Geek rambings

Our geeks have things that they need to get out. There is no arguing with them.

Wicket Ajax

(Particular comparison with GWT)

• pro - very good for HTML only
• pro - good security - e.g. just as Java removed pointer arithmetic Wicket doesn't expose property paths, ids etc by default
• con - request synchronized on Session so Sjax
• con - very heavy server side requirements
• con - very complex code base
• con - ugly API compared to Swing etc
• con - every click goes to server (unlike GWT)
• pro - very helpful community
• con - requirement for ids is more annoying than useful
• con - dual HTML and component tree is annoying
• con - components must be serialised! Real pain.
• con - if server state is lost can't just get user to login again as state of UI is on the server.
• con - more care needed as action runs in same VM as page state (e.g. ensure tx does not fail before updating page state).

"Value column" anti-pattern

It seems painfully common that software engineers decide to build a database on top of a relational database. Your lovely RDBMS can model columns, relations (duh), datatypes in a wonderful way and do all sort of clever optimisations when you query this data. When the wunderkind decides to have a table with columns name and value, to stuff any old rubbish in, they throw away all this good stuff and invent a very broken wheel on top of a very good wheel. Alfresco CMS manages to make very simple things very complicated and slow by using this pattern.