JSF 2.0: for non-fully j2ee apps as well?

[Gian Franco]

Dear authors,

I'm new to JSF 2.0...

Is JSF 2.0 a good option for light j2ee apps as well...
that is those applications that skip the security part
and maybe the jpa part of JSF 2.0?

Or would this be a too heavy approach?

Cheers,

Gian

[Marco Ehrentreich]

Hi Gian,

to my knowledge it should be possible to use JSF 2.0 without the other parts of Java EE. But the better question is: What advantages do you get when you use the whole EE stack. In my opinion the different components and APIs of JEE (6) are really good but they are even more shining if you use them in combination with each other.

Unfortunately I don't know what exactly is needed or how you wire only a JSF 2.0 "view" to any arbitrary framework or application.

Marco

[Tim Holloway]

From what I've seen, most Java webapps "skip the security part", if what you mean is that they invent their own security code and don't use what's in the standard.

And, they usually do a pretty poor job of it.

JPA is optional as well. I advise it for apps that have complex data interrelations or that could benefit from the performance boost that the data optimizers and caching mechanisms provide, but some apps don't need all that, so why add useless complexity?

[Gian Franco]

...a scenario where skipping those two (important) parts might be relevant
is during the transition/migration to this technology from a different (older)
solution...

[Ed Burns]

Oh yes, you can use JSF2 on any Servlet 2.5 container. For example, the website for the book http://jsfcompref.com/ is a JSF app on Google app engine, which is a FAR CRY from a J2EE container.

Ed