The abundance of third party Java web applications and libraries means that when
a component (such as a persistence layer or web framework) or a fully equipped
application is required very often an open source project exists with a suitable
project.
While this prevents the programmer from re-inventing the wheel the programmer must be
sure that the product actually functions as it says it does rather then waste his
or her time trying to make a broken product work.
The list of products below which we know work as expected has been compiled on the basis of our own experience
or clients who have successfully employed these within their web projects.
All libraries/products come under an open source licence of varying degrees
of rigidity (GPL,LGPL,BSD,MIT) unless stated otherwise.
| Content Management Systems |
| OpenCMS |
Mature and fully featured CMS |
www.opencms.org |
| Lenya |
Powerful CMS with excellent WYSIWYG editors |
lenya.apache.org |
| Web Frameworks |
| Struts |
Still a very popular MVC web framework |
jakarta.apache.org |
| Spring |
IoC based framework, not just a web framework. Gaining momentum. |
www.springframework.org |
| Turbine |
SOA framework |
jakarta.apache.org |
| Tapestry |
JSP/Velocity replacement, supports very rich web components/controls |
jakarta.apache.org |
| WebWork |
Popular MVC framework |
www.opensymphony.com |
| Cocoon |
Framework very dependent on XML, used by Lenya. |
cocoon.apache.org |
| Maverick |
Mimimal MVC framework |
mav.sourceforge.net |
| MyFaces |
Implementation of Java Server Faces, Sun's answer to .NET. Java Server Faces spec. led by the creator of struts. |
www.myfaces.org |
| Database persistence |
| Hibernate |
Probably the most popular persistence framework, normally using xml configuration to map tables to objects. |
www.hibernate.org |
| Toplink |
Oracle's ORM offering, a mature and stable product, Toplink Essentials is the EJB3 reference implementation. |
www.hibernate.org |
| Ibatis |
Not as popular as hibernate, but very good nonetheless. Easier to use than hibernate. |
ibatis.com |
| OJB |
JDO and ODMG compliant, standards panned by the hibernate folks. Requires its own tables in the database schema. |
db.apache.org |
| Castor |
JDO based persistence |
www.castor.org |
| Torque |
Powerful persistence, generates JavaBeans for you by reading the db schema. |
db.apache.org |
| Derby |
An open source lightweight SQL database implemented entirely in Java, embeddable or standalone.
| db.apache.org/derby/ |
| Blogs |
| Roller Weblogger |
Heavyweight feature packed blogger as used by Sun Microsystems and www.javalobby.org.
| www.rollerweblogger.org |
| Blojsom |
Easy to install, very pretty blogging app.
| blojsom.sourceforge.net |
| SnipSnap |
Lightweight, attribute blog/wiki.
| snipsnip.org |
| Pebble |
Ultra lightweight (no db required) but surprising feature full (mobile phonesupport).
| pebble.sourceforge.net |
| Wikis 1 |
| JSPWiki |
Easy to install Java Wiki |
www.jspwiki.org |
| ERP/Groupware |
| Ofbiz |
Very sophisticated ERM solution |
www.ofbiz.org |
| Hipergate |
Very impressive range of groupware features, all accessible via a browser.
| www.hipergate.com |
| Misc. |
| JFreeChart |
Generate stunning looking charts |
www.jfree.org |
| Lucene |
Java powered search engine, with no reliance on a relational database. |
lucene.apache.org |
1. The number of Java wikis is rather limited, for a powerful wiki we recommend MediaWiki which powers
the wikipedia.org site.
