So the cry goes up for Simpler Java - Combatting the complexity of J2EE. But what exactly is this supposed to mean?
Of course what is means is whatever the particular writer things it should mean. For some people this means that it should be easy to develop a simple blog for a single user, for others that their read mostly dynamically generated web site should be able to scale easily by adding more machines to the cluster, and for still others that it should be easier to develop business critical applications that talk to DB2, and Oracle databases while integrating with SAP and providing a workflow solution using a third party open source toolkit.
I would say there is no answer to these competing requirements within the current J2EE. Like all of th options is Microsoft Word nobody needs all of the features of J2EE, everyone uses only 60% of it, but they all use a different 60%. To say it's too complex is to some extent to say that the problems that people are trying to solve are complex, and that's just the way it is.
One possible solution, and one that's worked well in other areas, is to enable the development of domain specific languages within Java. This would let each domain, for instance blog development, use their own language the provides the high level constructs they need while concealing the complexity if they don't want to deal with it. A problem of course is to be able to arrange for a smooth transition between the DSL and the Java code.
Anyway, rather than the development of yet more specific frameworks for specific situations perhaps it would be better to develop a DSL system for creating those frameworks?
Posted by Alex at November 18, 2003 08:07 PM