comparing jvm web frameworks - jfokus 2012

Photos by Trish McGinity - http://mcginityphoto.com Photos by Trish - http://mcginityphoto.com

COMPARING JVM WEB FRAMEWORKS

Matt Raiblehttp://raibledesigns.com

© 2012 Raible Designs

Introductions‣ Your experience with

web development?‣ Your experience with

Java EE development?‣ What do you want to get

from this session?‣ Experience with Grails,

GWT, Rails, Spring MVC, Wicket, Tapestry or Play?

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Blogger on raibledesigns.com

Founder of AppFuse

Father, Skier, Cyclist

Web Framework Connoisseur

Who is Matt Raible?

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‣ The Problem with Web Frameworks‣ The Candidates‣ Comparison Points‣ The Matrix‣ Conclusion‣ Q and A

Session Agenda

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The Problem

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The Real Problem

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The Real Problem

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The Real Problem

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How do you choose?

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Eliminate, Don’t Include10

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... while I'd *love* to see life made simpler for Java web developers, and a lot of the things happening in Struts2 are going that way -- it won't be me doing it.

I've gone over to the dark side :-) and much prefer to develop in Rails -- for the conciseness mentioned above, but also because I don't ever have to do a "build" or "deploy" step during my development cycle any more. But you guys and gals need to be reminded that *this* is the kind of thing you are competing against if you expect to attract Rails developers ... or to avoid even more "previously Java web developer" defectors like me :-).

-- Craig McClanahan, 10/23/2007http://markmail.org/thread/qfb5sekad33eobh2

Craig McClanahan on Rails

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James Gosling on JSF

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ei-rbULWoA#t=47m

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‣ Developer Productivity‣ Developer Perception‣ Learning Curve‣ Project Health‣ Developer Availability‣ Job Trends

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2010: Comparison Points

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2010: Comparison Points

‣ Templating‣ Components‣ Ajax‣ Plugins or Add-Ons‣ Scalability‣ Testing Support

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‣ i18n and l10n‣ Validation‣ Multi-language Support (Groovy / Scala)‣ Quality of Documentation/Tutorials‣ Books Published‣ REST Support (client and server)

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2010: Comparison Points

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‣ Mobile / iPhone Support‣ Degree of Risk

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2010: Comparison Points

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Comparison Matrix

http://bit.ly/jvm-frameworks-matrix

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Matrix Results

0

4.5

9

13.5

18Gr

ails

Sprin

gRa

ilsGW

TVa

adin

Wick

etTa

pestr

ySt

ruts

2St

ripes Play

Flex

JSF Lift

11.513.513.5141414.5151515.5

17171717.5

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Matrix Results

‣ Grails (17.5)‣ GWT (17)‣ Ruby on Rails (17)‣ Spring MVC (17)‣ Vaadin (15.5)‣ Tapestry and Wicket (15)

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Weighted Matrix

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Weighted Results

‣ Grails (90)‣ Spring MVC (85)‣ Ruby on Rails (82.5)‣ Vaadin (82.5)‣ Play (82.5)‣ GWT (80)

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Fighting for 5th

‣ Top at Devoxx 2010- GWT

- Rails

- Spring MVC

- Grails

- Wicket / Struts 2

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Fighting for 5th

‣ Top at Rich Web Experience 2010- Grails

- GWT

- Rails

- Spring MVC

- Tapestry / Vaadin

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Fighting for 5th

‣ Top at TheServerSide Java Symposium 2010- Grails

- GWT

- Rails

- Spring MVC

- Vaadin

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Ratings Logic

‣ Developer Productivity‣ Developer Perception‣ Learning Curve‣ Project Health‣ Developer Availability‣ Job Trends

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Ratings Logic

‣ Templating‣ Components‣ Ajax‣ Plugins or Add-Ons‣ Scalability‣ Testing Support

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‣ i18n and l10n‣ Validation‣ Multi-language Support (Groovy / Scala)‣ Quality of Documentation/Tutorials‣ Books Published‣ REST Support (client and server)

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Ratings Logic

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‣ Mobile / iPhone Support‣ Degree of Risk

http://raibledesigns.com/rd/entry/how_i_calculated_ratings_for

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Ratings Logic

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‣ Developer Productivity: Lift gets a 11, Rails gets a 5, most Java-based frameworks get a 1 or less.

‣ Developer Perception: Every web framework gets a 1. 

‣ Learning Curve: Lift gets a 2.‣ Job Trends, yep, it's zero.

http://lift.la/my-take-on-matt-raibles-spreadsheet

* Matt's scale is 0-1 and my ratings are on Matt's scale, except mine goes to 11.

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David Pollack’s Lift Ratings

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Peter Thomas’s Perfbench

‣ Seam / JSF vs. Wicket Performance Comparison- January 2009: Seam 2.1.1 and Wicket 1.3.5

- Average page response time in milliseconds

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Peter Thomas’s Perfbench

‣ On the Seam / JSF side, the 20 sessions each take up about 800 KB adding up to around 16 MB total. On the Wicket side the 20 sessions add up to around 1.5 MB.

‣ + Lots of banter between Peter and Seam developers @ http://bit.ly/3X50Gc

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Peter Thomas’s Perfbench

‣ Peter’s Observations:- Grails was far more productive than Tapestry 5.

- Grails still has some ways to go in terms of performance.

- Overall, Wicket is fastest, with Tapestry coming a close second.

- Wicket takes up the least amount of heap.

- Session usage of the Seam + JSF combination is significantly higher compared to the rest.

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World Wide Wait - Devoxx

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http://www.parleys.com/d/2942

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World Wide Wait - Devoxx

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World Wide Wait - Devoxx

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World Wide Wait - Devoxx

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World Wide Wait - Devoxx

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World Wide Wait - Devoxx

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HybridJava beats JSF, Wicket and Spring MVC by perfomance.

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HybridJava - Really?

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Pros and Cons

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Grails

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‣ Pros- Easy dynamic language transition for Java Developers

- Groovy

- Plugins for all types of applications

‣ Cons- Groovy learning targets Java Developers

- Stack traces are horrendous

- Knowledge of underlying frameworks not required, but helpful

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GWT

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‣ Pros- Write Java => Produces Optimized JavaScript

- Easy to learn and develop with standard Java Tools

- Vibrant Community

‣ Cons- You have to know Java

- Slow to compile, difficult to test

- More like a JSP Tag Library than a web framework

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‣ Pros- Easy to learn and understand for Web Developers

- Lots and lots of documentation

- Passionate Community

‣ Cons- Slightly less performant by default

- Dynamic language means more tests

- Development Tools and Debugging

Ruby on Rails

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‣ Pros- Easy Configuration with Annotations and Conventions

- Integrates with many view options seamlessly: JSP/JSTL, Tiles, FreeMarker, Excel, PDF, JSON

- Excellent REST Support

‣ Cons- Instant reload not built-in, need JRebel or Spring Roo

- No open development process, need to be SpringSource

- Ajax requires 3rd-party library (can be a good thing!)

Spring MVC

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‣ Pros- Uses GWT API for developing view

- Vibrant Community and company backing

- Excellent Themes and Layouts support

‣ Cons- Large memory footprint, state stored in session

- Sketchy (?) because backed by a commercial organization

- Joonas keeps telling me my cons are wrong

Vaadin

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Wicket

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‣ Pros- Great for Java Developers

- Tight binding between pages and views

- Active community - support from creators

‣ Cons- No Jobs or Developers

- Stateful by default

- HTML Templates live next to Java code by default

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Tapestry

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‣ Pros- Live Class Reloading

- Development emphasis on performance and scalability

- Excellent Exception Reporting

‣ Cons- No Jobs

- Prototype baked in for JS Library

- Annotations vs. Conventions

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Pretty Graphs

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LOC in AppFuse Light

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0

1250

2500

3750

5000

JavaScript XML CSS Java

JSF Spring Stripes Struts 2 Tapestry 5 Wicket

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Jobs on Dice (World)

0

175

350

525

700

Sprin

gRa

ilsGWTGrai

lsW

icket

Tape

stry

Vaad

inJS

F52

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LinkedIn Skills (World)

0

10,000

20,000

30,000

40,000

Rails

Sprin

gGW

TGr

ails

Tape

stry

Wick

etVa

adin

JSF

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Pretty Graphs

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Pretty Graphs

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Pretty Graphs

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Pretty Graphs

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Pretty Graphs

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Pretty Graphs

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Pretty Graphs

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Pretty Graphs

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Pretty Graphs

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Mailing List Traffic

Wicket

GWT

Grails

Rails

Tapestry

Play

0 475 950 1425 1900

1451

1538

1604

1635

1753

1841

* Spring MVC and Vaadin use Forums, which don’t provide this data.63

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Books on Amazon

Rails

Spring MVC

GWT

Grails

Wicket

Tapestry 5

Vaadin

0 75 150 225 300

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2011 Releases

0 4 8 12 16Grails

GWT

Rails

Spring MVCVaadin

TapestryWicket

As of August 24, 2011

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StackOverflow

0

12,500

25,000

37,500

50,000

GrailsRails

Vaadin

Tagged Questions (August 24, 2011)

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StackOverflow

0

2,500

5,000

7,500

10,000

Spring JSFGWT

GrailsWicket

Tagged Questions (August 24, 2011)

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StackOverflow

0

50000

100000

150000

200000

Java ScalaGroovy

ClojureJRuby

Tagged Questions (August 24, 2011)

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StackOverflow

0

1500

3000

4500

6000

ScalaGroovy

ClojureJRuby

Tagged Questions (August 24, 2011)

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Source: ZeroTurnaround's Java EE Productivity Report 2010

Framework Popularity

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What we need is...

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Innovators

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Modern Principles

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Web Developers

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Java Developers

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“Java remains – in spite of the fragmented programming language landscape – a viable, growing language.”

http://redmonk.com/sogrady/2012/02/08/language-rankings-2-2012/

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The Modern Web Developer

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‣ ... embraces JavaScript‣ ... is learning mobile frameworks

- jQuery Mobile, Sencha Touch, PhoneGap or Native

‣ ... is using HTML5 and CSS3‣ ... is developing REST APIs with the stateless

framework that best supports their language‣ IE6 is dead, IE7 isn’t far behind...

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You have to decide...

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Are you a web developer?

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You have to decide...

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Or are you a services developer?

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Client-Side MVC

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Developer Productivity

80

http://zeroturnaround.com/blog/developer-productivity-report-part-1-developer-timesheet/

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Developer Productivity

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http://zeroturnaround.com/blog/developer-productivity-report-part-3-developer-efficiency/

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There is no “best” framework

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Just lots of awesome choices...

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Don’t listen to me!

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Choose your own!

‣ Prioritize a list of features that are important to your application.

‣ Pick 3-4 frameworks and do a 1-week spike with each, developing the same application.

‣ Document and rank each framework against your list of features.

‣ Calculate and choose!‣ ... Or just pick one and get to work...

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But don’t forget...

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Questions?

‣ Contact- http://raibledesigns.com

- @mraible

‣ Download- http://slideshare.net/mraible

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