Is Struts-like API really needed?

[JScoobyCed]

Hi,

We have a Java Web-Application that we are going to re-architecte. It
has been build in the rush and now it has poor evolution perspectives.
There is no complex processing in the application. It is a kind of
Contact Management system which display reports on the Contact Activity.
It has a lot of features, but we can group them by two main types:
- forms for the user to enter data
- reports to display the entered data in a relevant way (daily activity,
monthly, totals and so on)

It is quite basic in term of technology involved, but there are a lot
(really a lot) of forms and reports.
Now my question is: would an API like Struts or Web-Works really help in
the development (in term of speed and future evolutions of the
web-application)? Or would it be using a shotgun to kill a mosquito?
(There are few chances that the mosquito grows to an elephant sized one)

Using such API would also create a unbreakable relation between itself
and our product, so if we ever wanted to remove this API, that would
again mean to re-design the whole stuff.

Thanks for any advise.

 

[Luke Webber]

Hi,

We have a Java Web-Application that we are going to re-architecte.
It has been build in the rush and now it has poor evolution perspectives.
There is no complex processing in the application. It is a kind of
Contact Management system which display reports on the Contact Activity.
It has a lot of features, but we can group them by two main types:
- forms for the user to enter data
- reports to display the entered data in a relevant way (daily activity,
monthly, totals and so on)

It is quite basic in term of technology involved, but there are a lot
(really a lot) of forms and reports.
Now my question is: would an API like Struts or Web-Works really help in
the development (in term of speed and future evolutions of the
web-application)? Or would it be using a shotgun to kill a mosquito?
(There are few chances that the mosquito grows to an elephant sized one)

Using such API would also create a unbreakable relation between itself
and our product, so if we ever wanted to remove this API, that would
again mean to re-design the whole stuff.

You've put your finger on the thing that I like least about Struts.
First, you end up writing your whole webapp around it, effectively
replacing standards-based markup with a thing completely apart. Second,
anybody you hire to maintain the thing is going to need to learn Struts
before they can come anywhere close to working with it.

Admittedly, the same could be said for JSP, servlets, even straight HTML
or ASP, but Struts for me is just taking things too far. I never could
learn to love it.

Luke