Is there such a framework?

Hello all!

There are a lot of frameworks for developing web based application in java, for example jsf, struts, hibernate, spring, tapestry, DB HTML (Oracle), jaas and so on. The problem is that all these frameworks require a programmer to know quite complicated things. You must be experienced J2EE developer to work with such frameworks. Moreover, it takes you very much time to develop a small application.

I am looking for a framework which allows me to develop web applications mostly working with SQL queries, HTML templates and configurational descriptors. Of course, it might be necessary to write some java classes, but it must be easy and only in particular situations. This framework must hide all complicated and low-level things like EJB, MVC, data access components and so on. I know that it's necessary to separate business logic from interface, but this approach partly supports this principle. There are XML descriptors which contain SQL queries for inserting, deletion and updating data and HTML templates which define user interface and the framework that renders it. Also there are configurable lists (or grids) and trees that work in the same way. They must support paging, sorting, search by parameters and some other features. You can easily construct any application using such components.

Actually, I took part in developing similar framework, but we used very specific tools and it wasn't completed. May be there already exist something like that?

I think that would be provided by firms which create tools on top of frameworks.

So, the silver lining is you may have to buy a product that will meet your minimal J2EE coding requirements.

eXtensible Server Pages(XSP) from Apache/Cocoon achieves a part of your objectives. If you are willing to write some custom Java code, JSP taglibs are the way to go.

Check out App Fuse (<a href="http://www.appfuse.org">http://www.appfuse.org</a>

. Although what you describe is a bit too Utopian, I think App Fuse may get you part of the way there. Of course you will have to learn how to use the app itself, but it does abstract some of the details you mentioned.
Eman

Emanuel, I think that such framework is absolutely real, even if nobody made it yet :-) It seems to me that it makes sense to look at some commercial development tools and may be not only java tools.