The Java web framework landscape has become quite fragmented; the purpose of this group is to explore synergies among the existing frameworks that will make life easier for companies, organizations, and developers working using Java to build web applications.

A reaction to Rails?

As I suggested in The Value of MVC, the science of writing web applications is maturing and we are entering the age of frameworks.

Will there be a similar consolidation of PHP Frameworks? Or will Zend PHP Framework rule them all? eZ systems for one isn’t conceding just yet and continues with their eZ publish Enterprise Components. I expect other to do the same. We shall see.

Every once and a while I get an odd email from someone I have never heard of suggesting that WACT should merge with project X. The messages are usually poorly thought out and slightly insulting and never from anyone actually involved with either project X or WACT, but I certainly wouldn’t oppose such a thing if it made sense and there was some interest and synergy from the other party. Unfortunately, the fact that WACT 1.0 will support currently installed versions of PHP (meaning 4.x) is probably a deal breaker for the kinds of people who are interested in writing frameworks. After WACT 1.0 is out (Q1 2006) I would like to skip PHP 5 and target PHP 6 for WACT 2.0. (Other WACT stakeholders may have different ideas.) The framework landscape will probably be different then. And there is one other framework I’ve been keeping an eye on ….

“PHP as a language isn’t isolated and people are going to be building SOA types of applications using XML and SOAP,” said Rod Smith, vice president of emerging technology at IBM.

“So the idea is to have an Eclipse plug-in here to leverage content [and] leverage the assets that have a Web services interface on it” and link to Java back-end systems, Smith said.

Both the Eclipse plug-in and development framework will be offered free.

ZDNet adds:

In addition, Zend will publish a PHP “framework,” or set of reusable PHP codes, also under an open-source license. The framework will allow third-party software companies to create add-ins that work in conjunction with Zend’s flagship product, Zend Studio.

Is Zend PHP Framework an add-in API for Zend Studio? You too can make a “Refactor single quotes to double quotes” plugin.

Perhaps some esoteric Java integration capability? Good News Everyone! Now your sloppy php web front end can grovel even lower before our mighty and wise java back end. I, for one, welcome our new Java overlords. I’d like to remind them that as guy with a blog I could be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground SOAP caves. **

Don’t flush yet, Davey.

Why build when you can acquire? Maybe ZPF is PRADO with IDE support? Prado 3 is due “later this year.” But then, so is eZ publish Enterprise Components.

A Struts clone? Thats so 2004.

A Rails clone? It would be pretty obvious who the competition is then.

Is Zend PHP Framework a component model? The best thing that could happen to PHP would be a standard component model. I’m just not sure that PHP 5.1 has all the language pieces in place for that yet. Unless they go with the java style accessor methods – ok if you are the vendor of a tool that auto-generates accessor method code, big suck if you have even a small awareness of Ruby.

I know nothing, but this speculation is almost as much fun as Crazy Apple Rumors.

Ruby on Rails today looks poised to eat Java’s mindshare on the web tier. If not Rails, then something else.

It does seem like Java’s mindshare is on the decline, along with sun’s fortunes. There is some evidence that rails is drawing mindshare from PHP as well. (Mind share is the grown-up way of saying “what the cool kids are doing.”)

So why isn’t PHP that something else?

i think its the unit testing, “You aren’t gonna need it,” “Do the simplest thing that could possibly work” folk that are dismantling Java’s mindshare. As they gain it, Java loses it. Some of that is showing up in the java community itself in concepts like POJOs and dependency injection. Some of it shows up in an exodus from Java to dynamic languages.

So why are the agile leaders like Martin Fowler and Dave Thomas working with Ruby instead of PHP? David Heinemeier Hansson directly credits these guys with influencing his decision to stop programming rails in PHP and move to ruby. I suspect that its the dynamic, smalltalk, like features of Ruby that appeal the the agile methods leaders.

Rails could have been a PHP framework, but wasn’t. Although, I’m not sure that it would get the attention it is if it were a PHP framework. The rails, ruby combination may be greater than the sum of the parts.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I have some ideas about why PHP might not appeal to the agile method and java is too complicated folk:

• Too many globals – globals make unit testing more difficult and prevent integrating work from different developers, let alone different organizations.
• No culture of objects – PHP has made great strides in this area, but I don’t get the impression that many of the folk that work on and with PHP really buy into object oriented programming the way that the agile methods folk do.
• Crowded namespaces – How many functions is PHP up to? Constants?
• incomplete component model – This is another integration thing. PHP has too many islands and not enough continents. (I’m talking beans here, but definitely not EJB.)
• No mature frameworks – Ruby has been around a long time, but didn’t really start gulping mindshare until Rails came along. See The Value of MVC.
• No closures – Its a dynamic thing.
• Expert level gotchas – hopping on the learning curve is easy. Reaching the top, not so much.

I’ll elaborate on each of these points in a series of upcoming posts.

I’ll close by saying that life is not a zero sum game. The success of Ruby and Rails does not diminish the success of PHP. The cool kids were doing Java and now some of them are doing Ruby. Oh, well. Its disappointing that more of them aren’t doing PHP, but PHP has many things going for it. That, however, is a different series of posts.