OpenXava allows you develop rapidly and easily business J2EE applications using simple XML definition, and in an OO fashion. And now your OpenXava applications can be integrated in any JSR-168 Java Portal.

For example, if you want a J2EE application that works with Teachers you only need to write this simple XML code:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1"?>

<!DOCTYPE component SYSTEM "dtds/component.dtd">

<component name="Teacher">

  <entity>
    <property name="id" type="String"
      key="true" size="5" required="true"/>
    <property name="name" type="String"
      size="40" required="true"/>
  </entity>

  <entity-mapping table="MYSCHOOL.TEACHER">
    <property-mapping
      property="id" column="ID"/>
    <property-mapping
      property="name" column="NAME"/>
  </entity-mapping>

</component>

And no more. No Java classes, no XML files for mapping objects, no design of JSP or JSF pages, simply no more. OpenXava provides you a complete J2EE application

The new features in OpenXava 1.2 are:
* Supports JSR-168: All OpenXava modules now are standard portlets too.
* Easy installation: Only uncompress and work.
* Bundled with JetSpeed2 + JBoss4 all configured and ready to use.
* Look & feel of OpenXava portlets is adapted to look & feel of the container portal
* Tested with JetSpeed 2 and IBM WebSphere Portal 5.1
* Easy integration of reports made with JasperReports.
* Added french and indonesian translations.

You can see more features visiting www.openxava.org, or download it from sourceforge and test it.
Also in the OpenXava site are live demos and a comparative with JBoss Seam framework.

What do you think about simplifying J2EE toward XML instead of toward POJO + annotations?

What do you thing about using a Java Portal to provide security and module navigation for a business application?

Do you thing that Spring + Hibernate, or JSF + EJB3 (without aditional framework) are so productive as traditional business application development tools (4GL, RADs, Delphi, VisualBasic, RPG, etc)?