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From: "Davidson, Glenn" <Glenn.Davidson@tiaa-cref.org>
To: 'Struts Users Mailing List' <struts-user@jakarta.apache.org>
Subject: RE: struts layout  what do people think
Date: Wed, 16 Jul 2003 10:13:49 -0400
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John,
Right to the point. 
Positive: 
The Struts framework simplifies development of robust (are there any other
kind) Web applications. It provides a simple and intuitive implementation of
the MVC (or MVC2 to be more precise) pattern. Forms, actions, navigation,
validation etc are all made very simple.
It encourages good development practices. 
It is not exclusive, by that I mean you can use other (not all) web
technologies with Struts. 
It is relatively easy to learn the basic features of Struts. 
It is open source and has an active development community supporting it. 
With the addition of Tiles, Validator, DynaAction, Velocity etc. you have a
very powerful development environment. 
Struts is based upon Java and JSP, both very strong mature and widely
accepted technologies. You have the option to use EJB's or not.

Negatives: 
Struts is still relatively new. 
The view components are not strong. To get any fancy client view
functionality you will have to use JavaScript or something like it. (Note.
Java Server Faces may address some of these shortfalls but it is still just
a specification.)
There are few development tools for Struts. 
There are questions as to whether or not Struts has reached the critical
mass of developers to ensure it's survival. ( I do not agree with this but I
include it in an attempt to be at least superficially objective.) 
Some good books do exist, but they cover the basic features of Struts,
documentation on advanced features (including examples) is still lacking.
When you want to do something advanced for the first time be prepared to
take some additional time to figure out how to make it work. 

Bottom line:
We are using Struts to build trading systems for a company that has
multi-billion (280+)dollars under management. We have been able to deliver
on time and on budget while satisfying our users (sounds too good to be true
:-) ). 

Struts works.

I hope this helps.

Glenn

-----Original Message-----
From: McRobb, John [mailto:John.McRobb@tescopf.com]
Sent: Wednesday, July 16, 2003 8:40 AM
To: 'struts-user@jakarta.apache.org'
Subject: struts layout what do people think


I am looking for positive/negative feedback on this as we are considering
using it.

Thanks in advance

John


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