I've been tasked to develop a small web application for my company, and my initial plan was to use the Zend framework with Doctrine as this allowed for all the necessary features I needed. However, recently I came across a Joomla application builder called Fabrik which seems to have a lot of potential. My question is if anyone here has used it and if so, what your experiences were? Is it a stable, secure platform? Is it easy to use and does it allow for simple to more complex applications? And finally, how does it compare to one of the more established frameworks such as Zend or Cake etc. Any info regarding to your experiences would be appreciated.
I have not gone beyond a proof-of-concept using Fabrik, so I'm far from being an expert. What I've found so far is that Fabrik installs and configures easily in the Joomla environment and it's easy to get up and running. It's quite easy to get tables of output from the database and it's possible to do JOINs to combine data from multiple tables. The output format can be customized using CSS but I haven't been able to really customize the structure and I'm not sure it's possible to combine multiple tables into one report for example.
It's very easy to create a form that is an exact match of a table, so for data entry, it's very easy to set up a form to edit table data.
I haven't found it to be very flexible for creating a custom search form or a form that takes input from two drop-down list boxes and does a query based on the selected items in both lists.
The advanced search function that is provided is fairly powerful, but doesn't fit seamlessly into the Joomla environment so I think this feature needs to work to be something I would roll out to users.
Bottom line: Fabrik has been really well architected and will eventually be the most powerful and useful data management tool for Joomla, I just don't think it's quite there yet for providing a wide variety of forms and reports for end-users. It is still a very handy tool for more basic reports and for more tech savvy users to maintain data in a database.
Seen this question a bit too late, hope you have managed to solve your issues, but however, my several years experience with Fabrik and a few attempts on PHP frameworks such as Zend, Codeignitor etc, I can tell you Fabrik is the best RAD tool around. Especially now that version 3.x.x which works with latest Joomla 2.5.X is out. Offers so much power that you can have a very powerful system done within one night.
Related
OK, so for a couple of weeks I've been getting to grips with Symfony. Coming from working with Drupal a lot and wanting more control I've really grasped a lot of Symfony concepts– great! However in trying to replicate and entity field type which allows multiple images to be attached to and removed from an entity I'm really banging my head against a brick wall with this.
We are talking about a Product with a Gallery or numerous other scenarios where many images would relate to one thing.
I've followed the Symfony Cookbook article on embedding forms and failed to get a usable instance of One product allowing upload of Many images.
I'm just a bit surprised that there isn't a bundle or even some better documentation out there to handle what I would of thought to be highly demanded functionality.
I've looked briefly at the CMF but to be honest I like the simplicity of the standalone Symfony system as it has a simplistic appeal for very small CMS sites and systems that don't require the concepts talked about in CMF. If I were after a lot of that functionality then I would sooner revert to Drupal or similar.
Can anyone shed any light on this?
BTW. I'm not interested in creating the product first and then creating multiple images and relating them to the product. I could figure this out if necessary. It needs to be driven via on create/edit form.
I plan to make an web application using XPages for the design (plus the Lotus Notes Elements), but instead of storing the data in Lotus Notes, I will store the data in a RDBMS (specifically an Oracle Database). As you can see, I want to create a clear separation between the design and data. Is there a way I can do this? I mean, is there a way I can use Oracle as the data source and XPages/Lotus Notes for the UI only? Thanks a lot!
There actually has been native support for RDBMS/JDBC connectivity in Xpages since July 2011. Take a look at the Extension Library on OpenNTF (http://extlib.openntf.org/) and read the blogpost announcing the functionality: http://www.openntf.org/blogs/openntf.nsf/d6plinks/NHEF-8JYMXE.
It's not yet officially supported through IBM (not part of the Upgrade Pack 1 - http://www-01.ibm.com/software/lotus/notesanddomino/nd85-UpgradePack853-1.html), but there will be support for it in the future.
The short answer appears to be "yes but no" .
XPages is JDBC compliant, so you can connect to anything, including Oracle. The snag is, you'll probably have to write the code yourself. Apparently there are plans to open source a JDBC-based Relational Database XPages DataSource but there's been no activity as such. Find out more
XPages101.net may be a good site for cutting your teeth on Xpages. They have 60 lessons you can subscribe to. They are highly recommended. You may be particularly interested in lesson 55.
DISCLAIMER: I am not affiliated with XPages101.net in any way.
The XPages environment doesn't have any particular support for relational data sources, but there are two viable options depending on how cautious your organization is about using recent and beta software and how much support code you're willing to write.
For the former case, the XPages Extension Library (http://extlib.openntf.org/) is adding in relational database support for the 8.5.3 release of Domino, which is scheduled to come out at the beginning of next month. I'm not in the 8.5.3 beta, so I haven't seen this in action, but the video on their page looks promising and the Extension Library is high-quality in general. So if you're willing to deploy 8.5.3 when it comes out and use the Extension Library, it'll likely do just what you want.
If you won't be immediately upgrading or don't want to deploy the Library, you can write your own code using JDBC drivers; there's an example of this technique here: http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/ddwiki.nsf/dx/xpage_integration_rdb.htm . While you can't, for example, just pass a RecordSet to a Repeat control on an XPage, if you're willing to write your own ORM, you could make your objects implement the List interface use Java-Bean-style naming, which would let you use them in standard controls and write expression language like "#{someRecord.someField}".
I'm trying to find a CMS that can be incorporated into an existing MVC3 app.
I've played with N2, and can't get the damn thing to work in VS2010 or with .NET 4.
Umbarco doesn't appear to support MVC yet
Orchard looks great, but wants to own the whole application.
DNN is just a mess.
Any other brilliant solutions?
Post-mortem Dec 2011
This is an old post, but I thought I'd share my experiences with Orchard, and why I decided to go a different direction.
NHibernate
Aside from the very large number of transactions per page (literally dozens in some cases), each and every query was executed using sp_executesql. While not quite as bad as using Exec(), this rubs me the wrong way. Currently, my database is locked down so that applications can only execute stored procedures - that is, they can't perform select/update/delete, list entities such as tables, get any metadata, etc. This is a requirement for tier-wise unit testing, compile-time verification of the database, security and encapsulation of database logic from the application code.
Source Deployment
Orchard requires that the entire source for your site (views, .cs source files, etc) is deployed to the production server. The sheer number of source files that need to deployed boggles the mind.
Integration with an existing application
The manner in which Orchard is structured effectively requires it to be the point of entry for the web application. This means that you're going to spend some time modifying and reimplementing your app to get it to play nice with Orchard.
Conclusion
There were quite a few other issues that I encountered, but those are the highlights. Individually, each of those could have been a deal breaker. Together, they removed Orchard as a viable solution.
I'm now evaluating Telerik's Sitefinity. It's not MVC, which saddens me, but:
The admin interface is extremely powerful. Aside from a master page and some stylesheets that I put together in VS, we've been able to handle all of the layout via Sitefinity's admin tools.
I mean, it's really powerful. You can use the admin interface to edit the admin interface. Think about that for a minute.
Widgets are implemented as ASP.NET user controls. Most of my existing controls just dropped right in with zero modifications.
Database access is handled via Telerik's OpenAccess ORM. While Sitefinity doesn't natively use stored procedures, OpenAccess fully supports using them for all operations. Also, according to Telerik, OpenAccess does not, in any way, rely on reflection, which provides significant performance benefits in heavy-load apps.
There are several solutions available for using Razor markup within widgets, which is one of the great benefits (to me) of using MVC. Also, I've been told that native Razor support is in active development.
It's not free. In reality, however, a few grand barely breaks the noise floor in terms of development time.
Super crazy fast. Startup time is a bit on the slow side, but once it's running, it's very quick.
Built on top of Telerik's awesome, proven RAD controls.
Apologies for the long post. Hopefully this will be helpful.
You might find these projects useful. You can probably model a simple CMS based on one of their projects.
MvcCms
MvcMS
Atomic CMS
Mytrip.mvc
Try Web Noodles..The new CMS developed using mvc3. WebNoodles.It is easy to integrate .But the thing is it is still in beta stage..But you must give it a try ...
I'm a junior VB.net developer with little application design knowledge. I've been reading a lot of material online regarding different design patterns, frameworks, and methodologies. It's become a bit confusing for me.
Right now I'm trying to decide on what language would be best suited to convert an existing VB6 application (with SQL server backend.) I need to update the UI and add more user functionality and reporting capabilities. Initially I was thinking of using WPF and attempting the MVVM model for this big project. Reports would be generated from SSRS.
A peer suggested using ASP.net and I don't have enough experience to determine what would be better. The senior programmers here are stuck on using VB6 and don't have any input on what to use. They are encouraging me to use the latest technologies.
This application would be for ~20 users in a central location. Ideally I would stick to a Microsoft .net language. Current interface is similar to a datagrid table where the user would click in to see the detail of each record. They would need to have multiple records open at any given time.
I look forward to all the advice I can get.
EDIT 2010/04/22 2:47 PM EST
What is your audience? Internal clients within an intranet
How complex are the interactions you expect to implement? not very... displaying data from SQL server to UI. Allow user updates to said data. Typically just one user modifying a record.
Do you require near real-time data updates? no
How often do you expect to update the application after the first release? twice/year
Do you expect a well-defined set of client platforms? Yes, windows xp environment, potentially upgrading to Win7. Currently in IE.6 moving to IE7 or 8 within a couple of months.
Do users need access from anywhere? No, just from their PC.
What would be wrong about building a simple ASP.Net application in VB.Net using Gridviews for allowing the data access and manipulation? Seems like a simple ADO.Net trial application if you aren't familiar with it in the beginning you will be by the end. CRUD applications are pretty common so it shouldn't be too hard to build it and then refine it as more requirements become apparent.
Sounds like you need to use a web-based solution--this eliminates alot of your potential distribution woes with multiple users. You could use silverlight, but if you are locked into SSRS, this might not be the way to go.
The examples that Microsoft's Patterns and Practices provides are quite helpful:
about a half-dozen simpler QuickStarts which touch on specific issues
the StockTrader reference implementation, which is a fairly rounded application
but it lacks a more useful base application that reads and writes to a data source (XML or database), allowing users to login, edit data, logout, etc. (something like what ASP.NET MVC comes with).
Since Prism applications can get quite complex and lengthy (the StockTrader example is almost 300 files without tests), it would be helpful to have an application that takes care of the CRUD bulk that everyone needs to build for most apps anyway.
Does anyone know of any data-editing Prism example apps out there?
Here (http://petedoesstuff.net/Blog/?p=79) you'll find a bunch of links to the samples of using the Prism.
Particularly, LateNight (http://code.google.com/p/cwpfsamples/) may be what you need. It has login screen and data editing functions.
Its feedback I've seen a lot of. I'll pass this onto the Team and see if we can get some more examples put online around this space.
I'm currently writing my own demo app now, so i'll also try and put that online via my blog.
Scott Barnes - Rich Platforms Product Manager - Microsoft.
The reason data access was left out of the Prism RI is because it is largely irrelevant to Prism. I would think you're better off looking at something like DinnerNow for those kind of things.