The project consists of a diverse group of volunteers who share
common values regarding collaborative, community-based open source
development.
About the Committers
Project committers are the core Apache Struts community.
Craig R. McClanahan -- Emeritus PMC Member
I've been involved with servlet and JSP technology since
around
1998. It started out that I needed a way to build some web
applications for several projects, and liked Java a lot
better
than the alternatives. I also liked the price tag of open
source
software, and started using Apache JServ -- later, getting
involved in the project (like many people, I was whining
about
the twelve months it took to get from version 0.9 to
version
1.0, and my son said "Dad, you know Java -- go help them
finish
it!" -- so I did :-).
For quite a while, I was participating a lot the
JSP-INTEREST and
SERVLET-INTEREST
mailing lists
,
especially the topic of good architectures for web
applications.
I was disgusted with the hash that many beginners created
when
they used (or abused) scriptlets in JSP pages, and built
(for my
former employer) a pretty comprehensive framework that
could
considered ("Struts 0.01 without the custom tags"). It was
proprietary code, but I was able to describe the concepts,
and
there started to a feeling the lists that this "Model 2"
thing
was pretty cool -- but there were no good examples to look
at,
so it was mostly hand waving types of discussions.
Over the same time period, I got involved as an individual
contributor in the
Java
Community Process
, and joined the expert group that defined
the servlet 2.2 and JSP 1.1 specs. Sun was impressed
enough to
offer me a job as the technical lead the team within Sun
(currently five other individuals) that works
Tomcat
-- the
architecture for Catalina, which is the servlet container
part
of Tomcat 4.0, is also mine -- so I am in the really nice
position of getting paid to work open source software :-).
And,
participate the expert groups for Servlet 2.3 and JSP 1.2.
And,
speak at various conferences, including ApacheCon and
JavaOne.
And, talk to groups within Sun about using Struts and
JSP/servlet technology. And ... (there's some really
interesting
things being considered for the future).
The original design of what came to Struts has been in my
head
for a long time, since those interesting mailing list
discussions, but the first version of the actual code was
written my laptop a Memorial Day weekend vacation trip
(end of
May, 2000) to the Oregon coast -- in between watching the
surf
and having the house shaken by a windstorm at night. Since
then,
it has gathered attention and popularity as we approach
our
first official release, and it delights me to see my
"baby" grow
up so well :-). Of course, it is no longer just me --
there have
been incredible numbers of good ideas from all over, and a
peek
at the TODO list for 1.1 says that even more good stuff is
coming in the future.
One motivation factor was
Jason Hunter's
article about the Problems with JSP. Jason
and I get along fine, even though we have different
preferences
about presentation technologies. Besides being the author
of a
very popular book about servlets, with a second edition
coming
soon, Jason is also the representative for the Apache
Software
Foundation the Executive Committee of the Java Community
Process.
Personally, I live in Portland, Oregon (even though my
team at
Sun is mostly in Cupertino, CA -- staying here was part of
the
job deal :-). I like to support Oregon sports teams
(Oregon
State Beavers, Oregon Ducks, Portland Trailblazers) and
work
cool software.
I figured out I was getting pretty old when I realized
that
2000 was the 25th year I had been paid to work in some
aspect of
software development :-). I've got a son who is a
full-time
software developer (primarily in PHP so far, but I'm going
to
corrupt him with Java eventually :-), and a daughter in
college.
I'll happily let the other committers speak for
themselves.
Mike Schachter -- Emeritus Committer
I'm currently a student of computer science at Drexel
University
in Philadelphia, PA. I've been working at HP Middleware,
formerly Bluestone Software for 3 years programming in
Java and
recently J2EE technologies. I'm a full time worker from
September until April and a student and part time worker
from
April until August. In my spare time I've been known to
run
monkey-knife fights in a shady south philly warehouse.
Err... I
mean... nothing.
Ted Husted -- PMC Member
In the late 1990s, I was working with a local PBS station
to
improve their web presence. Like most stations, WXXI had
an
annual fundraising auction. Each year, we would do a
little more
for the auction. At first, we posted a few static pages
about
the "big ticket" items. The next year, we accepted
"pre-bids"
on the more expensive items, using a JavaScript
application.
Then, late in 1999, the CEO decided we should do a lot
more with the auction
on the website. The next big step would be to accept bids
for
all items online. A colleague recommended FileMaker Pro,
and we
went to work automating the bid-taking process. For
"Spring MarketPlace 2000", we entered the telephone bids
into
computers in the studio, and Internet users could enter
their
own bids directly.
The system worked, but we ran into some walls that were
difficult to work around. We also wanted to expand the
system to do scheduling and inventory as well as bid
taking.
So, I started looking for a new platform. I came close to
selecting PHP, but there were some cool new Java products,
like Resin and Jetty, coming out in 2000. I was impressed
and
decided to go with Java.
At the time, web application frameworks for Java were a
new
idea, and only a couple were available.
I stumbled upon Struts at Jakarta, and started posting
questions to the list. At first, the list traffic was so
low,
I wasn't sure if the group was still active. But, answers
came, and so I kept on posting.
To help teach myself the framework, I started a "walking
tour" of the infamous MailReader application. I posted the
tour as I wrote it, and people kindly corrected my
understanding of how things worked as I went.
In December 2000, Craig was asking for volunteers to help
with the documentation. Mike Schachter and I raised our
virtual hands, we became Struts committers 006 and 007.
By the Spring of 2001, WXXI's new auction application was
ready
to ship using the Struts 1.0 beta. We took over 50,000
bids on
5,000 items with nary a hitch. We added an inventory
module
for 2002, and the station continued to use the original
software unchanged through 2005.
Since joining Struts in 2000, I've become a Member of the
Apache
Software Foundation and Struts Project Management
Committee. My
books include JUnit in Action, Struts in Action, and
Professional JSP Site Design. I've consulted with Struts
teams
throughout the United States, including CitiGroup,
Nationwide
Insurance, and the Pepsi Bottling Group.
These consultations developed into a open source
Struts training course that I offer through
Struts Mentor.
Currently, I'm working with the Oklahoma State
Department of Environmental Services to improve their
permitting
system. We started the work in Java, but the enterprise
migrated to ASP.NET in 2004. Rather than quit the team,
I stuck it out. We still use .NET on the backend,
but on the frontend, we now use the Yahoo! User
Interface (YUI) library, with a little help from
Yazaar and
Anvil.
Cedric Dumoulin -- PMC Member
As a dreamer / researcher I have thought a lot about a
framework
like Struts. But, as a lazy developer I have first checked
what
already exists, and I have found Struts. Struts goals
fulfilled
nearly all I needed for my (now old) portal project,
except the
capability to reuse and assemble easily pieces of pages or
components. So, I have proposed the Components framework.
This
framework can seen as a superset of the Templates tag
library
contributed by David Geary, and contains lot of
interesting
features.
From a professional point of view, I have a Ph.D. in
computer
science. I have worked for 3 years in the R&D
department of
a worldwide company developing Internet banking solutions.
I am now a researcher at a university, and work European
research projects. My main research interest is WWW,
Distributed
Systems and Object Oriented Design. When developing code,
I
always try to first propose reusable pieces of code.
Martin Cooper -- PMC Chair
Early in the year 2000, I was asked, by my employer at
that time,
to investigate the best way to develop a new web-based
application
for the administration and management of an existing
product.
After exploring a number of technologies, I settled on
Java, along
with servlets and JSP, as the way to go. Then I started
looking
for methodologies and "best practices", since others must
surely
have been down that path before me.
In addition to rummaging around on the web, I subscribed
to the
SERVLET-INTEREST and JSP-INTEREST mailing lists, along
with
several others, and monitored the discussions for a while.
It was
clear that others were seeking the same answers as I was,
and it
was also clear that many people were building their
applications
in truly horrible ways.
At some point -- I don't recall when, exactly -- the
concept of
"Model 1" versus "Model 2" applications came up, and there
was a
great deal of discussion around that. Model 2 seemed very
much
like A Good Thing to me, and I paid it close attention.
Then, in May of 2000, I saw a message from Craig
McClanahan
about a new framework called Struts that was designed to
ease
the process of building Model 2 applications, and provide
solutions for some of the important issues at the same
time. I
hopped on over to the website and took a look around.
This was
exactly what I had been looking for.
My first postings to the Struts mailing list were, of
course,
questions to help me understand how to do things and why
Struts
is the way it is. Over time, I became more involved in
both the
user and developer communities, started submitting bug
reports,
patches and change requests, and eventually became a
committer.
Not long after that, I volunteered to take on the release
process,
and became the release manager for Struts 1.0.1 and
beyond. Little
did I know what I was letting myself in for!
A large majority of the people who contribute to Apache
projects are volunteers who are not paid for their
contributions. Like most of those volunteers, I also have
a "day job" to put bread on the table. Currently, I am a
Software Architect at EMC, where I work on the Documentum
family of products, focussed on the WDK/WebTop platform.
Working with, and on, Struts has provided me with an
excellent perspective with which to do that!
David Winterfeldt -- Emeritus
Committer
As I worked web based projects I started looking for
something
that would really help save time during development. I ran
across Struts in the Summer of 2000 and decided it was a
good
solution for web development. As I used Struts it really
helped
to remove a lot of the repetitive work, but validation
still
seemed very repetitive. I had an idea to create validation
rules
in an xml file and have them easily integrated with
Struts. It
started out simple and continued to develop over time. The
validation project was eventually incorporated into Struts
and
the core was moved to Jakarta Commons. I'm happy to see
Struts
continue to grow and develop.
I currently am employed at Forbes.com. I occasionally get
to do
some internal projects using Struts. The last interesting
project was a publishing system using Message Driven EJBs
in
JBoss and Struts was used to display the status of each
publishing process.
Rob Leland -- Emeritus PMC Member
I have gone from Unix -to- Windows -to- Unix based
development
about ever 6 years now. When moving to Windows I was
amazed at
how primitive the OS was compared to Unix. While
developing for
Win32 I had the pleasure of discovering Delphi and
developed
many GUI/databases, telephony, Internet enabled
applications. I
remain impressed with its design. Delphi, always enabled
development of a simple elegant solution, much like the
language
itself. I was convinced after 10 years of development with
C/C++
that it was a kinder gentler language.
Then in July 2000 I decided to move into Java, and Web
development. This is after using the Internet since 1985
and
occasionally teaching classes about it. I was hired as a
consultant to take over a JSP based application. I
realized it
had been written with the equivalent of "goto's"(Model 1)
and
had to be redesigned. I searched for a better way to
design the
code and by late August I had found Struts. It is also a
simple
elegant solution.
To date I have mainly served to pitch in where needed. I
continue to amazed at the Struts committers' generous
contributions of time, insight, and good will. I feel
fortunate
to part of the Apache Struts group.
David Graham -- Emeritus PMC Member
I, like many others, discovered Struts when contemplating
writing my own MVC Java framework for the web. Struts had
everything I needed and more so I scrapped plans for my
own and
joined the mailing lists. After playing with it for
several
months I started submitting documentation and a few source
patches. I'm excited about helping Struts evolve and am
continually amazed by the framework and the community
surrounding it.
James Mitchell -- PMC Member
Struts was forced upon me when the E-Commerce
sweat-shop...errr
...I mean "the company I worked for" decided to go from
being a
full fledged Microsoft Partner to a full J2EE shop. That
was
back in 2000. What little skills in Java I had were poor
at
best and I had never heard of Struts or even Tomcat for
that
matter.
I was fortunate to have several excellent mentors watching
over
my shoulder and helping our team cross the "great divide"
between ASP/COM and Java/OOP. You could say our mentors
knew a
thing or two about Java, web development, and frameworks
in
general. Chuck Cavaness, Brian Keeton, and many more, I
cannot
thank you enough for all the leadership and guidance you
have
given me (and others). I truly believe that without your
help,
I would not be where I am today.
Where am I today? That depends on who you ask ;) I own my
own
business and I am currently working for a clientin the
North
Atlanta (GA) area. I created the
Struts-Atlanta
Users
Group
along with James Holmes several years ago with the
primary goal of mentoring, educating, and assisting other
developers.We are a large group (over 200 members) of
Struts
enthusiasts and we meet monthly to discuss just about
anything,
not just Struts.I don't want this to sound like a resume,
but if
you are looking for talent, I have helped several of our
membersfind jobs in our area. Our list is a great resource
for
finding and nurturing local talent.
I call myself an "Open Source Evangelist" for a reason. I
use
the word "Evangelist" because that's what I feel I am
doing.
Just as Martin Luther was considered a rebel in his day, I
too
hope to make a change. I hope to change the way Software
is
developed in our world and how the lack of collaboration
for
the sake of "intellectual property" is inhibiting the
growth of
our economy. I believe businesses have a right to make a
profit.
I believe businesshave a right to make a profit on their
"intellectual property", but for heaven's sake, some
wheels
don't needto be reinvented 50,000 times. Where I draw the
line
is when they leverage existing market share to strong-arm
the
competition literally out of business. Based on what I
just
wrote and depending on what you've been exposed to in your
career, you might be thinking of one company right now.
You are
probably right in your assumption, but believe me, there
are
many companies that practice the same, or worsetechniques.
To
them, it's not about playing on a level playing field,
it's
about getting to the game early,buying 80% of the seats,
and
paying off the officials so there is little chance for any
real
competition. Ofcourse, for some companies, it doesn't hurt
if
you own the stadium and keep the other players locked out.
"Well, they were invited to compete, but they didn't show
up.
"....sound familiar?
Enter....the Open Source movement. I would encourage you
(if
you haven't already) to pick up a copy of
The Cathedral and the Bazaar
.This is an excellent
introduction to this whole "Open Source" thing and why it
is so
popular.
Compared to what I want to do in life, Struts is just a
drop in
the pond. However, that said, I am very happy and excited
to be
a part of this (and other) open source projects. Thanks
for
putting up with me :P
James Turner -- Emeritus Committer
I discovered Struts somewhat by accident. In 2001 I began
writing a book for SAMS on JSP web development (MySQL and
JSP
Web Development), and as part of it, I decided to write a
chapter on Struts in the advanced section. In the process
of
learning enough about Struts to write about it, I realized
that
it could simplify some of the projects that I was working
on for
clients.
After a half a year of working with Struts, I was asked by
SAMS
to write another book, this time concentrating on Struts
specifically. That book, co-authored with a former
co-worker n
amed Kevin Bedell, became Struts Kick Start.
In the process of writing that book, I began to realize
that
there were things I could do to contribute to Struts
beyond
writing about it. One thing in particular was to clean up
and
add some functionality to the Commons Validator project,
which
eventually led to me release-managing (with a lot of
help!) the
Commons Validator 1.0 release.
More generally, I've been a software developer for over 22
years, starting with work as a Research Specialist at the
MIT AI
Lab. I spent nearly a decade working in LISP, before
moving on
to C/Unix, a stint managing the Website for the Christian
Science Monitor, and finally Java based e-Commerce
development,
which has kept me busy for the last five years.
In addition to the two books mentioned above, I also write
for a
number of publications, including WIRED and the
aforementioned
Christian Science Monitor. You can get a look at my
portfolio
here
. I'm
also working on a third book with a bunch of other folks
for
O'Reilly, which will cover Apache Axis. I also edit the
OpenSolaris.org site for Sun.
Eddie Bush -- Emeritus Committer
My first experiences with Java made me wince. The language
was young-ish still and growing by leaps and bounds all
the time.
To me, it seemed unintelligent to invest any significant
intellectual resources in learning it because I perceived
it as
such a "moving target". Of course, that has
changed.
I'd been looking for a way to really do heavy-duty
processing of
web requests that was higher-level than CGI. In
particular, I
was on a quest to find somethiong that did not involve
using
Microsoft (tm) technologies. A friend of mine started
chatting up the idea of Java servlets and JSP pages. I
didn't
really like the idea of using Java because of my
previously
formed opinion, but, having a great deal of respect for my
friend's opinion, I set out on an exursion to delve into
the
world of Java-driven dynamic web page generation.
The language (and myself) had matured considerably by this
time,
and I found my previous inhibitions were no longer well
founded.
However, as much as I liked the technology, I was
dissatisfied.
There just had to be a better way! I loved the concept of
having a controller servlet, but, lacking experience in
building
externally-configurable Java "thingies", I was
hard-coding a lot, and, after a point, that started to
really
rub me wrong. At this point, I started buying books and
really
"studying" the technology more seriously.
I honestly don't recall where I stumbled onto Struts, but
I do
recall having toyed with a number of different frameworks
- none
of which I really recall now. I quickly fell in love with
Struts -- partially because it was an Apache project, and
partially because it was evident to me that the project
had a
really great user-base.
As time rocked along, I found myself becoming more deeply
involved in the project. I studied the source and learned
a
great deal about architecting configurable Java
"thingies", and learned a fantastic amount about
actually using the framework.
In time, I got comfortable enough with how Struts was
structured
that I began submitting patches - mostly documentation,
which
Ted Husted "massaged" and applied. I enjoyed the
feeling of gratification I got from helping to make Struts
better, even if minorly.
My last patch submitted as a non-committer was for
ActionServlet.
This was back when Struts 1.1 was working toward GA
release. It
was the first patch I hadn't had applied within a few days
of
submission and I grew impatient. Modules did not work
properly
without it and they did with it! "How can they not
apply
that patch when it's so critical to Struts?" I
thought to
myself.
Well, to keep this book from becoming a novel, I started a
campaign to have the patch applied which resulted in
my gaining committer status and applying the patch myself!
I should note that Steve Ditlinger and myself collaborated
on the
patch. I submitted a version, he made some suggestions and
submitted an altered patch, and then we, collectively,
decided
to make a couple of other modifications, which I applied
just
before committing the patch.
Niall Pemberton -- PMC Member
I've worked as a developer since 1988 using various
technologies/platforms.
In the late nineties I kept meaning to learn java but
never found the time
until 2000. I bought a couple of books (Java in 30 Days
and a Certification
Study Guide), passed the Sun certification exam and got my
first java job.
Early in 2001 I was investigating writing the first web
app for the company
I was working for and came across Struts - just before the
1.0 beta was
released. After a while I came off the user list because
of the volume of
traffic and just monitored the developers list. Late in
2003 I migrated to
Struts 1.1, re-joined the user list and started submitting
a few patches.
Was invited to become a Struts Committer in May 2004 and
PMC member in
September 2004.
Hubert Rabago -- Emeritus PMC Member
I started working with Java early in 2000. We designed and
implemented a
servlet-based application that to this day gives me and a
fellow designer
the urge to do a total rewrite. On my next assignment,
somebody
introduced me to a series of patterns useful for web
applications. We
built a framework using these patterns and it worked out
well for us.
When I tried to bring this framework into the next
project, somebody
suggested using Struts instead. The two frameworks
resembled each other
so closely that we had no trouble at all switching. One of
the things
missing in Struts was an easy way to do redirects with
parameters, so we
wrote our own class for that. The same guy who suggested
Struts
suggested I contribute it to Struts. A few months after
that, I joined
the mailing lists and sought how to contribute.
I found myself enjoying answering questions on the user
list. After some
time, I was participating on the dev list as well. Soon I
was able to
contribute a few patches and even came up with my own
Struts extension.
In February of 2005, I accepted an invitation to be a
committer, and
in July 2005, accepted an invitation to join the PMC.
Wendy Smoak -- PMC Member
In late 2001, I was asked to put information from a
database on
the web, including a few forms to allow updates. By that
time I had
been working with Java for a couple of years in class
projects, but
"Servlet" was still a foreign word. With no real deadline
and
complete freedom to pick anything I wanted, I spent hours
online
searching and participating in different forums and lists.
And any
time I asked for advice using 'Java' and 'HTML forms' in
the same
sentence, I got a resounding chorus of "Struts!" in
reply.
That first webapp went through quite a few iterations as I
tried
and discarded various things. But I kept coming back to
Struts, and
eventually things fell into place-- thanks mostly to the
helpful
community on the struts-user list. As I gained more
experience,
asking questions on the user list naturally transformed
into
answering them, which I've been doing ever since. I
accepted an
invitation to become a Struts Committer in June, 2005, and
was invited to join the PMC in December, 2005.
Gary VanMatre -- Emeritus PMC Member
I landed an internship in college working with the big blue
iron where
I dappled in the craft of VSE COBOL and JCL. Through the
90's, I worked my
way into several client-server technologies (Visual Basic,
PowerBuilder and Delphi)
and finally thought that I had learned the last
programming language I
would ever need to know, Forté Transactional Object
Oriented language (TOOL).
I rode the Forté wave for several years and suddenly
found myself
looking for work and feeling like a real "tool". An empty,
dust free
shelf was just the right size for the proprietary
distributed object
solution once called Forté.
In 2002, is when I found Java. While working a VB
assignment,
I decided the only hope I had of getting a competitive
edge was to
become a Sun Certified Java Programmer. With that card, I
found an
opportunity to become a Struts developer and began lurking
about the
Struts mailing lists in 2003.
In late 2004, I started hearing a buzz about a new Struts
subproject
and became very interested in the ideas. I also began
acquiring a stack
of JSF books matching my Struts collection. My experience
with Struts,
Tiles and something that Colorado Department of State
calls Rustts, gave
me the idea that has become known as the Shale "Clay"
plug-in. I was
invited to become a Struts Committer in July 2005.
Sean Schofield -- Emeritus PMC Member
During a job interview in 2002 I was asked if I had any
experience with
Struts. I told the interviewer that I had never heard of
it. That night
when I got home I set out to figure out what Struts was
all about. It
turns out I already knew it (sort of.) I had been spending
a lot of time
researching design patterns and I was working with my own
custom framework
that combined several patterns that I thought worked well
together.
I then realized that I wasn't the only one trying to
improve the way in
which complex web applications were being designed. Of
course, as with all
open source projects, the result of several minds working
together is superior
to that of a single mind working alone. I quickly
abandoned my custom
framework in favor of Struts. A few years later I was the
one interviewing
people asking them if they knew Struts!
Struts was also the beginning of my serious interest in
open source. Like
many other committers I started out as a user, then became
a participant on
the mailing lists, then started reporting bugs, then
started patching bugs and
finally started proposing and supplying new features. The
Struts community
was an invaluable resource for me, especially when it came
to getting advice on
tricky design issues.
In October 2005 I was invited to become a Struts Committer.
I have also been
involved in a few other open source projects including
commons-lang and
commons-chain. I am also a PMC member of the MyFaces
project where I spend
most of my free time these days. My current interest in
Struts lies with the
Shale subproject.
Greg Reddin -- Emeritus PMC Member
In early 2000 I was working on a client-server application
that
was written in Visual Basic and C++. The decision was made
to
rebuild the application as a web-based app using Java and
JSP. We
bought into the MVC architecture and implemented it using
Sun's
Blueprints with a JSP front controller. Then one of our
architects
came back from JavaOne raving about Struts. From that
point on
there was no turning back for me.
Over the years my involvement has come in spurts. If I was
working on a web-based project it was a given that this
project
would involve Struts. Finally, our organization was bitten
by the
SOA bug so it was "webapp no more" for a while. But I
never
bothered to unsubscribe from the Struts lists and always
kept one
ear tuned in to the chatter in my inbox.
Finally I decided to plant myself back in the web tier with
or
without my employer's support and changed jobs. Very soon
afterwards, in October 2005, I was invited to become a
Struts
committer. This comes at a time when Tiles, my favorite
part of
Struts, is seeing a lot of activity. I hope to play a
large part
in digging the Standalone version out of the sandbox. I am
also
very interested in JSF, Shale, content management systems,
and
portals.
The truth is I still haven't decided what I want to be when
I
grow up. In addition to my software pursuits I am also a
family man
and a
musician
. If anyone
knows of any good methods of cloning yourself, please let
me know!
I'm happy to be a part of this community and the Apache
Way.
Laurie Harper -- Committer
I've been lurking on the fringes of the Struts project for
years, on and off, but it wasn't until early 2005 that I
became an active participant. I founded
Zotech
Software
and selected Struts as the framework on which we would
build
our first product. I thought long and hard about how to
give
back to the Open Source community from whose work we would
derive so much value, and decided that one important
contribution I could make would be to answer questions on
the Struts user list, among others. Over time, I found
myself
wanting to add bits and pieces to Struts itself, and began
submitting patches.
In October 2005 I was invited to become a committer. My
main interests lie with the core Struts framework and
supporting
sub-projects, though I'm keeping an eye on Ti and some of
the
other experimental work that's going on.
Michael Jouravlev -- Committer
In 2001 I joined a team that had been tasked with building a front
end to a lottery system using Java technology. The system had to have
Web interface (HTML), cellular phone interface (WML and later SMS)
as well as audio interface for regular telephone
(VoiceXML). Someone suggested to use Struts. I did not know about Struts
at that time, but the framework quickly proved to be superior to simple
JSP-based Model1 approach. The team effort resulted in a multi-layer
application that is still competitive and maintainable today.
Struts proved its value, but some common practices seemed
inconvenient or plain wrong to me. I started to read what other people
say. I found great value in Ted Husted's tips, as well as in the book
by Chuck Cavaness. After a while I devised some practices of my own
(or just
rediscovered
something that others has been doing for long time)
and since then I have been trying to improve Struts in different
ways.
I started to think about page flows and Back button support back in
2002, this resulted in a simple but robust wizard engine. I also
wanted to make development with Struts more object-oriented. I found
DispatchAction useful in this regards but with quirks of its own. So I
created my own dispatch action that allowed me to process both input
and render phases of a web resource. Promoting this approach is a
job of its own.
My most recent area of interest is web components and Ajax.
Creating independent components using Ajax is actually simpler than
using less fancy patterns like redirect-after-post. In attempt to
combine Ajax and non-Ajax components into one package I came up with
idea of dual-mode components
that work either with or without Javascript.
Struts has been good to me. I want Struts to keep being improved and to
remain the Java web framework of choice.
Antonio Petrelli -- PMC Member
My first encounter with Struts was at the university in June
2003, when my teacher gave me an assignment in which I had
to convert a sample web application using Struts and Tiles.
After that the same teacher gave me my thesis assignment, in
which I had to develop the missing part of a web application
rapid prototyping tool based on the same technologies.
After my graduation, I worked for a year at the same
university and my job was to enhance that tool to support
multi-user and multi-device applications, with different
modelling techniques, so my experience with Struts and
Tiles grew more and more.
My job at the university finished and I went into the "real
world", but I kept my subscription in both users and developers
Struts mailing lists. One day I noticed that Greg Reddin was
working on a stand-alone version of Tiles, so I submitted some
patches for bugs and enhancements in Tiles. After a while, in
June 2006, I've been invited by Greg Reddin himself to become a
committer: you can't imagine my joy!
I am currently working on the integration between Struts 1
and Tiles 2. My other Java EE interests are in the view
layer (I am a developer and administrator of
Dimensions)
and in synchronization between client's browser and application
server: the latter led me to create
Scopes.
David H. DeWolf -- Committer
When I graduated from school in 1999 I headed to Flower Mound,
Texas (a Dallas Suberb) where my wife Teresa had grown up.
I was fortunate to find my first web development contract
and began my career on a portal development team providing
user interface implementation support.
Since that first job, I have worked for a few small
consulting companies providing J2EE design and development
consulting to mid sized and Fortune 500 clients. Many of the
projects I've been involved in over the yeras have leveraged
struts and tiles. I also have used other web frameworks
such as JSF and Tapestry.
In the summer of 2006 I left full time employment in order to
begin
Three Pillar Software, Inc. This move was driven by my
desire to spend more time doing the things I love (developing
open source software, agile coaching, spending time with my
wife and kids, etc. . .) and less time in corporate meetings
and sales calls. My first project as an independent consultant
proved to provide just that, as I've had time to contribute
to the development of both Struts2 and Tiles2. I was invited
to become a struts committer in October of 2006.
I am also a committer for
Apache Pluto, a member of the JSR-286 Expert Group, an author of
various online articles and have been known to speak at conferences
such as ApacheCon US 2005, Agile2006, and SD Best Practices 2006.
In my spare time, I enjoy spending time with my wife Teresa and
our 4 kids (under 6!), Sarah, Joseph, Rebekah, and Catherine. We
now live in Northern Virginia.
