By Mike Grueter
Posted August 14, 2001
This article is an outline of the key features of WebObjects 5. It is based on a presentation given at the first dBug WebObjects SIG meeting by SIG Leaders Mike Grueter and Baiss Magnusson.
- Development Environment
- Integrated Tools (Project Builder, WebObjects Builder, EOModeler)
- Extensive Frameworks
- Java is the programming language and you can use any Java frameworks in your application
- WebObjects applications can produce HTML for a browser or run as Java applications
- The Direct To Web and Direct To Java Client frameworks allow customizable application development at the click of a button with no coding
- You can develop on Mac OS X or Windows 2000
- Application Server
- Deploy on any computer with Java 2 Standard Edition
- Scales easily
- JavaMonitor
- Database Connectivity
- Any JDBC 2 datasource (Oracle, FrontBase, Sybase, OpenBase, MySQL, SQL Server 7, etc.)
- Object Relational Mapping converts database records into Java objects (including relationships)
- Conversion to and from Enterprise Objects happens automatically, allowing developers to concentrate on their application specific code
- Related data can be retrieved from the database only when needed for display to reduce the load on the database server
- Separation of Data, UI, and Code
- Application code uses Enterprise Objects that know nothing about the data source (EOModels houses the conversion rules and Enterprise Objects adapter applies them at run-time)
- User interface knows nothing about the application code (WebObjects declaration files house the conversion rules and WebObjects adapter applies them at run-time)
- Change the look of the web page without changing the application code, swap database sources without changing the application code, etc.
- User sees only plain HTML or a Java application (or XML, PDF, SVG, etc). They don't have access to your potentially sensitive application code or database calls
- Very Customizable
- Each step in the Request-Response-Loop can be customized (HTML, Code, SQL)
- Code and components are re-useable and extendable
