What is likely to be the biggest change (loss) in the transition from Seam 2 to plain JavaEE 6?

Question

The question pretty much talks about this, although I'm obviously looking for things that I’m probably going to skip about Seam 2 in the Java EE 6 ("loss") environment.

For my last (small) JavaEE 6 project or, more specifically, JSF 2 needed to be fixed, so using Seam 2 was not an option (and never will be). Although some people said that Seam 2 works with JSF 2, I never did. So far, I have only used Seam 2, and I'm afraid that switching to a normal JavaEE environment is a bigger problem than I know.

The project has the following basic / basic requirements:

• Security concept based on roles and permissions (~ 50 users)
• JPA 2 transaction transfer
• ...

The rest will most likely be based on a graphical interface, search forms, client validation, etc., which will be processed as verification of RichFaces 4 and JavaEE 6 bean. No web services, no quiet URLs, no messages, no email.

I see that using Seam security will unceremoniously represent a loss, but I'm not sure that Seam's persistence, entity / query structure, JBoss EL and others will be , especially the general programming model (navigation, EL, beans). Please note that we can add Seam 3 modules when it makes sense, so you can include Seam 3 in the discussion under the "Achievements" section.

So can someone clarify this a bit? (this should not be a complete conclusion, no matter what comes to mind)

PS: I was not able to connect to the Seam forums, so I felt that I needed to ask here.

Answer 1

Good and clear question - I do not understand why this happened.

What can I tell you - amid various Java EE 5 / Seam 2 and Java EE 6 / Seam 3 applications:

There is nothing that you cannot solve with Java EE 6 / Seam 3 , and many things become much more mature (e.g. typafe CDI is better than Seam 2 string components, JBoss AS 7 is much better than all other releases).

But: although Seam 2 is more like a universal solution for all the requirements that may arise in a corporate web application, with Java EE 6, you will almost certainly end up with great bewilderment from different modules .

Seam 3 is a great start, but it's not quite ready for production, at least not in all parts. Therefore, you will have to solve problems and exceptions that have yet to be resolved. This is definitely the difference with Seam 2.x, where the road was pretty well paved.

There is no equivalent to the Seam 2 concept of integrated navigation / page description . You either have to use JSF 2 navigation, or integrate Drools or something like that - on your own.

Nested talk is something you might like about Seam 2. There is no such thing in CDI, but OpenWebBeans / CODI offers a good solution as a CDI extension.

All GUI materials (pdf, newsletter, reporting) are already on the Seam 3 path, but not 100% ready (9/2011). This will change next time - but right now you are on your way with alpha and beta.

Having said that, here is my advice:

Switch to Java EE 6 / CDI as soon as possible (and maybe discuss). This is so much future. :-)

Answer 2

I experienced the same thing. Java EE is not enough in a few cases, and it was not intended. So there are CDI extensions. A few days ago, I found out that others experienced the same thing:

Java EE is all you need

If it's too easy to be true

If you are a Seam2 user, go with Seam3 (I think they plan to provide similar things again - just the conversations are very bad) and help them get stable, add missing features, ... or switch to other extensions. There are many, for example. we prefer MyFaces CODI because it is very stable and fast, and their understanding of conversations is better. There is also a very open community, and they also help a lot, listen to ideas, ...

The question is not, “What” is “When will it be available in the extension”. I think as soon as someone asks about it.