Need recommendations on technology/architecture

[Droolboy]

Hi,

I'm about to start building a simple invoicing system for internal
use, and am leaning towards using Java in some form. Thing is, there
are so many ways it could be done, I'm having a hard time deciding.

Should I make a thick Swing-based application talking directly to the
db? A server-based app with a thinner Swing gui? Use
JSP/Servlets/Struts/Tapestry? Will Java Server Faces do me any good?
JSF + NetBeans = RAD GUI-developement for the web?

I'm not familiar with JSF, nor any web frameworks (do have decent
knowledge on JSP/Servlets, though), but recon this is as good a time
as any for learning.

EJBs, Web Services, XML/XSLT/whatever are completely uncharted
territory to me, and probably way overkill..?
I know there are already dozens of solutions for invoicing, but
purpose of this project is mostly about learning something and making
my cv look better ;)

Also, would anyone care to make some estimates on how long this should
take? Figure I'll need a basic customer database, a list of the stuff
we charge for, forms for creating and following up on invoices, as
well as a few reports for accounting purposes.

Any feedback appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Espen

[Michael]

My customer recently converted several stand alone applications to web
based using JSPs, Java Servlets, XML, XSLT and regular Java classes to
perform business logic such as database access and calculations.

We used the following open source software packages

Tomcat
MySQL
ANT
JFreeChart for graphics

With this approach you need to like JavaScript and HTML. XML is no
big deal because you define the tags.

We used JSPs to create XML which is then processed by the XSL to
render the GUI. JavaScript wa sused to provide user interaction with
the GUI. Servlets were used to render various graphs.

There is one advantage to this approach from a usability standpoint.
The application could be accessed using a browser so several people
could access the same application without having to install a SWING
based client on everyone's system.

I have also done Swing based applications that use a database and as a
software engineer I prefer developing a GUI in Swing rather than
HTML. In my opinion SWING based GUIs are easier to lay out and it is
easier to provide user interactivity.

I suggest that you spend time developing the database access and
report genarating classes first. If they are designed as a seperate
package then it should not matter which GUI approach you decide to
use. Our business classes were originally developed for Swing based
application, we easily used them for the web based application.
The following link is a good source for information on HTML,
JavaScript, XML and XSL.

http://www.w3schools.com/

te*******@hotmail.com (Droolboy) wrote in message news:<36**************************@posting.google. com>...

Hi,

I'm about to start building a simple invoicing system for internal
use, and am leaning towards using Java in some form. Thing is, there
are so many ways it could be done, I'm having a hard time deciding.

Should I make a thick Swing-based application talking directly to the
db? A server-based app with a thinner Swing gui? Use
JSP/Servlets/Struts/Tapestry? Will Java Server Faces do me any good?
JSF + NetBeans = RAD GUI-developement for the web?

I'm not familiar with JSF, nor any web frameworks (do have decent
knowledge on JSP/Servlets, though), but recon this is as good a time
as any for learning.

EJBs, Web Services, XML/XSLT/whatever are completely uncharted
territory to me, and probably way overkill..?
I know there are already dozens of solutions for invoicing, but
purpose of this project is mostly about learning something and making
my cv look better ;)

Also, would anyone care to make some estimates on how long this should
take? Figure I'll need a basic customer database, a list of the stuff
we charge for, forms for creating and following up on invoices, as
well as a few reports for accounting purposes.

Any feedback appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
Espen