Barton's Blog » gwt

Who’s Using GWT? Red Hat Joins the Fray

Barton George — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 22:45:03 +0000

This morning on Twitter, Rich Sharples, Director of Product Management for the JBoss EAP (Enterprise Application Platform) and former Sun compadre, sent out the news that JBoss was adopting the Google Web Toolkit.

Here is what Rich had to say in his blog a few hours later:

Today Red Hat announced a couple of things :

1. that we’ve signed Google’s corporate contributor agreement

2. that we’re adopting GWT (Google Web Toolkit) as a core part of JBoss Middleware

The world doesn’t need another Java framework for developing rich AJAX apps. so we’ve decided to go with what we think is a real leader – Google Web Toolkit. (Read more)

(I hope this doesn’t mean that JBoss will be replacing us as the self-proclaimed GWT poster child )

GWT draws inspiration from the Brady Bunch (does that make Alex, Cindy?)

And in other News

In other GWT related news today, Google posted a timeframe and details for their next release, 1.6. And as if that wasn’t enough, Google also posted four sets of developer videos where each of the four gentlemen (including Lombardi Blueprint‘s very own Alex Moffat) discuss how GWT has helped them and why they chose it as their weapon of choice.

Update: This just in… (non-geeks need not read on)

A few hours after I originally posted this entry, the Register posted their summary of today’s events and quoted our Mr. Moffat

Alex Moffat, chief engineer at the business process management firm – and GWT user – Lombardi Software told El Reg he’s mostly interested in GWT 1.6′s string performance and compiler improvements.

However, Moffat said he’s disappointed to see GWT’s in-browser hosted mode has been moved to a “post 1.6″ feature on Google’s roadmap. The feature, which lets developers debug their apps within a web browser rather than GWT, was originally slated for version 1.5 and then 1.6 until Google’s latest development update.

Pau for now…

A Quick Peak at Blueprint thanks to Google

Barton George — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 15:26:02 +0000

A couple of weeks ago Alex Moffat, chief engineer for Lombardi Blueprint, jetted out to Mountain View to record a video at Google headquarters.

The video, which is in YouTube’s new 16:9 aspect ratio (the only way you want to watch Lawrence of Arabia or Blueprint demos), is part of a series of developer videos Google is doing to show the cool things that can be built using Google Web Toolkit (GWT).

What you’ll see (and what you’ll get)

In the video, which is only a minute and 16 seconds, Alex shows how business users can enter info in outline form which then generates corresponding boxes in an adjacent map view. These boxes can be easily moved around via drag-and-drop. Additionally, at the push of a button this high-level view is auto-magically converted into a process flow diagram. As Alex points out, thanks to GWT, all of this happens completely within any browser without the user having to download any plug-ins like Flash etc.

Extra-Credit Reading

Blueprint: Built of Java thanks to Google Web Toolkit
How GWT is enabling Blueprint’s agility
Blueprint and the Performance of the GWT 1.5 Hash Map
Using GWT to Build a High Performance Collaborative Diagramming Tool (video from the presentation give at Google I/O)

Pau for now…

Blueprint: Built of Java thanks to Google Web Toolkit

Barton George — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 13:10:28 +0000

The great thing about cloud-based applications is that it doesn’t matter what they’re written in or how they’re constructed, all that matters is that they do what you need them to. What’s the back-end of your phone system written in? Odds are you don’t know and don’t care.

That being said, there are group of folks, lets call them “developers” who are interested in what goes on behind the curtain. For that group of people and others who find this kind of thing interesting and informative, read on.

What to build Blueprint out of?

When the team first started developing Lombardi Blueprint, they began with Java on the back-end and a combination of HTML and Flash on the front end. When, due to plug-in issues, this didn’t work they moved to pure HTML and JavaScript using Dojo. This too had its issues, namely performance and a lack of visibility.

Around this time Google Web Toolkit (GWT) 1.3 was released and the team decided to give it go. This turned out to be the right choice. GWT, which compiles Java code into JavaScript as you go, enabled the team to write both the back and front ends in 100% Java.

GWT, which was originally released in May of ’06, is 100% open source licensed under the Apache License 2.0.

Here’s a good entry posted by Olivier Modica, the Blueprint engineering manager that simply lays out the advantages that GWT provides the Blueprint team: How GWT is enabling Blueprint’s agility.

Gory Detail and Extra-credit reading

If you really want to dive into what the team did with GWT and Blueprint, check out the video of the talk Alex Moffat, lead architect on Blueprint, and Damon Lundin gave at Google I/O back in May.

Also if you want to learn more about the performance of the recently released GWT 1.5, check this out: Blueprint and the Performance of the GWT 1.5 Hash Map

Pau for now…