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Application Server that Allows Separated Content?
Aceticon asks: "I've been looking around for a Web Server/Application Server/Whatever solution in which the content and the presentation are separated enough to allow a designer (which at most knows HTML) to create and adjust the presentation side with minimal support from a programmer. On top of this, the solution should be scalable enough to work from a Windows NT (maybe/hopefully Linux) serving 10000 pages/day enviroment to a Sun HPC Server (or similarly sized beast) serving 1000000 pages/day. Things like XML/XSL seem unsuitable for the whole 'designer with no support' thing - encoding presentation using XSL sheets is a refined form of masochism.
The scripting solutions i've seen out there are either too techie-like (PHP), or non-scalable (ASP). Anything that needs recompiling is probably a bit too complex for somebody whose not expected to have programming abilites. Any ideas?"
Disclaimer: I work for ATG.
Dynamo does exactly what you want -- it has JHTML pages with some extra tags which interface into servlets, so that designers never see Java code.
The cool bit is that there's only ONE tag. It's
<droplet bean="ForEach">
<param name="array" value="bean:SomeArray">
<oparam name="output">
This text is output for each element in the array and you can get properties of those elements (like the name) by typing <valueof param="element.name"></valueof>
</oparam>
</droplet>
So you have a concept of a mathematical function (the droplet), then you have input parameters and output parameters (which can also be chunks of HTML). It's possible to nest droplets, so that you can have another droplet in the output parameter which does something to an element, and each of these elements is a javabean. When you say "element.name", it calls getName() on the bean.
Very cool. Beats JSP out by a mile, even with taglibs.
i do agree with you, but i haven't looked at it that much to be able to explain it, and i sure would like to be able to tell my boss why i think, xsl is not good.
greetings, eMBee.
--
Gnu is Not Unix / Linux Is Not UniX
Seriously. Server runs on Linux, Sparc, AIX, AS/400, HPUX, and probably a few others I know. Scaleable, redundant, and even does some strange-o stuff called Off Line services, where you can cache a web page locally, then work with the application while not online. Also plugs into Db2, SAP, Oracle, MS SQL, and allows you to run IIS as your web server if you so desire.
The whole Lotus.com site, and some of ibm.com is run off of Notes servers.
WO has been around for several years, is tremendously scalable, and is quite powerful
Basically these days Apple is going the Java route, so although you can code in WO using Java or Objective-C, Java is the way to go.
There's a fair learning curve associated with learning to develop in WO, but once you learn it, you've got a serious toolkit, rather than a "targeted solution" shrinkwrap affair. It can pull from practically any data source, has built-in load-balancing features, and utilizes a very sophisticated object framework.
You can develop on NT or OS X Server, and can deploy on NT, OS X Server, HP UNIX, and the strong rumor is that the next rev will deploy on Linux - it's being rewritten completely in Java.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Reminds me of the poster I put up at my consulting business:
You quitting proves that the karma kap worked. The most annoying of the whores shut up. --CmdrTaco
Second, it only takes about a day to write your own template fill-in routines in whatever language your app server uses. It can be dead simple--just open a template file (cache it for performance) and replace placeholders ($foo, <var>foo</var>, whatever makes you happy) with supplied values. You have the code compute all the placeholders, then call the template fill-in routine.
HTML hackers work on the templates and don't have to worry their little heads over anything more scary than your friendly placeholders. Coders just need to know what values to compute and what templates to pass them to. Not fancy, but what more do you want?
The evaluation of an action as 'practical' . . . depends on what it is that one wishes to practice.
You need (1) to implement a high-traffic web site which serves dinamic information.
You need (2) if it's oriented to the average consumer.
You need (3) to minimize maintenance costs and speedup changes to the "looks" of the site. The situation in which a programmer has to be called to change the position of an icon in a web page is a very very bad way of maintaining a site.
There should be loads of implementations out there that have (1) and (2). I believe that the next level in quality is having (3).
I doubt it very much that an ideal solution can be found, but you can allways compensate by:
- Throwing more computing power at the problem
- Staying with less flashy, more simple looks
- Teaching the designer some basic computer principles like "for cycles"
Everything is flexible, and what's best for my needs might not be the best for others.Still, i bet there's a lot of people out there which either have used something like it, or would like to use it.
Have you looked at Enhydra? It includes XMLC which compiles static HTML files containing dummy data which can be prepared by a web designer into classes which can be used by the app programmer to display dynamic content. Take a look at it, it sounds like it might just suit your requirements. It's Java, so runs pretty much anywhere.