7.6. Vendor Selection
The major off-the-shelf components of the solution eTapestry acquired included an interactive development environment (IDE) and a combined application and database server. For the development environment, eTapestry chose Forte for Java, Community Edition, based on the flexibility and broad functionality options the open source-based tool provides. “Forte for Java gives us a double-barreled advantage. As open source, it is freely available, and it has the broadest selection of features and integration capabilities of any Java development environment that we evaluated,” says Ganyo.
Among the features Ganyo found useful were its auto-completion capabilities with which the tool can complete partially written coding statements. “That provides a useful productivity tool,” notes Ganyo. The Forte for Java product's capability to automatically generate Java property files was another productivity aid. Its XML, JSP, and servlet support, plus the comprehensive Javadoc-based help system, made the coding and debugging processes simpler and faster.
That the Forte for Java IDE was available as an open-source product was an important selection criterion. “Open source provides us the confidence that we won't end up with proprietary, dead-end technology,” Ganyo says.
Open source significantly broadened eTapestry's options. With the source code freely available to the Internet developer community, eTapestry can benefit from third-party enhancements that are becoming available. For instance, the development team is considering using Ant, a Make environment for managing code dependencies, which is available through the Apache Foundation. They are also looking forward to small but valuable enhancements, such as the new “mouse wheel” support that open-source developers have made available to the Java community. “Little things like that add up and make a big difference,” says Ganyo, who adds, “A bonus is that we won't have to depend on a single vendor to get all the improvements.”
Furthermore, the modular architecture of the Forte for Java IDE provided eTapestry the flexibility to use only the functionality it requires. “You can trim down the memory requirements of Forte for Java if you use only the features you need, which really helps performance,” notes Ganyo. For instance, while eTapestry currently uses most modules available as part of Forte for Java, the company has not installed modules covering JINI, FTP, or login. An added benefit of the product's modularity is the ease of upgrade, an important advantage now that version 2.0 is shipping. With this release, the core tool can remain in place with only the new or updated features needing to be installed as plug-ins.
When the Forte for Java Internet edition was released in beta, eTapestry quickly upgraded to the new tool to take advantage of several key features. “We were very interested in using the new JSP line-level debugging features that allow us to improve the way the system handles incoming HTTP requests,” says Ganyo.
eTapestry chose the Gemstone/J application server as the deployment platform, in large part due to its embedded object-oriented database. The advantage of this approach is that the performance and complexity issues of object/relational mapping can be avoided. The embedded data cache stores data as Java objects. This approach simplifies matters for the development team, since they do not have to reconcile the object structures of the Java application with relational data structures. In addition, by using an object database, new functionality can be added more readily to the system.