Comments on: Google Web Toolkit for Rich Internet Applications –A Java Programmer’s Experience

By: Tiekmedodiste

Tiekmedodiste — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 02:57:58 +0000

unemotional notify

By: Tan

Tan — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 19:25:10 +0000

Hi, we’re evaluating GWT and JSF to see which one is best suited to rewrite our “fat” desktop application to a web-based one. Your article is very helpful.

You know GWT 2.0 is out now, does it solve some of your problems now?

Regarding your statement “So I think GWT may be a misfit for large enterprise applications.” due to lack of dynamic loading. Is there way to workaround this problem?

Finally, is Ext-gwt 2.1 a JS wrapper?

I appreciate your answers.

By: Nitin Sood

Nitin Sood — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 09:12:50 +0000

Thanks for your comments Rob.

I agree using a javascript library wrapper like gwt-ext can become a pain beause of licensing changes / lack of support. We faced similar problem while using “Livegrid” control. This control had a bug in the version of GWT-Ext we were using which was fixed in ExtJS and unfortunately GWT-ext was not supported anymore. We had to analyze the fix and apply similar one in the version of code we were using. If you can get all the required widges in pure GWT widgets then that sure is preferred way. We used gwt-ext because we required very rich widget library that was not available in GWT.

By: Nitin Sood

Nitin Sood — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 08:57:07 +0000

Thanks Mohit for reading the blog and posting this query.

We are not using “Comet” in our application. A quick search suggests there already are solutions available to implement Comet solution using GWT. Based on your requirements, you can decide to implement your own solution or check an existing one like rocket-gwt (http://code.google.com/p/rocket-gwt/wiki/Comet).

You can also check blog by Jean where he talks about implementing GWT Comet based web app using Grizzly Comet (http://weblogs.java.net/blog/jfarcand/archive/2008/05/building_gwt_co.html)

By: Nitin Sood

Nitin Sood — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 08:49:06 +0000

Thanks for the compliments Sekhar.

I cannot post the URL since the app is not public.

By: Sekhar Ravinutala

Sekhar Ravinutala — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 15:45:48 +0000

Thanks Nitin for the nice, objective summary. If this app is public, could you post the URL?

By: Rob Stone

Rob Stone — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 10:44:26 +0000

I have followed a similar path, creating a new configuration interface for our product using GWT and gwt-ext. The one piece of advice I would give would be to avoid using a javascript library wrapper (eg. gwt-ext, smartgwt) if you possibly can and stick with pure GWT as when you encounter problems with the library tracking them down and fixing them can be time consuming.
When I first started my app there were very few pure GWT widgets available beyond the standard set, so to get the extra functionality required I had to rely on gwt-ext. The picture has changed significantly since then with projects such as gwt-incubator. Another problem with gwt-ext was that it is no longer supported, I plan to replace it with pure GWT widgets as soon as possible.

By: Mohit

Mohit — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 02:50:16 +0000

Nitin: Thanks for sharing your experience.

I was preparing the case to use one of the Ajax frameworks in our application and would like to know the following:

Did you guys use “Comet” or “Reverse Ajax” technology in the application? It would be interesting to know if GWT supports Comet or how easy it is to integrate Comet with GWT.

Also, I feel the Ext JS framework needs a mention here for the developers evaluating frameworks for RIA: http://extjs.com/