[webbeans-dev] Re: XML configuration format

[Gavin King]

On Thu, Dec 25, 2008 at 12:01 PM, Gavin King <gavin at hibernate.org> wrote:
> On Wed, Dec 24, 2008 at 12:23 PM, Michael Keith
> <MICHAEL.KEITH at oracle.com> wrote:

>> I would say that writing web beans XML, which is more
>> like code, requires a rather different mindset than what is applied when
>> writing traditional Java EE descriptors.
>
> Again, I disagree. For a developer configuring a pre-packaged library,
> the "traditional" XML style requires a lot more knowledge of the code
> (Java class, method names, etc) than the "web beans" style does. With
> the web beans style, the configuration author doesn't see anything
> about Java - everything they need to know is completely encapsulated
> in the schema for the library.

I want to reiterate this, because it's an important point:

   <web-bean>
      <class>org.jboss.jbpm.Jbpm</class>
      <field>
         <name>datasource</name>
         <value>java:comp/env/datasource</value>
      </field>
   </web-bean>

is a *much* more Java-code-centric approach, and requires much more
knowledge of the underlying Java classes, than:

   <jbpm:Jbpm>
      <jbpm:datasource>java:comp/env/datasource</jbpm:datasource>
   </jbpm:Jbpm>

I really don't agree that the second example is "more like code", in
fact I think it's less like code.

-- 
Gavin King
gavin.king at gmail.com
http://in.relation.to/Bloggers/Gavin
http://hibernate.org
http://seamframework.org