Test Environment
Client/Server:Client: Dell Precision 410, 128MB RAM, 18GB disk drive,
Windows NT Workstation 4.0 SP 5
Codagen Technologies Corporation
2075 University St., Suite 1020
Montreal, Quebec, Canada, H3A 2L1
Phone: 514 288-4802
Fax: 514 288-2446
www.codagen.com
Pricing:
Gen-it for Java $4,900/ Developer
Batch-it for Java $295/ Developer
In last month's issue of JDJ (Vol. 5 issue 6) I talked about the concept of using frameworks to automate the development of J2EE applications. Armed with this concept I took a look at Codagen Technologies' Gen-it for Java 1.1.
Codagen's product is designed around the basic premise that much of the lower-level structural code within an application is highly repetitive. Routine tasks such as persisting objects into the database, managing locks and performing integrity checks can be easily generated from a template rather than built from scratch each time.
Codagen's product is slightly different from a typical application generator in that it works in conjunction with frameworks that you may already have built. (In fact, Codagen has a partnership with IBM to leverage their San Francisco object framework with Gen-it for Java.) In the following sections I'll take a look at installing and using Gen-it for Java using one of their sample projects.
Installing and Configuring Gen-itfor Java
I downloaded the 1.1 release of Gen-it for Java from Codagen's Web site. (Since this article was written, version 1.2 has been released.) The InstallShield setup kit is a little under 9MB in size and installs quickly and easily. Codagen uses Globetrotter's FlexLM software to control licensing for Gen-it for Java, but the downloaded installation kit is preconfigured with a demo license key already installed. When all is said and done, the installation process was a quick and painless affair - I had Gen-it up and running in about 15 minutes. One factor worth mentioning is that Gen-it for Java requires either Rational Rose or Visual Modeler (a version integrating with Telelogic's Tau, formerly Sterling's Cool:Jex, is scheduled for beta this month) to be installed on your local machine before the Gen-it installation can proceed. If you want to test Gen-it for yourself, you'll need to acquire one of the modeling tools in advance. (Rational allows you to download Rational Rose Enterprise Edition 2000 for a 20-day trial period as well.) Once the product is installed, it's a simple process to start working with Gen-it.
Working with Gen-it for Java
Codagen provides a tutorial that describes the basic value proposition for Gen-it for Java, and I would recommend going through it as a starting point. The Codagen folks believe strongly that frameworks are just as important for small and medium projects as they are for large projects - and the introduction section of the tutorial is dedicated to explaining this concept. As IT professionals and application developers we're certainly living in a time of tight deadlines and complex projects. I'd argue that very few projects in today's world are actually "small" projects. Sure, they might start out small; but they often end up being much larger efforts over the life of the application. Does this mean that we're underestimating the initial development effort in the first place? Not necessarily. We've all learned the lesson that large, multiyear projects are less likely to be successful than smaller, tactical projects. (We may be short on empirical evidence for this hypothesis, but it appears to be so from anecdotal evidence.) The result of this collective experience has been a trend toward projects that are much shorter in duration. This doesn't mean that we simply ignore larger, more complex, long-term projects. Rather, we have a better chance of success in managing large projects if we can break them down into a series of smaller projects with highly focused goals. Even projects that appear to be smaller in scope can grow as the needs of the business change. For many companies the first step into the Internet is a simple Web site soon to be followed by a dynamically generated Web site, online payment, interfaces to partners - the list is endless. Of course, one result of taking a large, complex project and breaking it down into smaller, more manageable chunks is that without a proper game plan it can lead to chaos. This is exactly where the folks at Codagen have designed the Gen-it product to play. Tackling larger projects (or small projects that grow into large projects over the life of the application) becomes possible when you use a well-planned architecture.
