Ruby
Rails

Frameworks
Beyond Java

Application Development Frameworks

By Ken North

Through several generations of software development, application development frameworks have been a preferred solution for simplifying the development process. The adoption curve for Windows and Java were elevated by the availability of the integrated developer environment (IDE) and object-oriented frameworks. Web development has moved in the direction of using frameworks to complement scripting solutions.

Model-view-controller (MVC) is an event-driven software architecture that's a popular solution for object-oriented programming (OOP). The original implementation of MVC was for Smalltalk-80, but since then it's appeared in a variety of platforms and application developer frameworks. The list includes Apache Cocoon, Apache Tapestry, Cocoa, Jakarta Struts, JavaServer Faces, Java Swing, Microsoft Foundation Classes (MFC), NeXTstep, OpenStep, Ruby on Rails, Taligent CommonPoint and WebObjects.

Object-oriented frameworks typically become more popular as the underlying APIs become more complex. We've seen Java development become more complex, for example, with new enterprise Java APIs and a cornucopia of XML and web services technologies. That complexity has caused frameworks such as Spring and Ruby on Rails to gain traction.
 

Spring

The Spring framework simplifies J2EE development. Spring provides MVC capabilities, sometimes in combination with Struts. Spring can provide business objects and a persistence layer that operates with a Struts web user interface. Spring works with Enterprise Java Beans (EJBs) and Plain Ole Java Objects (POJOs). Spring JMS provides simplifies two implementations of JmsTemplate to support applications that requires messaging and message queues. Spring provides a consistent programming model for working with other Java APIs, such as JDBC™ and JNDI. Spring framework users have worked with Apache Tomcat, Apache Geronimo, BEA WebLogic, IBM WebSphere, JBoss, Jetty, Resin, and other application servers.

Ruby on Rails

Ruby on Rails is an open source frameworks that's suitable for developing database-enabled web applications. The primary appeal of Ruby on Rails is that its a simple, lightweight solution to building database-powered web applications. In a Rails application, the tables of an SQL database map to Active Record objects of the Model class. Views are handled by HTML fragments. Rails is also a viable solution for developing Asynchronous Java and XML (AJAX) applications. Developers can use Rails with three HTTP servers: Apache, lighttpd and WEBrick.