Kirkman Enterprises

 As I mentioned in my last posting, I was unhappy with how Apache Wicket constructed URLs for the pages within the web-based application.  I did not see an easy solution to the issue, therefore I began looking at other alternatives.  To recap, I'm looking to develop a web-based service for a potential business that is based on a Java application that I have been developing for more than a year.  I would like to use, potentially, a substantial portion of the code from this Java application in the web-based service, therefore the framework for the site would need to be able to handle Java code.  I think Groovy on Grails may be the answer.

The development work I have been doing so far with Grails has yet to touch on the Java code that I need to utilize.  At the moment, I need to complete a lot of front-end work to get to the point of integrating the Java code.  In theory, Groovy on Grails should be able to handle the Java code without problems.  That remains to be seen from my perspective.  Before I could ever get to that point I needed to learn first how to develop with Grails and then how to develop my service with Grails.  

I had talked before about my initial thoughts of using the Spring framework for this project.  I passed on it because I was not able to find a good tutorial on it.  With Grails I was able to find a very good tutorial, not from the developers but from a third party.  InfoQ's "Getting Started with Grails" provides a step-by-step guide for developing with Groovy on Grails.  There isn't really a lot to say about the tutorial other than it was a pretty awesome guide, in my opinion.

The next issue in developing, in any language and/or framework, the integreated development environment (IDE).  It turns out that the IDE for Spring has add-ons for Grails development.  Since I had already installed the SpringSource Tool Suite (STS) on my computers I installed the add-ons through the easily accessible extensions tab of the Dashboard.  STS is build on the ever popular Eclipse engine.  It has support for creating files based on HTML, JavaScript, Groovy, Grails, Java (and likely more).  It makes a good attempt at integrating the Grails tools within the IDE.  There are still a few issues here and there with integrating the Grails tools with STS, but the developers on the SpringSource forum have been very good at responding to issues and offering solutions including advanced builds of the IDE.

Grails seems to pretty seamlessly be able to integrate the design and development of the major data objects for a web-based application with the user interface (the web pages themselves) and the data store (in my case a MySQL database).  I am able to first sit and work on a particular data object, what all information I need to store, and various constraints on the data.  Then I can generate the scaffolding for web pages to allow the user to create, display, and edit information for that data object.  As development progresses, I can move from using a local database store to a full SQL database.  It allows access to multiple database software applications (MySQL, MSSQL, Oracle, etc) as long as you have the Java based connection APIs.  

In terms of the web-based service I have been working on, progress has been a little slow (in my opinion).  That is mostly due to needing to finish out another semester of graduate school.  The goal is to have an alpha version of the website up and running by the end of June, just two months from now.  I feel that I can easily accomplish that goal, using Groovy on Grails with the SpringSource Tool Suite by that time.  The way everything is modularlized and kept seperate from the start, it will be easy for me to modfying aspects of the service if one of my business partners decides they want to do something a little differently.  

As I've mentioned before, I'll try to keep providing updates as I have time and as there are developments to announce.  It certainly looks like, at this point in time, that Groovy on Grails will provide the back-end of the web-service.  Development will occur with STS.  Now it's just a race to the end of June to accomplish everything I need to publish an alpha version of the site.  One thing I'll probably write about at some point is how to publish the site on an Apache Webserver and TomCat server.  I briefly attempted that last month and had a number of issues.  It wasn't a priority so I bailed on getting it working.  It will be a major thing to accomplish late this month or early next month.  I'll try to write up how I got it working in case there are others who experience the same problems.