Any pointers to project ideas ?

[Sherry Jacob]

Hello friends,
I am planning to make a small project. What I plan is a yahoo-messenger type of application for an inter-office communication purpose.

I plan to do this using Swing, EJBs and JSP/Servlets.

Is it possible to interact Swing with EJBs because that's the actual requirement of the project.

Any pointers as to how I should go about it ?

Thanks alot.

[Dave Brown]

I am planning to make a small project. What I plan is a yahoo-messenger type of application for an inter-office communication purpose.I plan to do this using Swing, EJBs and JSP/Servlets.

Hiya, immediately i'm thinking EJBS & servlets/jsps ? I thought you said a small project.. Surely you dont need a full EJB capable J2EE container, in fact you dont need servlets/jsps/webserver.

I would recommend thinking about what you need your app to do, there are several ways of sending messages to & from other instances of your application, and storing them you can just use some lightweight database like hsqldb.

If you do need a server running component to control the messenger users, then you can definately avoid the overhead of EJB's. Theres lots of threads to be found on here and articles online regarding avoiding all the intrusive complexity EJB's will add to your project.

[Sherry Jacob]

Hi Dave,
Thannks for the enlightemnent on the subject. It was quite helpful. But there are a few more clarifications I'd like to make.

Surely you dont need a full EJB capable J2EE container, in fact you dont need servlets/jsps/webserver.

I understand that I do not need a full EJB capable J2EE container. But what do you think about yahoo messenger ? It does have a client web-interface too where a user registers onto a main database obviously. That's where I also thought of the need for JSP/Servlets. How else could I maintain a list of users for the application within the office ?


...there are several ways of sending messages to & from other instances of your application, and storing them you can just use some lightweight database like hsqldb.

I know that I can develop a completely Swing-based application too. But the minimum application implementation requirements are Swing, JSP/Servlets with MySQL database. Any pointers here ?


...intrusive complexity EJB's will add to your project.

I understand that EJBs will add complexity overhead that's why I decided to keep EJBs optional.

So how should I go about it now ?

[Dave Brown]

Hmm well I'd probably have a system using webservices on the server that I can call to authenticate a user, register a user etc.. so my swing app could also handle new registration. Sadly I dont know enough about RMI or JINI which may or may not be more appropriate to calling things remotely, thats why I personally would use webservices.

when your swing app is running, it could keep polling a servlet to let it know that that particular user is logged in and available and at the same time retrieving a list of logged on users so the application can display who's available.

As far as the DB goes, I tend to use mySql, mainly because I like using Sqlyog for viewing/maintaining the data during development.

Also this would probably be the sort of app where using hibernate could speed things up too (in terms of development time). Its very quick to get started with if you havent seen it and should help you along.


Rgds

Originally posted by Sherry Jacob:
Hi Dave,
Thannks for the enlightemnent on the subject. It was quite helpful. But there are a few more clarifications I'd like to make.
[qb]
Surely you dont need a full EJB capable J2EE container, in fact you dont need servlets/jsps/webserver.

I understand that I do not need a full EJB capable J2EE container. But what do you think about yahoo messenger ? It does have a client web-interface too where a user registers onto a main database obviously. That's where I also thought of the need for JSP/Servlets. How else could I maintain a list of users for the application within the office ?


...there are several ways of sending messages to & from other instances of your application, and storing them you can just use some lightweight database like hsqldb.

I know that I can develop a completely Swing-based application too. But the minimum application implementation requirements are Swing, JSP/Servlets with MySQL database. Any pointers here ?


...intrusive complexity EJB's will add to your project.

I understand that EJBs will add complexity overhead that's why I decided to keep EJBs optional.

So how should I go about it now ?[/QB]