8

Based on the demos and documentation, OpenXava looks very impressive framework for quickly building an RIA from a Java domain. If it's really as good as it claims, why isn't it more well known?

I'd like to hear from people with practical experience of using OpenXava. What are it's strengths and weaknesses? How does it compare with alternatives such as Grails, Roo, and the Play framework?

skaffman
  • 398,947
  • 96
  • 818
  • 769
Dónal
  • 185,044
  • 174
  • 569
  • 824

5 Answers5

2

If you choose to use openxava then you have to choose a portal server in which to deploy it. That's the complicated part, portals are very heavy.

Chris Seymour
  • 83,387
  • 30
  • 160
  • 202
joshua
  • 4,118
  • 3
  • 40
  • 53
  • Yes, but then you also get all the advantages of a portal: single-sign on, role-based access control, web content management, wikis and so on. – GeraldScott Mar 11 '15 at 04:35
  • I need to implement single-sign on and role-based access control . Can you give me a link /tutorial to follow. I m stuck. @GeraldScott – Shifat Nov 09 '17 at 11:53
1

It is not necessary to use it with a portal server. Even the download comes bundled with Tomcat 6.0 for getting started quickly.

Yes, you have OPTION to generate portlets using the Ant script and deploy in a portal server like Liferay

Kumar Sambhav
  • 7,503
  • 15
  • 63
  • 86
1

It looks so good in demo but I could not get through. These are the steps I have taken.

  1. downloaded the openxava , which is more like a workspace then plugin. 2 create a project .
  2. create entities by using 'DB Importer' so JPA entities are automade.(can be at step 5 too)
  3. running the crateNewProject and get the files copied in the project.
  4. update the persistence.xml file and context.xml file of tomcat.
  5. run build.xml but remove updateSchema target as I am doing reverse engineering and don't want to lose data.

when I run the project , I don't see the portal getting generated 

generatePortletXml:
     [echo] Generating portlets files
     [java] Jul 11, 2013 12:05:45 PM org.openxava.util.Labels get
     [java] WARNING: Impossible to translate element with id Client
     [java] Jul 11, 2013 12:05:45 PM org.openxava.util.Labels get
preparePortletsWar:
insertCustomPortlets:
 [loadfile] C:\Projects\openxava-4.7.1\workspace\Viewport\web\WEB-INF\portlet-ext.xml doesn't exist
 [loadfile] C:\Projects\openxava-4.7.1\workspace\Viewport\web\WEB-INF\liferay-display-ext.xml doesn't exist
     [java] WARNING: Impossible to translate element with id Client
     [java] Jul 11, 2013 12:05:45 PM org.openxava.util.Labels get

Spring roo is quite good when you want to generate the pages but does not give much support for sorting or other customisation, also as roo is OSGi based getting it changed will need very good experience with OSGi, Spring Roo also uses Spring MVC and Hibernate if you have scaffolded for MVC. It does create lot of aspect files too. You need not know all these but when it comes to customization knowing these may put you in fasterlane(not really)

I hope openXava gets some traction and create maven archtype and some kind of shell scripts to generate the portlets, Open Xava screens are way too good but now sadly giving up.

R-JANA
  • 1,138
  • 2
  • 14
  • 30
0

It is great for rapid prototyping an application, but the user interface does not look very polished. It uses JSP underneath, which is now out of fashion, but you can be up and running very quickly.

It runs on a Tomcat which is quite light-weight, but for more functionality and a better look-and-feel, run the Liferay portal on Tomcat and upload the OpenXava application as a number of portlets in the portal. The Liferay documentation is quite good explaining this.

GeraldScott
  • 481
  • 5
  • 8
0

Had the same question :) OpenXava is mature enough and is offering a richer User Interface out of the box. For the other you have basic CRUD out of the box. The look and feel is OK and I assume is customizable. Is not so known as the others because does not have such a powerful company behind like Grails and Roo. Play is nice but is in the same category as OpenXava (backed up by some not very big companies) They all are good products, so it is a matter of choice.

Cris
  • 4,947
  • 6
  • 44
  • 73