The ESRI Web ADF 9.3
Remember this post? Count that as the most popular post ever on my blog (so much for a positive post being my watermark). Anyway Doron Yaacoby has followed up almost a year and a half later with another look at where ESRI has taken the Web ADF since then.
Almost none of the issues I addressed in my original post were fixed. The API is still overly complex. Resources, functionalities and all these so-called abstractions remain in place, emphasizing the strength of the JavaScript API’s simplicity. And yes, there are still about a billion classes that are named “Converter†in the API. It seems like ESRI insists that you write the entire namespace before every class you use.
Yea that was probably predictable, but I don’t think any of it matters. We’ve all moved beyond the Web ADFs and on to the REST APIs (Flex, JavaScript and Silverlight). Really though I’m amazed at how much our web development platform has changed in that time, we all can agree developing with ESRI is much more enjoyable than it was and I’m wagering most of us forget there is a Web ADF out there anymore. I can’t wait until the ESRI UC to see what the future holds in store.
The killing of .NET and Java on the web continues unabated.
unofficial comments represent official words – that is James Fee – Is ADF dead or to die?
ADF gives one thing that javascript, flex and silverlight don’t give yet (at least that I know of, correct me If I’m wrong)! And It is the possibility to edit features on a Web Application.
About the edit features, the Java ADF still has strong limitations in the J2EE world. EJB components are J2EE 1.4 compatible (version 6 – Glassfish RI – will be released this year) and even in a JSF-based web application you have to be Sun RI 1.1 compliant. So forget MyFaces, IceFaces, RichFaces JSF 1.2 components. And I don’t even talk about the future JSF 2.0 compatibility.
What is the roadmap of the Java ADF ?
Mauro is right (though you can write that functionality in js as well) The only thing that has improved is the javascript that comes with the adf, though it pales compared to js api or similar. both apis are still missing something the other has. overall, using one over other is just the matter of the requirements.
The WEB-ADF might have editing but the implementation and tools are horrible. I can’t wait till ESRI rolls out a good solution for editing over the web. I think ESRI knows that editing with the WEB-ADF is lacking. I’ve never seen a decent web editing demo in a ESRI presentation.