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| <document> |
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| <title>Turbine</title> |
| <author email="jon@latchkey.com">Jon S. Stevens</author> |
| </properties> |
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| <body> |
| |
| <section name="What is Turbine?"> |
| |
| <p> |
| Turbine is a servlet based framework that allows experienced Java |
| developers to quickly build secure web applications. Parts of |
| Turbine can also be used independently of the web portion of Turbine |
| as well. In other words, we strive to make portions of Turbine |
| easily available for use in other applications. |
| </p> |
| |
| <p> |
| <strong>A web based application is an application where users use |
| their favorite web browser in order to access secure business |
| logic.</strong> |
| </p> |
| |
| <p> |
| A couple example web applications that can benefit from using this |
| framework include <a |
| href="http://www.restorationhardware.com/">e-commerce shopping cart |
| systems</a>, Yahoo style <a href="http://c.clearink.com/">Link |
| Conservatories</a> and <a |
| href="http://tracker.clearink.com/">project</a> / <a |
| href="http://scarab.tigris.org/">bug / issue</a> tracking systems as |
| well as cool XML integration applications like <a |
| href="http://jakarta.apache.org/jetspeed/">Jetspeed</a>. |
| </p> |
| |
| <p> |
| <strong>A platform for building applications, not just running |
| them.</strong> |
| </p> |
| |
| <p> |
| Many commercial (and non-commercial!) software companies will |
| attempt to sell you an "Application Server", but what few people |
| realize is that it is only half of the battle to creating a web |
| application. There is often quite a lot of code that your engineers |
| end up re-inventing the wheel with or grabbing various packages from |
| all over the net with various licenses that you may or may not agree |
| to. |
| </p> |
| |
| <p> |
| The point of Turbine is to collect that code into one location and |
| make it easy to create re-usable components (such as |
| ParameterParsing, Database Connection Pools, Job Scheduling, |
| GlobalCaches, integration with other tools such as Castor, Velocity, |
| Webmacro, etc...) all under a <a href="license.html">license</a> |
| (Apache) that allows you to create useful websites for your |
| customers without worrying about viral code. Turbine is not the end |
| all answer, but it sure is a nice way to make your development life |
| easier. |
| </p> |
| |
| <p> |
| This framework has an intended audience that is directed at web |
| engineers, not necessarily the web designers. By using this |
| framework, it is possible for the web engineers to build intuitive |
| high level systems for the web designers to use, but the low level |
| framework is strictly for web engineers. Turbine is not a web |
| application server. It is a tool for building web applications. Your |
| <a href="http://jakarta.apache.org/tomcat/">servlet engine</a> is your |
| application server and the application that you develop using this |
| framework is your web application. |
| </p> |
| |
| <p> |
| <strong>Integration with Velocity, Webmacro and FreeMarker is well |
| defined and makes doing applications using these tools painless for |
| both the developers and the web designers!</strong> |
| </p> |
| |
| <p> |
| Turbine can be integrated with existing <a |
| href="http://jakarta.apache.org/velocity/">Velocity</a>, <a |
| href="http://www.webmacro.org/">Webmacro</a>, <a |
| href="http://jakarta.apache.org/">Java Server Pages (JSP)</a>, <a |
| href="http://freemarker.org">FreeMarker</a> and <a |
| href="http://xml.apache.org/cocoon/">Cocoon</a> technologies by |
| specially creating Screens that use Services to parse templates. |
| Screens can also be created to read files from other websites as |
| well as off disk. This makes it easy to have designers simply put |
| the body of a page on disk and Turbine can serve these files when |
| requested. All of this is described in more detail in the |
| documentation section below. |
| </p> |
| |
| <p> |
| The reason why Turbine works so well is because it applies object oriented |
| principles to the entire process of building a complex secure web application. |
| We try to follow the |
| <a href="http://www.javaworld.com/javaworld/jw-12-1999/jw-12-ssj-jspmvc.html">Model |
| 2 methodology</a> yet expand on it to encompass "View" techologies other |
| than just JSP as well as more mature methodologies such as |
| <a href="./howto/action-event-howto.html">Action |
| Event</a> handling. Turbine is consided as Model 2 <strong>+ 1</strong>. :-) Please |
| see the <a href="model2+1.html">discussion</a> of Model 2+1 for more information. |
| </p> |
| |
| <p> |
| This all sounds like a bunch of marketing talk, but in reality, |
| Turbine has been developed by developers for developers. We are not |
| trying to sell you something that does not really work, instead we |
| are trying to solve (or do something about) the problems that our |
| fellow developers keep having over and over again. Come be a part of |
| the revolution! |
| </p> |
| |
| </section> |
| |
| <section name="Where do I get releases?"> |
| |
| <p> |
| The Turbine Development Kit (TDK) is a package that bundles a copy |
| of Turbine, Tomcat, jar files, documentation and other utilities in |
| order to help you get started with Turbine as quickly as possible. |
| Everything is pre-configured and ready to go. To get started, simply |
| follow the instructions in the TDK download. |
| </p> |
| |
| <p> |
| You can find released versions of |
| Turbine, |
| the <a href="howto/tdk-howto.html">TDK</a>, |
| and <a href="howto/torque-howto">Torque</a> |
| <a href="http://jakarta.apache.org/builds/jakarta-turbine/release/">here</a>. |
| </p> |
| |
| </section> |
| |
| <section name="How do I contribute, give feedback, fix bugs and so on?"> |
| |
| <p> |
| We really need and appreciate any contributions you can give. This |
| includes documentation help, source code and feedback. Discussion about |
| changes should come in the form of source code and/or very detailed and |
| well thought out constructive feedback. The <a href="todo.html">TODO</a> |
| document has details and hints as to areas that still need work. |
| </p> |
| |
| <ul> |
| <li> |
| We have a <a href="http://jakarta.apache.org/site/mail.html">Turbine mailing |
| lists</a> for discussion.</li> |
| <li> |
| Access to Turbine CVS is |
| <a href="http://jakarta.apache.org/site/cvsindex.html">available</a></li> |
| </ul> |
| |
| </section> |
| |
| </body> |
| </document> |