A Presentation Framework to Simplify the Development of Java EE Application Thin Clients

Abstract

The main aim of this paper is to report on the building of a software framework that greatly simplifies the development of the presentation layer for Java EE applications with thin clients. One of the design principles of the presentation layer in Java EE applications is to separate the business layer flow control and calls from the presentation layer. To this end, Java EE applications usually use the Model-2 architecture, which includes the well-known Model-View-Controller (MVC) design pattern. The advantages of the MVC pattern are a clear separation of concerns, resulting in more flexible applications, which are eventually easier to manage and update. However, the use of the MVC pattern bears many repetitive tasks that all supported applications must perform, making the development work tedious and complex. In order to overcome these deficiencies and limitations, in this paper we propose a web framework for developing Java EE applications that simplifies many development aspects and tasks, resulting in web applications that are more flexible, reusable and maintainable. The starting point of this contribution is to survey and analyze the most common existing Java EE frameworks with similar purposes in terms of functionality, applicability and pros-cons comparison among them. This study allows us to go deep into the knowledge of the presentation layer of Java EE applications and collect the appropriate requirements for our framework with the focus on easy of use. The framework is then designed and implemented with Java EE technologies and finally evaluated by an ad hoc testing approach.