Kirkman Enterprises

 A couple weeks ago I expressed my frustration with the Spring Framework and its lack of tutorials and information for those new to the framework and web frameworks in general.  I read up a little on other Java web frameworks and decided to evaluate Apache Wicket.  Wicket does use Java for the backend processing.  Web applications built with it can run on web application servers such as Tomcat.  At first I was afraid that I would toss away Wicket for the same reason as Spring.  While the Wicket site has a few examples of wicket applications, it lacked a true tutorial into the various aspects of the framework, web application development, and deployment.  

While doing some additional research on Wicket I found what I think was a good tutorial to start learning about the framework.  I found it at Wicket's Wikipedia article.  The tutorial walks you through the creation of a Movie database web application.  It covers the creation of pages for the application with Wicket's API, including header files so that all pages across your site/application have similar characteristics, and has a brief introduction to objects, models and using the two to interact with forms on the web pages.  There is also a brief introduction to using databases with the web application.

After going through that tutorial, I was able to start working on my own web application.  I've mentioned before that there are a couple business opportunities ahead for me.  At a recent meeting for one, the group of us decided that we should perform a survey of potential clients to see what they would want to see in terms of the web-based service we would be offering.  I continued to learn about the Apache Wicket framework by creating this survey as a web-based application.  I've learned quite a bit and am pleased with what I have experience so far.  

The next step after this survey (depending on the results of the framework) is to start working on the actual web-based service that the business will eventually offer.  I think that will be the true test of Wicket's abilities and/or my ability to utilize it.  There is another another piece I need to find.  While Wicket provides a framework for the implementation of Java object and APIs on the backend of a web-application it doesn't provide anything to help with the front-end, browser-based functionality.  That will be another thing I'll need to research prior to the full launch of any web-based business.  Without a nice, feature rich front-end people will be less likely to want to interact with it.  The leading candidate is DoJo (I think I have the right name).  I haven't looked into this aspect very much, but that will be something to do sometime in the next month or two.