SmartGWT Migration

[tgilbert]

Hi,
We are currently developping an pretty large application using SmartGWT 4. Because of big changes in the company I work with, we might be required to move to SmartClient instead.
Can you please provide me a list a differences/drawbacks/checklist we might need to check before taking such a (big) decision ?
Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Thank you,
Thomas

[Isomorphic]

SmartClient and SmartGWT have the same underlying runtime and there is a direct and simple correspondence between the JavaScript API of SmartClient and the Java API of SmartGWT. What you should experience, as long as you have been following best practices, is that translating SmartGWT code to SmartClient is straightforward, and might be able to be done partly mechanically.

The differences to focus on are principally the differences in style between Java and JavaScript:

1. your UI code is generally going to become much shorter and more declarative (just look at the SmartClient vs SmartGWT sample code side by side)

2. in Java the compiler catches certain errors that can only be caught at runtime in JavaScript. If you do not already have a strong suite of automated tests, this is a good time to build one, or to improve on an existing suite

3. Java forces a particular way of organizing code. You can organize code any way you want in JavaScript, so you might want to institute certain standards about how code is organized before you begin migration

A couple of specific concerns in migration:

1. if you've made use of third-party GWT widgets or integrated GWT-compatible Java libraries, you will need replacements for those

2. GWT's locale system is based on generating permutations of an application; you will no longer need to do this, but you will need to add code to load the correct locale files. Read the Internationalization overview in the SmartClient docs and compare to the same documentation for SmartGWT.

3. perhaps too obvious to mention, but instead of inheriting modules, you add <script> tags to your application's start page. This is all covered in SmartClient's QuickStart Guide of course.

Finally, all of the consultants that work at Isomorphic are conversant with both SmartGWT and SmartClient and switch back and forth between the technologies routinely. If you want a smooth and efficient migration, taking advantage of our Consulting services makes a lot of sense.

[tgilbert]

Thank you very much for this nice and detailed answer!