I am working with the GWT since it was announced at JavaOne, and I am really amazed with the possibilities. This article clearly show one of the advantages: as a developer, you can create a fancy layout by coding. Every day, I discover new features of the widget gallery included with the GWT.
The main challenge I see, though, has to do with the A in Ajax: how to integrate asynchronously with back-end software. The GWT uses an RPC mechanism based on an extension of a HTTPServlet. This works nicely (I created some demos at http://ajax.lodgon.com/gwt.html), but it does force you into a specific design direction. My main concern with this approach is the integration with JSF (there is an excellent article about Ajax-JSF on https://bpcatalog.dev.java.net/ajax/jsf-ajax but GWT-JSF is still a bit different).The server-side part of the Ajax application often needs to get information which is available in the JSF Beans. I am not sure what the best approach is for exchanging information between the JSF Beans and the Ajax server part.
Currently, I use the request object from the RemoteServiceServlet to obtain the JSF Beans, and to interact with these beans. I am not too happy with this "plumbing" approach, but for now, it combines the best of two worlds (JSF and GWT).
Anyway, the graphical capabilities of GWT are good enough to create a "WOW effect", and fortunately, there are ways to interact with JSF components. |
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