Comparison RAP vs GWT-EXT [message #85674] |
Wed, 30 April 2008 15:26 |
Arpit Desai Messages: 25 Registered: July 2009 |
Junior Member |
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Hey folks,
I am just throwing out this discussion to see the views of people
working with RAP, understand better the positives of RAP / Eclipse
development from people who have already encountered challenges.
The point of discussion is RAP vs GWT-EXT (for those who do not know
this please visit http://gwt-ext.com/ for more info). Let's start with
some positives of gwt-ext libraries:
1) excellent looking and behaving widgets on user's browser. this is
because of the matured extjs libraries that it uses to render the UI
2) quick response times, since JS is running on client side (event
processing is done of client side)
3) Clean APIs to work with chucked Data loading, auto-completion of
text, drag-drop, etc. This is thanks to GWT mainly who have written the
APIs specific to web2.0 use cases. People on the new websites expect
unusual things like dynamic help, intuitive text suggestion, etc. The
GWT libraries do a great job at understanding these use case and
providing right UI components with right APIs to provide your
implementation.
And many more, please feel free to Add. Now let's talk about RAP. One of
the main questions I have is
1) Why does RAP do the event-processing on Server-side ? Is it because
RAP is tightly coupled with Eclipse framework and making remote calls to
eclipse bundles/runtimes was not intended?
2) Why does RAP tie-up with qx on the front-end library? Honestly, no
matter how smart/cool the technology is, if it does not present well to
the end-user, the whole purpose gets defeated. Qx may do the job as a
proof of concept but RAP should have been designed in a way to make it
easy to choose own client side JS libraries. As a simple business-case
you would win a lot more users. Any one agrees with me ? Differs, please
explain?
3) RAP allows single sourcing with RCP. Excellent job and thats its edge
among its competitors. However, if we are to take RAP to the next
level, as in an industry leader than it needs to compete well with the
other Ajax (purely Web domain) technologies. So, let's say for a small
business owner if the primary UI is web and he/she wants to upgrade it
to web 2.0 for the customers/partners and wants to use RAP. He should be
able to do this and come up with UI which blows the customer away. The
reason to pick RAP here would be to have the flexibility to use the same
UI code and prepare an RCP for other set of users. Something which GWT
or others do not offer.
Please throw in your comments and suggestions. Also, bear in mind I am
still very much in awe with RAP :)
Thanks,
Arpit
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