GUI Development - Free Tools - swing

We are looking at building a GUI application having the following attributes -
* approx 100 screens
* approx 200 users
* interfaces with 8 different legacy applications (protocols tbd but we are assuming web services will be exposed)
* has a separate data store for storing authentication and authorisation info along with few other information.
We are trying to avoid spending any money on procurement of physical servers, application servers etc.So we thought instead of building a web application , we could develop a standalone GUI based application that could be deployed on users' desktops considering that the users are less and the access to this application is confined to our organisation.
We were thinking of Java Swing as one of the options to consider. Is it a good choice? Please advice on the other options that we need to think about. We thought MS products would involving licensing costs to buy the product hence we are looking at developing the application using some free software tools.
Thanks a lot!
Regards,
V

I really like Swing and have written many applications with it, but I'm not sure the argument that you will get a cheaper solution because you have to procure less physical servers is a good reason for it.
There are other ways to use computational capacity on the client side. For example you could use SmartGWT. With a browser based solution you get easy deployment and have no problems with client-server communications (i.e. no proxy hell). It's possible to get all of this solved with a standalone GUI, but it requires experience and time (== money).
I think a standalone GUI is a good idea if you need a "rich" user experience and tight integration with the native environment. Web apps are generally less snappy and not so well integrated. If it's just about editing data on a server, the standalone GUI does not really have any advantages.

I won't rehash what we talked about in the comments. It seems you are focused on java gui solutions. With that said there are alternatives for developing gui applications with free tools. Just to name a couple, you could develop your client with Adobe Flex or Adobe Air, use python, php or ruby and GTK, or develop a windows GUI app using c# if your target os is windows. Similar to Air, Microsoft Silverlight is an option. Java is not the only solution.
Many Java gui apps are written using swing. The major competitor to Swing has long been SWT which is used for eclipse and by IBM. Javafx is a newer/alternative platform Sun/Oracle is behind, you should also look at. To be complete, you should also take a look at qt jambi that lets you develop in java against the Qt framework.

Related

SpringBoot-MySQL or ExpressJS-MongoDB which one is best for building rest API of online BookStore?

How are you all? I'm a beginner with the web programming. I am planning to develop my personal e-commerce Bookstore for myself. I've basic knowledge of ReactJS, ExpressJS, Spring MVC, MongoDB, and Mysql. I've already done some basic project in ReactJS, Spring MVC-MySQL and Express-MongoDB like Personal Diary, Cost management system, School management system etc. My future plan is to build a native mobile app for this Bookstore. I am a little bit confused to select the language and framework. I've some question and need experts opinion and suggestion like you.
ReactJS or NextJS(Server Side Rendering), which one will best for the frontend of this Bookstore?
Do I have any possibility to face any problem in SEO in the SPA?
Which Framework and Database will best for building the backend for better performance and lower hosting cost?
By using that backend service, can I use the same API endpoint to build a native app?
Any alternative technology to develop the bookstore?
Thank you all in advance.
-ReactJS has a vibrant and big community, so you would find plenty of support
-As far as i understand type of language for the front-end or SPA's shouldn't affect your SEO
-Java is rock solid, battle tested whereas NodeJs is new and a lot of experiments still going around it. Although it is claimed to be faster and easier to work with.
-Cost ? the cheapest would be PHP Apache shared hosting. Java and or JavaScript will both cost almost the same on platforms like heroku or digital ocean.
-Yes you should be able to build native apps using the same endpoints.
-With what you know do not look for alternate technologies. (What you have is more than enough)
-Moral of the story - If you are alone doing everything, JavaScript can save you a lot of time and effort. (Building web-apps, hybrid mobiles apps and server side APIs, all using JavaScript), however if you choose Java for server side, that knowledge may help you build a native android app and then you will need to learn Swift for a native IOS app and JavaScript anyway for web apps.
Everything boils down to what you are doing and how you are doing it.
All the best!

How can I test my integration with SAP for free?

I need to integrate an API created with .NET with SAP FI/CO.
Researching online I found out there used to be something called IDES that would provide access to an SAP server free of charge, just for testing purposes, but that's no longer available.
The Consolut solution seems to have been a viable solution while it was active:
https://www.outsystems.com/forums/discussion/6598/sap-server-test-account/
Anyway, my question is: Is there any way for an independent developer to test an SAP integration without spending money to access that server? Are there any options out there that would allow me to access an SAP instance for testing purposes?
Here you can find the official list of developer trials that you might access without having any kind of relationship with SAP:
https://www.sap.com/developer/trials-downloads.html.
If you have an SAP S-user, you might have access to more stuff from the SAP Marketplace. From my knowledge, IDES was / is only accessible through the SAP Marketplace (or external sources which use the marketplace themselves).
FI/CO runs on Netweaver AS ABAP (or an older alternative, e.g. R/3), so you could download it here: https://tools.eu1.hana.ondemand.com/#abap. But it will not have FI/CO in it. Based on the discussion here https://archive.sap.com/discussions/thread/2039981 I would say that it is not really possible to get FI/CO up and running on your local Netweaver.
This is a general strategy of SAP. They provide the possibility of trying out their technological platforms (HCP, HANA, NW, etc) but they don't really offer access to their business solutions for free.
If you don't find any other way of getting access to a FI/CO system (e.g. from a third party or customer) then maybe the best thing would be to use the local Netweaver and mock the FI/CO specific RFCs that you are using (assuming that you use NCo for the integration). At least this way, you would know that the integration works at a pure technical level (at some point though, you will need a real system).

Why there is need to use html in enterprise application?

I have found this question in my University Past paper.
I know what is enterprise application and i also have a detail knowledge of HTML.. But i could not understand what is the specific purpose of html in enterprise application development. I search this question in different ways from google but no site explain it in any way except the one which is (https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20160825012934AAuuG4g)
This site says (If the application is web based, it needs HTML to display its GUI.)
GUI can alse be displayed using JAVA.
I want someone explain me in a better way
Yes, you can use Java API also for Web Based Enterprise, Its upto you which domain is used for creating Enterprise application..
An enterprise application can consist of anything. It's a big business application. The technology used for it can differ wildly, as you pointed out, Java can be used to display the GUI.
Most businesses opt for web-based applications utilizing HTML5 and Bootstrap. It makes mobility less of an issue when someone is out in the field (if that is one of the requirements) and easily maintainable etc.
Or you can have a windows application as your enterprise application, using .NET, Java, whatever to display an interact with your desktop. This means people have to be AT work to DO work because the application is installed on a PC, not compatible with Linux etc.
It's all about what the business needs are. HTML is just a technology that CAN be applied to an enterprise application

Develop Native Application on Ubuntu with HTML/CSS GUI?

Redmond has a good idea occasionally:
The next-gen Windows will come with a new programming foundation, letting developers build native apps with the same techniques they use for Web applications. Microsoft calls this new variety "tailored apps."
There is always a steep learning curve for developing GUIs; each new toolkit you learn is different enough that it takes a lot of time and effort and frustration. Thus developing in HTML with CSS begins to look very appealing: it's much easier and much more portable; and with HTML 5 and CSS 3, it is very powerful.
Is there any support yet on Ubuntu (or even better, a cross-platform toolkit) for developing native applications that use HTML/CSS for the GUI? To minimize overhead, I do not want to start a full browser session. (That's not very good desktop integration.) I am particularly interested in answers for native JavaScript or Python 3, but any language would be alright (easier to learn a new language than a new GUI toolkit, in my book).
Edit: I have found this page, but have not had time to read it all or test it. It linked to Python XULRunner, but again I have no previous knowledge of it.
This was asked on Ask Ubuntu back in August of 2011.
In summary, the options are:
SeedKit
The JavaScript bindings for GNOME.
There are more options, but those are the two "big ones".
You can write native apps in HTML/CSS and Javascript using node-webkit, is an app runtime based on Chromium and node.js, you can use node.js modules into your apps. it's available on Linux, Mac OSX and Windows
I would like to add QtWebKit to the list. It's like SeedKit with better support.
I'm using it personally on a project where we have native (C++) code for the data layer, business logic and the presentation layer is done via HTML5 and heavy use of JavaScript. As far as I know Qt can be used with python as well so perhaps you could use it for all the business logic.

Swing or SWT/JFace - for integration with MS Office

I 've read a lot of discussions about Swing vs SWT/Jface. Yet, I have a particular need in mind and I wonder people with experiences here sould kind share your insights.
I'm planning to develop desktop application to integrate MS Office (Excel, Word, Outlook). Which technology I should choose: Swing or SWT/Jface?
many thanks.
What platform are you going to develop your desktop application on, and how much UI tweaking are you planning on doing? It is commonly argued on the internet that SWT and JFace are more suitable for quick out-of-the-box type UI development on the Eclipse platform because they work so well together (eg. JFace wizards, databinding and validation), whereas Swing is more suitable for enterprise level development in NetBeans that requires more UI customising:
http://www.ahmadsoft.org/articles/swingswt/swingswt.html
I have worked on UI applications written in SWT and JFace with Eclipse (which consume web services), and have found such things as the decorator framework to be quite useful. My applications require minimal user interaction, so SWT and JFace have minimized my development time quite nicely. I can see, though that if I scaled out my application to an enterprise level MVC design requiring richer interactions with users that using SWT and JFace may not be as suitable as using Swing.
Just my opinion!