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I'm planning to develop a web based ERP, which should be full-ajax and with desktop-like UI. It will be a data-entry & data-report application. For developing it I'm considering all technologies.

GWT: I saw that with GWT Designer you could create cool UIs, but databinding seems to be too complex

JSF: Netbeans no longer supports the visual web editor

ZK: supports databinding in a relatively easy way, and has got an Eclipse-based visual editor

Some people talk about REST + javascript as a winning choice

I'd like to have your opinion about what could be the right choice.

Thank you very much in advance!

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2 Answers

up vote 4 down vote

You are comparing a language (js), with a language framework(zk), with an architectural design style (rest), with a development toolkit (gwt).

Have you experience with any of them ? I'd start with the core basics.

I've been building websites and enterprise scale systems for ten years and have never used a visual designer, and neither has anyone I worked with, so I wouldn't worry about that too much.

Related: GWT or Vaadin

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Thank you very much for your answer NimChimpsky. As I said, I'm considering all "technologies", therefore frameworks, languages, IDEs, and so on... Regarding web development I've got experience with JSP+Servlet, but for this new project I'd like to learn new technologies for having a faster development and a full-ajax desktop-like user interface. Have you got any suggestions? Thank you again for your help – csaffi Nov 22 '10 at 17:13
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"learning new technologies" and "faster development" do not usually go hand in hand. – Carson63000 Nov 23 '10 at 5:31
What do you suggest then? – csaffi Nov 23 '10 at 8:58
Stick with jsp/servlets. Include the javascript library jQuery, it has support for ajax and I think its great. – NimChimpsky Nov 23 '10 at 9:06
So NimChimpsky do you suggest to continue using JSP/Servlets adding JQuery? What do you think about GWT? – csaffi Nov 23 '10 at 10:08
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I am using ZK for years. It is a great framework if not the best. IMO, it is easy to learn, very productive, and, most important, has a best architecture - it puts MVC, databinding, server+client and server-push together elegantly.

On the other hand, GWT, though pure Java, actually runs at the client. GWT aims for developers that want to have 100% control of the client while don't want to learn JavaScript. Personally I don't like the idea. If I would like to have 100% control, I'll use jQuery.

Forget about JSF, unless your boss forced you. It is over-designed and last generation product.

However, it is worth to consider jQuery and other lightweight JS solution, if your project is migrated from a Website (rather than an enterprise application). If designed well, they allow you to add Ajax features to a Website less painful.

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I had a quick look at zk; have they actually separated model,view and controller ? To clarify I looked at their samples and they hadn't. Server-push is something I'd stay away from. – NimChimpsky Nov 23 '10 at 9:55
Thank you very much for your answer Bill. Therefore do you suggest ZK instead of GWT? Some people told me that ZK could have problems with many concurrent users because it's only server-side. – csaffi Nov 23 '10 at 11:51
corporate shill? in fact, OP might be too – Alison Dec 17 '10 at 13:14

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