[webbeans-dev] Re: XML configuration format

[Gavin King]

On Thu, Jan 8, 2009 at 10:44 AM, Jim Knutson <knutson at us.ibm.com> wrote:
> gavin.king at gmail.com wrote on 12/24/2008 07:18:25 PM:
>> (3) web beans competes with proprietary solutions such as Spring and
>> Seam, and must offer competitive functionality
>
> I need more background here because this sounds like this spec. is
> attempting to compete with Spring on its own and as such would need
> to independently offer a component model, injection model, context
> management, and a host of other things that Spring provides, but
> may already be part of the EE platform.

What I mean is that EE as a whole competes with Spring, and that Web
Beans competes with Spring dependency injection in particular, and
therefore needs to offer competitive functionality in this area.


> If there are requirements needed from other specs., then let's
> drive those other specs. to meet those requirements.
>
>> Beginning from these assumptions I find it difficult to avoid the
>> conclusion that we should be offering the schema-driven, IDE-friendly
>> style of XML configuration that Spring and Seam offer.
>
> I suggest then, that we surface a requirement for new platform DD
> schemas across the board within the EE EG.

I don't think this is necessary or achievable.

Certainly *some* other EE DDs could benefit from the namespaced-based approach:

* ejb-jar.xml, certainly
* perhaps some of the WS DDs, but I've never used this stuff so I'm not sure

but most of the other DDs are just fine as they are:

* application.xml
* web.xml
* jsf-config.xml
* taglib.tld

None of these would really benefit much from the new-style XML,
because they aren't being used to configure third-party components (at
least, not any more in EE 6!)

Finally, the following two "DD"s, which *are* used to configure
third-party components *already* use the "new" style:

* JSP pages
* JSF pages

I think it's perfectly reasonable to wait til the next rev of EJB to
tackle a rework of ejb-jar.xml (which is a big job and overdue).

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