vendor because of the portability promise offered by the platform. Spring is a set of products from a single company, one price book, one support organization, one sustaining organization, one sales organization, etc. If any of those cause a customer headache, where do you go ? Java EE, backed by multiple vendors, is a safer bet for those that are risk averse. Production support - With Spring, typically you need to get support from two vendors - VMWare and the container provider. With Java EE 6, all of this is typically provided by one vendor. For example, Oracle offers commercial support from systems, operating systems, JDK, application server, and applications on top of them. VMWare certainly offers complete production support but do you really want to put all your eggs in one basket ? Do you really use tcServer ? ;-) Maintainability - With Spring, you are likely building your own distribution with multiple JAR files, integrating, patching, versioning, etc of all those components. Spring's claim is that multiple JAR files allow you to go à la carte and pick the latest versions of different components. But who is responsible for testing whether all these versions work together ? Yep, you got it, its YOU! If something does not work, who patches and maintains the JARs ? Of course, you! Commercial support for such a configuration ? On your own! The Java EE application servers manage all of this for you and provide a well-tested and commercially supported bundle. While it is always good to realize that there is something new and improved that updates and replaces older frameworks like Spring, the good news is not only does a Java EE 6 container offer what is described here, most also will let you deploy and run your Spring applications on them while you go through an upgrade to a more modern architecture. End result, you get the best of both worlds - keeping your legacy investment but moving to a more agile, lightweight world of Java EE 6. A message to the Spring lovers ... The complexity in J2EE 1.2, 1.3, and 1.4 led to the genesis of Spring but that was in 2004. This is 2012 and the name has changed to "Java EE 6" :-) There are tons of improvements in the Java EE platform to make it easy-to-use and powerful. Some examples: Adding @Stateless on a POJO makes it an EJB EJBs can be packaged in a WAR with no special packaging or deployment descriptors "web.xml" and "faces-config.xml" are optional in most of the common cases Typesafe dependency injection is now part of the Java EE platform Add @Path on a POJO allows you to publish it as a RESTful resource EJBs can be used as backing beans for Facelets-driven JSF pages providing full MVC Java EE 6 WARs are known to be kilobytes in size and deployed in milliseconds Tons of other simplifications in the platform and application servers So if you moved away from J2EE to Spring many years ago and have not looked at Java EE 6 (which has been out since Dec 2009) then you should definitely try it out. Just be at least aware of what other alternatives are available instead of restricting yourself to one stack. Here are some workshops and screencasts worth trying: screencast #37 shows how to build an end-to-end application using NetBeans screencast #36 builds the same application using Eclipse javaee-lab-feb2012.pdf is a 3-4 hours self-paced hands-on workshop that guides you to build a comprehensive Java EE 6 application using NetBeans Each city generally has a "spring cleanup" program every year. It allows you to clean up the mess from your house. For your software projects, you don't need to wait for an annual event, just get started and reduce the technical debt now! Move away from your legacy Spring-based applications to a lighter and more modern approach of building enterprise Java applications using Java EE 6. Watch this beautiful presentation that explains how to migrate from Spring -> Java EE 6: List of files in the Java EE 6 project: ./index.xhtml./META-INF./person./person/Create.xhtml./person/Edit.xhtml./person/List.xhtml./person/View.xhtml./resources./resources/css./resources/css/jsfcrud.css./template.xhtml./WEB-INF./WEB-INF/classes./WEB-INF/classes/Bundle.properties./WEB-INF/classes/META-INF./WEB-INF/classes/META-INF/persistence.xml./WEB-INF/classes/org./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/AbstractFacade.class./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/Person.class./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/Person_.class./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/PersonController$1.class./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/PersonController$PersonControllerConverter.class./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/PersonController.class./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/PersonFacade.class./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/util./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/util/JsfUtil.class./WEB-INF/classes/org/javaee/javaeemysql/util/PaginationHelper.class./WEB-INF/faces-config.xml./WEB-INF/web.xml List of files in the Spring 3.x project: ./META-INF ./META-INF/MANIFEST.MF./WEB-INF./WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml./WEB-INF/classes./WEB-INF/classes/log4j.properties./WEB-INF/classes/org./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams ./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams/tutorial ./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams/tutorial/controller ./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams/tutorial/controller/MainController.class ./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams/tutorial/domain ./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams/tutorial/domain/Person.class ./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams/tutorial/service ./WEB-INF/classes/org/krams/tutorial/service/PersonService.class ./WEB-INF/hibernate-context.xml ./WEB-INF/hibernate.cfg.xml ./WEB-INF/jsp ./WEB-INF/jsp/addedpage.jsp ./WEB-INF/jsp/addpage.jsp ./WEB-INF/jsp/deletedpage.jsp ./WEB-INF/jsp/editedpage.jsp ./WEB-INF/jsp/editpage.jsp ./WEB-INF/jsp/personspage.jsp ./WEB-INF/lib ./WEB-INF/lib/antlr-2.7.6.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/aopalliance-1.0.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/c3p0-0.9.1.2.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/cglib-nodep-2.2.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/commons-beanutils-1.8.3.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/commons-collections-3.2.1.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/commons-digester-2.1.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/commons-logging-1.1.1.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/dom4j-1.6.1.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/ejb3-persistence-1.0.2.GA.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate-annotations-3.4.0.GA.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate-commons-annotations-3.1.0.GA.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/hibernate-core-3.3.2.GA.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/javassist-3.7.ga.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/jstl-1.1.2.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/jta-1.1.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/junit-4.8.1.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/log4j-1.2.14.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/mysql-connector-java-5.1.14.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/persistence-api-1.0.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-api-1.6.1.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/slf4j-log4j12-1.6.1.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-aop-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-asm-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-beans-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-context-support-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-core-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-expression-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-jdbc-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-orm-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-tx-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-web-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/spring-webmvc-3.0.5.RELEASE.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/standard-1.1.2.jar ./WEB-INF/lib/xml-apis-1.0.b2.jar ./WEB-INF/spring-servlet.xml ./WEB-INF/spring.properties ./WEB-INF/web.xml So, are you excited about Java EE 6 ? Want to get started now ? Here are some resources: Java EE 6 SDK (including runtime, samples, tutorials etc) GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 3.1.2 (Community) Oracle GlassFish Server 3.1.2 (Commercial) Java EE 6 using WebLogic 12c and NetBeans (Video) Java EE 6 with NetBeans and GlassFish (Video) Java EE with Eclipse and GlassFish (Video)

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• Implementing a modern web application with Web API on top of old services

  - by Gaui

  My company has many WCF services which may or may not be replaced in the near future. The old web application is written in WebForms and communicates straight with these services via SOAP and returns DataTables. Now I am designing a new modern web application in a modern style, an AngularJS client which communicates with an ASP.NET Web API via JSON. The Web API then communicates with the WCF services via SOAP. In the future I want to let the Web API handle all requests and go straight to the database, but because the business logic implemented in the WCF services is complicated it's going to take some time to rewrite and replace it. Now to the problem: I'm trying to make it easy in the near future to replace the WCF services with some other data storage, e.g. another endpoint, database or whatever. I also want to make it easy to unit test the business logic. That's why I have structured the Web API with a repository layer and a service layer. The repository layer has a straight communication with the data storage (WCF service, database, or whatever) and the service layer then uses the repository (Dependency Injection) to get the data. It doesn't care where it gets the data from. Later on I can be in control and structure the data returned from the data storage (DataTable to POCO) and be able to test the logic in the service layer with some mock repository (using Dependency Injection). Below is some code to explain where I'm going with this. But my question is, does this all make sense? Am I making this overly complicated and could this be simplified in any way possible? Does this simplicity make this too complicated to maintain? My main goal is to make it as easy as possible to switch to another data storage later on, e.g. an ORM and be able to test the logic in the service layer. And because the majority of the business logic is implemented in these WCF services (and they return DataTables), I want to be in control of the data and the structure returned to the client. Any advice is greatly appreciated. Update 20/08/14 I created a repository factory, so services would all share repositories. Now it's easy to mock a repository, add it to the factory and create a provider using that factory. Any advice is much appreciated. I want to know if I'm making things more complicated than they should be. So it looks like this: 1. Repository Factory public class RepositoryFactory { private Dictionary<Type, IServiceRepository> repositories; public RepositoryFactory() { this.repositories = new Dictionary<Type, IServiceRepository>(); } public void AddRepository<T>(IServiceRepository repo) where T : class { if (this.repositories.ContainsKey(typeof(T))) { this.repositories.Remove(typeof(T)); } this.repositories.Add(typeof(T), repo); } public dynamic GetRepository<T>() { if (this.repositories.ContainsKey(typeof(T))) { return this.repositories[typeof(T)]; } throw new RepositoryNotFoundException("No repository found for " + typeof(T).Name); } } I'm not very fond of dynamic but I don't know how to retrieve that repository otherwise. 2. Repository and service // Service repository interface // All repository interfaces extend this public interface IServiceRepository { } // Invoice repository interface // Makes it easy to mock the repository later on public interface IInvoiceServiceRepository : IServiceRepository { List<Invoice> GetInvoices(); } // Invoice repository // Connects to some data storage to retrieve invoices public class InvoiceServiceRepository : IInvoiceServiceRepository { public List<Invoice> GetInvoices() { // Get the invoices from somewhere // This could be a WCF, a database, or whatever using(InvoiceServiceClient proxy = new InvoiceServiceClient()) { return proxy.GetInvoices(); } } } // Invoice service // Service that handles talking to a real or a mock repository public class InvoiceService { // Repository factory RepositoryFactory repoFactory; // Default constructor // Default connects to the real repository public InvoiceService(RepositoryFactory repo) { repoFactory = repo; } // Service function that gets all invoices from some repository (mock or real) public List<Invoice> GetInvoices() { // Query the repository return repoFactory.GetRepository<IInvoiceServiceRepository>().GetInvoices(); } }

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• Modular Web App Network Architecture

  - by nairware

  Assuming that I am dealing with dedicated physical servers or VPSs, is it conceivable and does it make sense to have distinct servers setup with the following roles to host a web application? Reverse Proxy Web server Application server Database server Specific points of interest: I am confused how to even separate the web and application servers. My understanding was that such 3-tier architectures were feasible. It is unclear to me if the app server would reside directly between the web and database server, or if the web server could directly interact with the database as well. The app server could either do the computational heavy-lifting on behalf of the app server or it could do heavy-lifting plus control all of the business logic (as implied in the diagram above, thus denying the web server of direct database access). I am also unsure what role the reverse proxy (ex. nginx) could and should fulfill as a web server, given the above mentioned setup. I know that nginx has web server features. But I do not know if it makes sense to have the reverse proxy be its own VPS, given that the web server–in theory–would be separate from the app server.

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• Architecture guidelines for a "single page web-app"

  - by Matt Roberts

  I'm going to start a side project to build a "single page" web application. The application needs to be real-time, sending updates to the clients as changes happen. Are there any good resources for best-practice approaches wrt the architecture for these kinds of applications. The best resource I've found so far is the trello architecture article here: http://blog.fogcreek.com/the-trello-tech-stack/ To me, this architecture, although very sexy, is probably over-engineered for my specific needs - although I do have similar requirements. I'm wondering if I need to bother with a sub/pub at the server side, could I not just push updates from the server when something happens (e.g. when the client sends an update to the server, write the update to the db, and then send an update to the clients). Tech-wise, I'm probably looking to build this out in Node.JS or maybe Ruby, although the architecture guidelines should to some extent apply to any underlying server technologies.

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• Web 2.0 Extension for ASP.NET

  - by Visual WebGui

  ASP.NET is now much extended to support line of business and data centric applications, providing Web 2.0 rich user interfaces within a native web environment. New capabilities allowed by the Visual WebGui extension turn Visual Studio into a rapid development tool for the web, leveraging the wide set of ASP.NET web infrastructures runtime and extending its paradigms to support highly interactive applications. Taking advantage of the ASP.NET infrastructures Using the native ASP.NET ISAPI filter: aspnet_isapi...(read more)

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• Thoughts on web development architecture through integrating C++ in the future to a web application

  - by Holland

  I'm looking to build a website (it's actually going to be a commercial startup) I saw this question and it really shed some light on a few things that I was hoping to understand (kudos to the op). After seeing that, it would make sense that, unless the website were required to actually have millions of hits per day, it wouldn't be a viable solution to write a C++ backend on the server side. But this got me thinking. what if it in the (unlikely) events of the future, it does go that route? The problem is that, while I'm thinking of starting this all using .Net (in the beginning) just to get something quick and easy up without a lot of hassle (in terms of learning), and then moving towards something more Open Source (such as Python/Django or RoR) later to save money and to support OSS, I'm wondering IFF the website actually becomes big, will it be a good idea to integrate a C++ backend, and use Python ontop of C++ for a strong foundation, and then mitigate HTML/CSS/AJAX/etc ontop of the backend's foundation? I guess, what I'd like to know is that, given the circumstance, if this were to happen, would it be a proper approach in terms of architecture? I'd definitely be supporting MVC as that seems to be a great way to implement a website. All in all, would one consider this rational, or are there other alternatives? I like .Net, and I'd like to use it in the beginning, because I have much more experience with that than, say, Python or PHP, and I prefer it in general, but I really do want to support OSS in the future. I suppose the sentence I'm looking for is, "is this pragmatic?"

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• Carpool logical architecture

  - by enrmarc

  I'm designing a carpool system (drivers can publish their routes and passengers can subscribe to them) with WebServices(axis2) and Android clients (ksoap2). I have been having problems with the logical architecture of the system and I wondered if this architecture is fine. And another question: for that architecture (if it is ok), how would be the packages structure? I suppose something like that: (In android) package org.carpool.presentation *All the activities here (and maybe mvc pattern) (In the server) package org.carpool.services *Public interfaces (for example: register(User user), publishRoute(Route route) ) package org.carpool.domain *Pojos (for example: User.java, Route.java, etc) package org.carpool.persistence *Dao Interface and implementation (jdbc or hibernate)

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• Please guide this self-taught Web Developer.

  - by ChickenPuke

  One of the major regrets in life is that I didn't do something with my introversion. I didn't manage to get past the first year of college because of that. I have chosen the path where there are no video games and other time sinks, all I have is the internet to quench my thirst of learning the ins and outs of the field of Web Developing/Designing. Though currently, I'm taking a Web Design Associate course at one of the best Computer Arts and this is the last month of the class. Even though I'm still a sapling, I love this field so much. So basically, At school I'm learning web design while at home I'm teaching myself web-developing. First thing first, returning to college seems impossible at the moment because of some financial problems. I'm pretty comfortable with CSS and HTML and I'm into PHP/MySQL at the moment. Could you please provide me a web-development Curriculum to follow. And do I need to learn about the theories behind? And I think I'm still young(I'm 18 at the time of writing). Is it a good thing or bad thing for choosing this path? I'm glad with my decision but in all honesty, I'm worrying about my future and employment because I'm an undergrad, coming from a country where companies are degree b!tches, it saddens me so. Thank you. (My questions are the bold parts. )

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• Best Web Site Copying Software

  - by GregH

  I just wanted to get some opinions on the best "web site copying" software out there (free or commercial is fine). I have a site that I've recently become responsible for managing, and the previous consultant has not provided operating system access. As such, the plan is to re-host the web site. I realize there are a lot of different issues to consider in doing this. However, I don't have much choice in the matter now. The plan is to use web site copying software (ala HTTrack) to "rip" the web site, and then modify what is downloaded back in to a maintainable site. This, of course, involves HTML, css, javascript, etc on the front-end. I'd like to recover as much of the site as possible to make re-creating it as easy as possible. Your input is appreciated. Input on my approach is also appreciated. Thanks!

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• integration of dynamic forms for 3rd party web apps

  - by afr0

  I've a custom web forms definition interface where I user can define bespoke web forms and those webforms are then rendered on the other part of the my web app. It works well as I can render and submit my forms dynamically. However I have a scenario where there will be different 3rd party apps should be interacting with my custom forms. So the quesion arises how can I have my client side web forms and the fields within to work with the 3rd party interfaces on the fly. Any idea in that regard or best practice will be highly appreciated.

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• Where does ASP.NET Web API Fit?

  - by Rick Strahl

  With the pending release of ASP.NET MVC 4 and the new ASP.NET Web API, there has been a lot of discussion of where the new Web API technology fits in the ASP.NET Web stack. There are a lot of choices to build HTTP based applications available now on the stack - we've come a long way from when WebForms and Http Handlers/Modules where the only real options. Today we have WebForms, MVC, ASP.NET Web Pages, ASP.NET AJAX, WCF REST and now Web API as well as the core ASP.NET runtime to choose to build HTTP content with. Web API definitely squarely addresses the 'API' aspect - building consumable services - rather than HTML content, but even to that end there are a lot of choices you have today. So where does Web API fit, and when doesn't it? But before we get into that discussion, let's talk about what a Web API is and why we should care. What's a Web API? HTTP 'APIs' (Microsoft's new terminology for a service I guess)  are becoming increasingly more important with the rise of the many devices in use today. Most mobile devices like phones and tablets run Apps that are using data retrieved from the Web over HTTP. Desktop applications are also moving in this direction with more and more online content and synching moving into even traditional desktop applications. The pending Windows 8 release promises an app like platform for both the desktop and other devices, that also emphasizes consuming data from the Cloud. Likewise many Web browser hosted applications these days are relying on rich client functionality to create and manipulate the browser user interface, using AJAX rather than server generated HTML data to load up the user interface with data. These mobile or rich Web applications use their HTTP connection to return data rather than HTML markup in the form of JSON or XML typically. But an API can also serve other kinds of data, like images or other binary files, or even text data and HTML (although that's less common). A Web API is what feeds rich applications with data. ASP.NET Web API aims to service this particular segment of Web development by providing easy semantics to route and handle incoming requests and an easy to use platform to serve HTTP data in just about any content format you choose to create and serve from the server. But .NET already has various HTTP Platforms The .NET stack already includes a number of technologies that provide the ability to create HTTP service back ends, and it has done so since the very beginnings of the .NET platform. From raw HTTP Handlers and Modules in the core ASP.NET runtime, to high level platforms like ASP.NET MVC, Web Forms, ASP.NET AJAX and the WCF REST engine (which technically is not ASP.NET, but can integrate with it), you've always been able to handle just about any kind of HTTP request and response with ASP.NET. The beauty of the raw ASP.NET platform is that it provides you everything you need to build just about any type of HTTP application you can dream up from low level APIs/custom engines to high level HTML generation engine. ASP.NET as a core platform clearly has stood the test of time 10+ years later and all other frameworks like Web API are built on top of this ASP.NET core. However, although it's possible to create Web APIs / Services using any of the existing out of box .NET technologies, none of them have been a really nice fit for building arbitrary HTTP based APIs. Sure, you can use an HttpHandler to create just about anything, but you have to build a lot of plumbing to build something more complex like a comprehensive API that serves a variety of requests, handles multiple output formats and can easily pass data up to the server in a variety of ways. Likewise you can use ASP.NET MVC to handle routing and creating content in various formats fairly easily, but it doesn't provide a great way to automatically negotiate content types and serve various content formats directly (it's possible to do with some plumbing code of your own but not built in). Prior to Web API, Microsoft's main push for HTTP services has been WCF REST, which was always an awkward technology that had a severe personality conflict, not being clear on whether it wanted to be part of WCF or purely a separate technology. In the end it didn't do either WCF compatibility or WCF agnostic pure HTTP operation very well, which made for a very developer-unfriendly environment. Personally I didn't like any of the implementations at the time, so much so that I ended up building my own HTTP service engine (as part of the West Wind Web Toolkit), as have a few other third party tools that provided much better integration and ease of use. With the release of Web API for the first time I feel that I can finally use the tools in the box and not have to worry about creating and maintaining my own toolkit as Web API addresses just about all the features I implemented on my own and much more. ASP.NET Web API provides a better HTTP Experience ASP.NET Web API differentiates itself from the previous Microsoft in-box HTTP service solutions in that it was built from the ground up around the HTTP protocol and its messaging semantics. Unlike WCF REST or ASP.NET AJAX with ASMX, it’s a brand new platform rather than bolted on technology that is supposed to work in the context of an existing framework. The strength of the new ASP.NET Web API is that it combines the best features of the platforms that came before it, to provide a comprehensive and very usable HTTP platform. Because it's based on ASP.NET and borrows a lot of concepts from ASP.NET MVC, Web API should be immediately familiar and comfortable to most ASP.NET developers. Here are some of the features that Web API provides that I like: Strong Support for URL Routing to produce clean URLs using familiar MVC style routing semantics Content Negotiation based on Accept headers for request and response serialization Support for a host of supported output formats including JSON, XML, ATOM Strong default support for REST semantics but they are optional Easily extensible Formatter support to add new input/output types Deep support for more advanced HTTP features via HttpResponseMessage and HttpRequestMessage classes and strongly typed Enums to describe many HTTP operations Convention based design that drives you into doing the right thing for HTTP Services Very extensible, based on MVC like extensibility model of Formatters and Filters Self-hostable in non-Web applications  Testable using testing concepts similar to MVC Web API is meant to handle any kind of HTTP input and produce output and status codes using the full spectrum of HTTP functionality available in a straight forward and flexible manner. Looking at the list above you can see that a lot of functionality is very similar to ASP.NET MVC, so many ASP.NET developers should feel quite comfortable with the concepts of Web API. The Routing and core infrastructure of Web API are very similar to how MVC works providing many of the benefits of MVC, but with focus on HTTP access and manipulation in Controller methods rather than HTML generation in MVC. There’s much improved support for content negotiation based on HTTP Accept headers with the framework capable of detecting automatically what content the client is sending and requesting and serving the appropriate data format in return. This seems like such a little and obvious thing, but it's really important. Today's service backends often are used by multiple clients/applications and being able to choose the right data format for what fits best for the client is very important. While previous solutions were able to accomplish this using a variety of mixed features of WCF and ASP.NET, Web API combines all this functionality into a single robust server side HTTP framework that intrinsically understands the HTTP semantics and subtly drives you in the right direction for most operations. And when you need to customize or do something that is not built in, there are lots of hooks and overrides for most behaviors, and even many low level hook points that allow you to plug in custom functionality with relatively little effort. No Brainers for Web API There are a few scenarios that are a slam dunk for Web API. If your primary focus of an application or even a part of an application is some sort of API then Web API makes great sense. HTTP ServicesIf you're building a comprehensive HTTP API that is to be consumed over the Web, Web API is a perfect fit. You can isolate the logic in Web API and build your application as a service breaking out the logic into controllers as needed. Because the primary interface is the service there's no confusion of what should go where (MVC or API). Perfect fit. Primary AJAX BackendsIf you're building rich client Web applications that are relying heavily on AJAX callbacks to serve its data, Web API is also a slam dunk. Again because much if not most of the business logic will probably end up in your Web API service logic, there's no confusion over where logic should go and there's no duplication. In Single Page Applications (SPA), typically there's very little HTML based logic served other than bringing up a shell UI and then filling the data from the server with AJAX which means the business logic required for data retrieval and data acceptance and validation too lives in the Web API. Perfect fit. Generic HTTP EndpointsAnother good fit are generic HTTP endpoints that to serve data or handle 'utility' type functionality in typical Web applications. If you need to implement an image server, or an upload handler in the past I'd implement that as an HTTP handler. With Web API you now have a well defined place where you can implement these types of generic 'services' in a location that can easily add endpoints (via Controller methods) or separated out as more full featured APIs. Granted this could be done with MVC as well, but Web API seems a clearer and more well defined place to store generic application services. This is one thing I used to do a lot of in my own libraries and Web API addresses this nicely. Great fit. Mixed HTML and AJAX Applications: Not a clear Choice  For all the commonality that Web API and MVC share they are fundamentally different platforms that are independent of each other. A lot of people have asked when does it make sense to use MVC vs. Web API when you're dealing with typical Web application that creates HTML and also uses AJAX functionality for rich functionality. While it's easy to say that all 'service'/AJAX logic should go into a Web API and all HTML related generation into MVC, that can often result in a lot of code duplication. Also MVC supports JSON and XML result data fairly easily as well so there's some confusion where that 'trigger point' is of when you should switch to Web API vs. just implementing functionality as part of MVC controllers. Ultimately there's a tradeoff between isolation of functionality and duplication. A good rule of thumb I think works is that if a large chunk of the application's functionality serves data Web API is a good choice, but if you have a couple of small AJAX requests to serve data to a grid or autocomplete box it'd be overkill to separate out that logic into a separate Web API controller. Web API does add overhead to your application (it's yet another framework that sits on top of core ASP.NET) so it should be worth it .Keep in mind that MVC can generate HTML and JSON/XML and just about any other content easily and that functionality is not going away, so just because you Web API is there it doesn't mean you have to use it. Web API is not a full replacement for MVC obviously either since there's not the same level of support to feed HTML from Web API controllers (although you can host a RazorEngine easily enough if you really want to go that route) so if you're HTML is part of your API or application in general MVC is still a better choice either alone or in combination with Web API. I suspect (and hope) that in the future Web API's functionality will merge even closer with MVC so that you might even be able to mix functionality of both into single Controllers so that you don't have to make any trade offs, but at the moment that's not the case. Some Issues To think about Web API is similar to MVC but not the Same Although Web API looks a lot like MVC it's not the same and some common functionality of MVC behaves differently in Web API. For example, the way single POST variables are handled is different than MVC and doesn't lend itself particularly well to some AJAX scenarios with POST data. Code Duplication I already touched on this in the Mixed HTML and Web API section, but if you build an MVC application that also exposes a Web API it's quite likely that you end up duplicating a bunch of code and - potentially - infrastructure. You may have to create authentication logic both for an HTML application and for the Web API which might need something different altogether. More often than not though the same logic is used, and there's no easy way to share. If you implement an MVC ActionFilter and you want that same functionality in your Web API you'll end up creating the filter twice. AJAX Data or AJAX HTML On a recent post's comments, David made some really good points regarding the commonality of MVC and Web API's and its place. One comment that caught my eye was a little more generic, regarding data services vs. HTML services. David says: I see a lot of merit in the combination of Knockout.js, client side templates and view models, calling Web API for a responsive UI, but sometimes late at night that still leaves me wondering why I would no longer be using some of the nice tooling and features that have evolved in MVC ;-) You know what - I can totally relate to that. On the last Web based mobile app I worked on, we decided to serve HTML partials to the client via AJAX for many (but not all!) things, rather than sending down raw data to inject into the DOM on the client via templating or direct manipulation. While there are definitely more bytes on the wire, with this, the overhead ended up being actually fairly small if you keep the 'data' requests small and atomic. Performance was often made up by the lack of client side rendering of HTML. Server rendered HTML for AJAX templating gives so much better infrastructure support without having to screw around with 20 mismatched client libraries. Especially with MVC and partials it's pretty easy to break out your HTML logic into very small, atomic chunks, so it's actually easy to create small rendering islands that can be used via composition on the server, or via AJAX calls to small, tight partials that return HTML to the client. Although this is often frowned upon as to 'heavy', it worked really well in terms of developer effort as well as providing surprisingly good performance on devices. There's still plenty of jQuery and AJAX logic happening on the client but it's more manageable in small doses rather than trying to do the entire UI composition with JavaScript and/or 'not-quite-there-yet' template engines that are very difficult to debug. This is not an issue directly related to Web API of course, but something to think about especially for AJAX or SPA style applications. Summary Web API is a great new addition to the ASP.NET platform and it addresses a serious need for consolidation of a lot of half-baked HTTP service API technologies that came before it. Web API feels 'right', and hits the right combination of usability and flexibility at least for me and it's a good fit for true API scenarios. However, just because a new platform is available it doesn't meant that other tools or tech that came before it should be discarded or even upgraded to the new platform. There's nothing wrong with continuing to use MVC controller methods to handle API tasks if that's what your app is running now - there's very little to be gained by upgrading to Web API just because. But going forward Web API clearly is the way to go, when building HTTP data interfaces and it's good to see that Microsoft got this one right - it was sorely needed! Resources ASP.NET Web API AspConf Ask the Experts Session (first 5 minutes) © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in Web Api   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Reuse Business Logic between Web and API

  - by fesja

  We have a website and two mobile apps that connect through an API. All the platforms do the exactly same things. Right now the structure is the following: Website. It manages models, controllers, views for the website. It also executes all background tasks. So if a user create a place, everything is executed in this code. API. It manages models, controllers and return a JSON. If a user creates a place on the mobile app, the place is created here. After, we add a background task to update other fields. This background task is executed by the Website. We are redoing everything, so it's time to improve the approach. Which is the best way to reuse the business logic so I only need to code the insert/edit/delete of the place & other actions related in just one place? Is a service oriented approach a good idea? For example: Service. It has the models and gets, adds, updates and deletes info from the DB. Website. It send the info to the service, and it renders HTML. API. It sends info to the service, and it returns JSON. Some problems I have found: More initial work? Not sure.. It can work slower. Any experience? The benefits: We only have the business logic in one place, both for web and api. It's easier to scale. We can put each piece on different servers. Other solutions Duplicate the code and be careful not to forget anything (do tests!) DUplicate some code but execute background tasks that updates the related fields and executes other things (emails, indexing...) A "small" detail is we are 1.3 person in backend, for now ;)

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• Question about API and Web application code sharing

  - by opendd

  This is a design question. I have a multi part application with several user types. There is a user client for the patient that interacts with a web service. There is an API evolving behind the web service that will be exposed to institutional "users" and an interface for clinicians, researchers and admin types. The patient UI is Flex. The clinician/admin portion of the application is RoR. The API is RoR/rack based. The web service component is Java WS. All components access the same data source. These components are deployed as separate components to their own subdomains. This decision was made to allow for scaling the components individually as needed. Initially, the decision was made to split the code for the RoR Web application from the RoR API. This decision was made in the interests of security and keeping the components focused on specific tasks. Over the course of time, there is necessarily going to be overlap and I am second guessing my decision to keep the code totally separate. I am noticing code being lifted from the admin side being lifted, modified and used in the API. This being the case, I have been considering merging the Ruby based repositories. I am interested in ideas and insight on this situation along with the reasoning behind your thoughts. Thanks.

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• Free cloud web service development

  - by hyde

  I am looking for a free (as in beer) combination of services, for learning "cloud SW development" and very small scale private use (say, a private streamlined web shopping&todo list with simple auth). The combination should include the full set of needed services: DVCS service (like github) A cloud service to run the backend code A suitable data storage service (preferably not SQL), accessed by the backend (if not included in the backend service) A web service, serving the web pages seen by user, to access the backend functionality A "cloud IDE" (ideally one, two is ok too) for both backend and HTML/javascript coding If (backend) deployment uses some CI, then that Other points: Backend programming language can be anything, except VB or PHP Everything has to be in the cloud, nothing permanent on a local PC (graphics is not part of the question) Looking for ready-to-use service combination, not a virtual server where I can set anything up myself I don't care if service insists on displaying ads in the user web UI "Cheap" and "free trial" are ok too, if "free" does not exist As per example use case, storage, CPU and bandwidth quota requirements are negligible Google finds several services of course, all requiring at least registration before testing, so I'm looking for a known-good combination, so ideal answer starts with "I use this service combo: ...", contains links to services and brief description and personal experiences.

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• Java(standard, non standard) or Non Java based Web developement [closed]

  - by LivingThing

  I am new to web development. Initially i thought i would be learning LAMP or WAMP to acquire web developement skills but recently i came across Standard Java based (JSP, servlets) and Non standard Java based (GWT). My question is related to if and how LAMP can be compared with Java (standarad or non stadard) technologies. Is LAMP even comparable to Java based tech or it does something else or something more or less ? what requirement for a web developement projects require the choice that which of these 'technologies' should be choosen ? Thank YOu

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• Podcast Show Notes: William Ulrich and Neal McWhorter on Business Architecture

  - by Bob Rhubart

  The latest ArchBeat podcast program features a four-part conversation with William Ulrich and Neal McWhorter, the authors of Business Architecture: The Art and Practice of Business Transformation, available from Meghan-Kiffer Press. Listen to Part 1 Bill and Neal cover the basics and discuss the effects of the lack of business architecture on organizations. Listen to Part 2 (Jan 19) What really happens to the billions of dollars annually invested in IT. Listen to Part 3 (Jan 26) Why the IT and business sides of many organizations can’t play nice. Listen to Part 4 (Feb 2) How IT architects and business architects can work together to get the ship back on course and keep it there. Connect William Ulrich Website | LinkedIn | Business Architecture Guild Neal McWhorter Website | LinkedIn | Business Architecture Group on OMG Coming Soon Bob Hensle, Director, Oracle Enterprise Architecture Group, discusses the recently launched IT Solutions from Oracle (ITSO) library of documents. Excerpts from a recent OTN Architect Community Virtual Meet-up. Stay tuned: RSS del.icio.us Tags: business architecture,enterprise architecture,arch2arch,archbeat,podcast,business transformation,oracle,oracle technology network Technorati Tags: business architecture,enterprise architecture,arch2arch,archbeat,podcast,business transformation,oracle,oracle technology network

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• web application or web portal? [closed]

  - by klo

  as title said differences between those 2. I read all the definition and some articles, but I need information about some other aspects. Here is the thing. We want to build a web site that will contain: site, database, uploads, numerous background services that would have to collect information from uploads and from some other sites, parse them etc...I doubt that there are portlets that fits our specific need so we will have to make them our self. So, questions: 1. Deployment ( and difference in cost if possible), is deploying portals much more easier then web app ( java or .net) 2. Server load. Does portal consume much of server power ( and can you strip portal of thing that you do not use) 3. Implementation and developing of portlets. Can u make all the things that you could have done in java or .net? 4. General thoughts of when to use portals and when classic web app. Tnx all in advence...

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• Architecture of a "website generator" web application

  - by Resorath

  What is the most maintainable and efficient way to architect a web application who's purpose is to host and generate websites which can be customized to a certain degree? There are a lot of these style of applications in the wild that generate all kinds of sites, from sites that host World of Warcraft guilds like guildlaunch to other sites like my wedding for wedding site hosting. My question is, what is the basic architecture that these sites operate on? I imagine there are two ways of thinking about this. A central set of code that all sites on the host run against, and it acts differently based on which site was visited. In this manner, when the base code is updated all sites are updated simultaneously. Or, the code for an individual site exists in a silo, and is simply replicated to a new directory each time a site is created. When an update needs to be applied, the code is pushed out to each site silo. In my case, I am working in PHP with the CodeIgniter framework, however the answer need not be limited to this case. Which method (if any) creates a more maintainable and efficient architecture to manage this style of web application?

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• Need help with PHP web app bootstrapping error potentially related to Zend [migrated]

  - by Matt Shepherd

  I am trying to get a program called OpenFISMA running on an Ubuntu AMI in AWS. The app is not really coded on the Ubuntu platform, but I am in my comfort zone there, and have tried both CentOS and OpenSUSE (both are sort of "native" for the app) for getting it working with the same or worse results. So, why not just get it working on Ubuntu? Anyway, the app is found here: www.openfisma.org and an install guide is found here: https://openfisma.atlassian.net/wiki/display/030100/Installation+Guide The install guide kind of sucks. It doesn't list dependencies in any coherent way or provide much of any detail (does not even mention Zend once on the entire page) so I've done a lot of work to divine the information I do have. This page provided some dependency inf (though again, Zend is not mentioned once): https://openfisma.atlassian.net/wiki/display/PUBLIC/RPM+Management#RPMManagement-BasicOverviewofRPMPackages Anyway, I got all the way through the install (so far as I could reconstruct it). I am going to the login page for the first time, and there should be some sort of bootstrapping occurring when I load the page. (I am not a programmer so I have no idea what it is doing there.) Anyway, I get a message on the web page that says: "An exception occurred while bootstrapping the application." So, then I go look in /var/www/data/logs/php.log and find this message: [22-Oct-2013 17:29:18 UTC] PHP Fatal error: Uncaught exception 'Zend_Exception' with message 'No entry is registered for key 'Zend_Log'' in /var/www/library/Zend/Registry.php:147 Stack trace: #0 /var/www/public/index.php(188): Zend_Registry::get('Zend_Log') #1 {main} thrown in /var/www/library/Zend/Registry.php on line 147 This occurs every time I load the page. I gather there is an issue related to registering the Zend_Log variable in the Zend registry, but other than that I really have no idea what to do about it. Am I missing a package that it needs, or is this app not coded to register the variables properly? I have no clue. Any help is greatly appreciated. The application file referenced in the log message (index.php) is included below. <?php /** * Copyright (c) 2008 Endeavor Systems, Inc. * * This file is part of OpenFISMA. * * OpenFISMA is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public * License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later * version. * * OpenFISMA is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied * warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more * details. * * You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with OpenFISMA. If not, see * {@link http://www.gnu.org/licenses/}. */ try { defined('APPLICATION_PATH') || define( 'APPLICATION_PATH', realpath(dirname(__FILE__) . '/../application') ); // Define application environment defined('APPLICATION_ENV') || define( 'APPLICATION_ENV', (getenv('APPLICATION_ENV') ? getenv('APPLICATION_ENV') : 'production') ); set_include_path( APPLICATION_PATH . '/../library/Symfony/Components' . PATH_SEPARATOR . APPLICATION_PATH . '/../library' . PATH_SEPARATOR . get_include_path() ); require_once 'Fisma.php'; require_once 'Zend/Application.php'; $application = new Zend_Application( APPLICATION_ENV, APPLICATION_PATH . '/config/application.ini' ); Fisma::setAppConfig($application->getOptions()); Fisma::initialize(Fisma::RUN_MODE_WEB_APP); $application->bootstrap()->run(); } catch (Zend_Config_Exception $zce) { // A zend config exception indicates that the application may not be installed properly echo '<h1>The application is not installed correctly</h1>'; $zceMsg = $zce->getMessage(); if (stristr($zceMsg, 'parse_ini_file') !== false) { if (stristr($zceMsg, 'application.ini') !== false) { if (stristr($zceMsg, 'No such file or directory') !== false) { echo 'The ' . APPLICATION_PATH . '/config/application.ini file is missing.'; } elseif (stristr($zceMsg, 'Permission denied') !== false) { echo 'The ' . APPLICATION_PATH . '/config/application.ini file does not have the ' . 'appropriate permissions set for the application to read it.'; } else { echo 'An ini-parsing error has occured in ' . APPLICATION_PATH . '/config/application.ini ' . '<br/>Please check this file and make sure everything is setup correctly.'; } } else if (stristr($zceMsg, 'database.ini') !== false) { if (stristr($zceMsg, 'No such file or directory') !== false) { echo 'The ' . APPLICATION_PATH . '/config/database.ini file is missing.<br/>'; echo 'If you find a database.ini.template file in the config directory, edit this file ' . 'appropriately and rename it to database.ini'; } elseif (stristr($zceMsg, 'Permission denied') !== false) { echo 'The ' . APPLICATION_PATH . '/config/database.ini file does not have the appropriate ' . 'permissions set for the application to read it.'; } else { echo 'An ini-parsing error has occured in ' . APPLICATION_PATH . '/config/database.ini ' . '<br/>Please check this file and make sure everything is setup correctly.'; } } else { echo 'An ini-parsing error has occured. <br/>Please check all configuration files and make sure ' . 'everything is setup correctly'; } } elseif (stristr($zceMsg, 'syntax error') !== false) { if (stristr($zceMsg, 'application.ini') !== false) { echo 'There is a syntax error in ' . APPLICATION_PATH . '/config/application.ini ' . '<br/>Please check this file and make sure everything is setup correctly.'; } elseif (stristr($zceMsg, 'database.ini') !== false) { echo 'There is a syntax error in ' . APPLICATION_PATH . '/config/database.ini ' . '<br/>Please check this file and make sure everything is setup correctly.'; } else { echo 'A syntax error has been reached. <br/>Please check all configuration files and make sure ' . 'everything is setup correctly.'; } } else { // Then the exception message says nothing about parse_ini_file nor 'syntax error' echo 'Please check all configuration files, and ensure all settings are valid.'; } echo '<br/>For more information and help on installing OpenFISMA, please refer to the ' . '<a target="_blank" href="http://manual.openfisma.org/display/ADMIN/Installation">' . 'Installation Guide</a>'; } catch (Doctrine_Manager_Exception $dme) { echo '<h1>An exception occurred while bootstrapping the application.</h1>'; // Does database.ini have valid settings? Or is it the same content as database.ini.template? $databaseIniFail = false; $iniData = file(APPLICATION_PATH . '/config/database.ini'); $iniData = str_replace(chr(10), '', $iniData); if (in_array('db.adapter = ##DB_ADAPTER##', $iniData)) { $databaseIniFail = true; } if (in_array('db.host = ##DB_HOST##', $iniData)) { $databaseIniFail = true; } if (in_array('db.port = ##DB_PORT##', $iniData)) { $databaseIniFail = true; } if (in_array('db.username = ##DB_USER##', $iniData)) { $databaseIniFail = true; } if (in_array('db.password = ##DB_PASS##', $iniData)) { $databaseIniFail = true; } if (in_array('db.schema = ##DB_NAME##', $iniData)) { $databaseIniFail = true; } if ($databaseIniFail) { echo 'You have not applied the settings in ' . APPLICATION_PATH . '/config/database.ini appropriately. ' . 'Please review the contents of this file and try again.'; } else { if (Fisma::debug()) { echo '<p>' . get_class($dme) . '</p><p>' . $dme->getMessage() . '</p><p>' . "<p><pre>Stack Trace:\n" . $dme->getTraceAsString() . '</pre></p>'; } else { $logString = get_class($dme) . "\n" . $dme->getMessage() . "\nStack Trace:\n" . $dme->getTraceAsString() . "\n"; Zend_Registry::get('Zend_Log')->err($logString); } } } catch (Exception $exception) { // If a bootstrap exception occurs, that indicates a serious problem, such as a syntax error. // We won't be able to do anything except display an error. echo '<h1>An exception occurred while bootstrapping the application.</h1>'; if (Fisma::debug()) { echo '<p>' . get_class($exception) . '</p><p>' . $exception->getMessage() . '</p><p>' . "<p><pre>Stack Trace:\n" . $exception->getTraceAsString() . '</pre></p>'; } else { $logString = get_class($exception) . "\n" . $exception->getMessage() . "\nStack Trace:\n" . $exception->getTraceAsString() . "\n"; Zend_Registry::get('Zend_Log')->err($logString); } }

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• The architecture and technologies to use for a secure, fast, reliable and easily scalable web application

  - by DSoul

  ^ For actual questions, skip to the lists down below I understand, that his is a vague topic, but please, before you turn the other way and disregard me, hear me out. I am currently doing research for a web application(I don't know if application is the correct word for it, but I will proceed w/ that for now), that one day might need to be everything mentioned in the title. I am bound by nothing. That means that every language, OS and framework is acceptable, but only if it proves it's usefulness. And if you are going to say, that scalability and speed depend on the code I write for this application, then I agree, but I am just trying to find something, that wouldn't stand in my way later on. I have done quite a bit reading on this subject, but I still don't have a clear picture, to what suits my needs, so I come to you, StackOverflow, to give me directions. I know you all must be wondering what I'm building, but I assure you, that it doesn't matter. I have heard of 12 factor app though, if you have any similar guidelines or what is, to suggest the please, go ahead. For the sake of keeping your answers as open as possible, I'm not gonna provide you my experience regarding anything written in this question. ^ Skippers, start here First off - the weights of the requirements are probably something like that (on a scale of 10): Security - 10 Speed - 5 Reliability (concurrency) - 7.5 Scalability - 10 Speed and concurrency are not a top priority, in the sense, that the program can be CPU intensive, and therefore slow, and only accept a not-that-high number of concurrent users, but both of these factors must be improvable by scaling the system Anyway, here are my questions: How many layers should the application have, so it would be future-proof and could best fulfill the aforementioned requirements? For now, what I have in mind is the most common version: Completely separated front end, that might be a web page or an MMI application or even both. Some middle-ware handling communication between the front and the back end. This is probably a server that communicates w/ the front end via HTTP. How the communication w/ the back end should be handled is probably dependent on the back end. The back end. Something that handles data through resources like DB and etc. and does various computations w/ the data. This, as the highest priority part of the software, must be easily spread to multiple computers later on and have no known security holes. I think ideally the middle-ware should send a request to a queue from where one of the back end processes takes this request, chops it up to smaller parts and buts these parts of the request back onto the same queue as the initial request, after what these parts will be then handled by other back end processes. Something *map-reduce*y, so to say. What frameworks, languages and etc. should these layers use? The technologies used here are not that important at this moment, you can ignore this part for now I've been pointed to node.js for this part. Do you guys know any better alternatives, or have any reasons why I should (not) use node.js for this particular job. I actually have no good idea, what to use for this job, there are too many options out there, so please direct me. This part (and the 2. one also, I think) depend a lot on the OS, so suggest any OSs alongside w/ the technologies/frameworks. Initially, all computers (or 1 for starters) hosting the back end are going to be virtual machines. Please do give suggestions to any part of the question, that you feel you have comprehensive knowledge and/or experience of. And also, point out if you feel that any part of the current set-up means an instant (or even distant) failure or if I missed a very important aspect to consider. I'm not looking for a definitive answer for how to achieve my goals, because there certainly isn't one, for I haven't provided you w/ all the required information. I'm just looking for recommendations and directions on what to look into. Also, bare in mind, that this isn't something that I have to get done quickly, to sell and let it be re-written by the new owner (which, I've been told for multiple times, is what I should aim for). I have all the time in the world and I really just want to learn doing something really high-end. Also, excuse me if my language isn't the best, I'm not a native. Anyway. Thanks in advance to anyone, who takes the time to help me out here. PS. When I do seem to come up w/ a good architecture/design for this project, I will certainly make it an open project and keep you guys up to date w/ it's development. As in what you could have told me earlier and etc. For obvious reasons the very same question got closed on SO, but could you guys still help me?.

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