Looking for a great Java Framework w/ ORM for an Enterprise App - Grails? Aribaweb? ?

Question

I realize that this may be tantamount to asking, "what's the best programming language?" (lots of debate and emotion), but I don't know what do but ask YOU about what Web Frameworks you've had good experience with.

Practically, to be adopted by our IT folks it needs to be HOSTED on Java; thus the two I listed in the subject above. I insist that it include a Dynamic Language (duh!).

I noticed that there are already a lot of GRAILs questions on here, but no hits when I searched for aribaweb (http://aribaweb.org). The demo and introduction on the Aribaweb site is pretty freakin' amazing... but why no hits here?

Answer 1

Looking at the number of downloads AribaWeb seems to be of absolutely marginal popularity, apparently a proprietary product recently open-sourced and so far not very successfully.

Other things that make me suspicious:

• Extreme "too good to be true" claims ("100x less code than Rails")
• Version jumped from 0.8 to 5.0
• Demo? What Demo? I see videos. That means nothing. Show me a live app

None of this necessarily says anything about its technical qualities, but one thing is certain: you won't find anyone with experience in using it and able to answer questions about it outside the company that made it.

Answer 2

Take a look at Spring(www.springsource.org).

IMO it is a perfect choice, which covers the whole J2EE landscape. Grails is based on it too. It supports dynamic languages such as Groovy and JRuby. If for some reason you have to stay with Java - you can use Spring Roo which is a lot like Rails.

Answer 3

I've never heard about AribaWeb before, but I've used Grails for almost a year now and I'm very impressed! There is also an increasing ecosystem building around the project. One of the best ting about Grails is the modularity. A lot of people are creating plugins with new functionality or just wrappers around existing Java libraries.

Answer 4

I don't have experience with this but it looks like you can run Ruby on Rails on the JVM. take a look at this link. http://kenai.com/projects/jruby/pages/JRubyOnRails

Answer 5

You've clearly narrowed it down to two options. Between those two I would recommend to stick to the one with a larger community, since it's easier to get support that way. You already experienced that here, where Grails is familiar territory for many, but that's not the case for Aribaweb.

Also I've found that it really helps to try and do a simple but complete example project in both tools. Come up with a general design, and see how much time and effort it takes you to implement it in both frameworks. You can look for the following symptoms:

• Do I get stuck very often?
• Do I have to go hunt for an answer every time I get stuck, or can I get past it by reading at documentation?
• Is the framework built to support what I'm trying to do, or do I have to invest significant effort to get it to play nice?
• Do I feel like I get it after using it for a while?

Personally, that framework would be Grails.

Answer 6

Hi,

Just to comment on a few points made here and point to you a link.

AribaWeb is able to create applications with much less code mainly because it does not use scaffolding and its "Instant App" feature.

The jump in version number is to better reflect the 10 year history of AribaWeb.

You will find more about the above points and a brief comparision to other frameworks here: http://aribaweb.org/Documentation/Frequently_Asked_Questions.htm

Thanks.

Answer 7

Groovy/Grails is a great way to make Java palatable, and it is a language designed explicitly for the Java VM. It has a lot of support and is frequently updated. (Often, you have to make the decision to take the more popular option, if it's satisfactory, over the technically best one.)