Last updated on Wednesday, February 09, 2005 at 10:39:00 PM
- What is WebObjects?
- Where can I find more general information about WebObjects?
- Are there any resources to help me learn WebObjects development?
- Are there public examples of WebObjects applications available?
A: WebObjects is a development environment for building applications that communicate across a network. The network can be an internal network or the internet, and the applications can be presented to the user as a web page in a browser or a Java application. WebObjects is also a scalable, high-volume server of applications developed in WebObjects, and can serve (deploy) applications from any Java 2 capable computer.
Java is the object-oriented programming language used to write applications in WebObjects, and that, along with a vast collection of object-oriented frameworks, allows rapid development of reusable applications that can interact with other Java applications.
WebObjects applications can store data in and retrieve data from any JDBC 2 compliant database. Once fetched from the database, the data is converted into Java objects that fit nicely into object-oriented program designs. This database access is automatic and alleviates the need to learn the intricacies of any specific database or SQL.
The design of WebObjects allows for separation of business logic from the user interface and data model. This means that modifications can be made to the database, the application code, or the user interface separately without requiring modifications to the other parts, resulting in a flexible and easy to maintain application that can quickly be modified.
Q: Where can I find more general information about WebObjects?
A: Apple has a very informative WebObjects area on their web site.
Apple has also published a document titled "WebObjects Overview" which gives a great high-level analysis of WebObjects. This document is available free in HTML form, and can be downloaded for free in PDF form.
Q: Are there any resources to help me learn WebObjects development?
A: Apple's main WebObjects development web site is a good starting point and they also provide a lot of online documentation. There are several free tutorial-style documents in both HTML and PDF format that can also be purchased in hardcopy form.
Apple hosts three mailing lists that focus on WebObjects: WebObjects Announcements, WebObjects Development, and WebObjects Deployment
Project Builder, the integrated development environment that comes with the WebObjects development tools, supports reference documentation look-up in Apple Help. To access reference documentation in Project Builder, make sure the project is indexed, and then use the Project Find panel to look up documentation for a particular symbol. Each development framework has a documentation folder that contains HTML formatted reference guides which can be pointed to by any browser. It is possible to bookmark those frameworks for easy access to the reference documentation for a particular subject. The WebObjects 5 installation also includes several example projects which can be found in /Developer/Examples/JavaWebObjects.
Apple has comprehensive WebObjects developer training courses available worldwide as well.
There are several mailing lists run by 3rd parties including four hosted by The Omni Group and a few on Yahoo! Groups. All of the lists have searchable archives and are an invaluable resource.
Stepwise has some great articles on WebObjects as well as other programming topics.
And finally, there are several books available for purchase: "WebObjects 5 for Mac OS X: Visual QuickPro Guide" by Joshua Marker (Peachpit Press; ISBN: 032111549X), "Practical WebObjects" by Charles Hill and Sacha Mallais (Apress; ISBN: 1590592964), "WebObjects Developer's Guide" by Ravi Mendis (Sams; ISBN: 0672323265), "Professional WebObjects 5.0 with Java" by several authors (Wrox Press Inc; ISBN: 1861004311), "Building WebObjects 5 Applications" by Jesse Feiler (Osborne McGraw-Hill; ISBN: 0072130881), "WebObjects Web Application Construction Kit" by George Ruzek (Sams; ISBN: 0672320746), and "WebObjects 5" by Hermann Röscheisen and Eckehart Röscheisen (Galileo Computing)
Q: Are there public examples of WebObjects applications available?
A: You can use Google to find many web sites created and deployed using WebObjects. The dBug Event Calendar is a WebObjects application.
