In this post, I will focus on some technical and organizational topics that were addressed during the project.

Search and data import

The initial version of welke.nl contained two major parts: the product database and articles. A Content Management System (CMS) has been implemented to help the authors and publishers manage the content on the website.

The product database, however, required more specific features than the CMS could offer out-of-the-box. To enhance the customer experience, welke.nl visitors have to be able to filter through the available products to limit the selection to only those products that are of interest to them. To enable this, we used something called facetted navigation (or attribute-based search). Facetted navigation provides a very intuitive view on the current data set by showing the values of several, well-picked attributes of the search results including the number of products that match for that attribute value. By choosing one of those facets, the search result are then further limited to only results that match that value. This allows users to easily drill down the entire data set and has the added value that users will never get to an empty search results set. Next to normal values (e.g. choosing a specific brand) some facets allow you to choose a range (e.g. price) or multiple selections (e.g. color).  You can see a working example on the website.

Another major difference between the product database and the articles section is the way data is inserted. MediaMij maintains close contact with their main suppliers in the Netherlands and helps them write interesting articles about new products. The suppliers provide the data to MediaMij in files containing the details of all their products. These files are imported into the CMS using a simple tool and subsequently synchronized with the search engine to allow users to access the information.

Empowerment

Welke.nl is divided into several domains, based on the types of products that are offered. The bathroom domain was chosen as the first domain to be developed. In addition to the JTeam project staff, two MediaMij developers were included in the development of this first domain. As part of the project, so during the development, we coached them and trained them in the use of the frameworks and technologies that we used on the project. The idea behind this empowerment is that MediaMij could continue development of other domains independent of JTeam.

Only several weeks after the successful launch of the bathroom domain, the kitchen domain was developed and launched with only limited support from JTeam. The subsequent development and launch of the fireplace domain was done by MediaMij without any support from JTeam at all. This proved to the customer that our empowerment approach had indeed worked. In fact, JTeam is not involved at all in the development of the remaining domains, allowing us to focus on more advanced features the client would like to see implemented (for all domains).

The result, a happy customer, who is able to quickly move into new domains, without any dependency on JTeam, so no vendor lock-in. And in turn, JTeam can help the customer on the more technically challenging area’s.

Going further…

Development continues on the JTeam side, implementing some additional requirements. Currently, we are in the process of implementing dealer locator functionality, basically a location-based search. This allows users to search for dealers of products that are nearest to them, based on a location they provide. Luckily, JTeam previously implemented similar functionality for iLocal. Of course this location-based search functionality will be fully integrated with the existing product database and CMS.

Conclusion

We can conclude that the empowerment approach has helped the customer in becoming independent in the maintenance of their new website. They no longer rely on the availability of JTeam personnel to make changes or even expand to new domains. Moreover, it also allowed us to focus on the innovative areas and help improve their customer experience even more.

Edwin’s presentation was the business part of a case study JTeam and iLocal did together at the last ApacheCon conference in Amsterdam. It introduced the implementation project they did at iLocal (JTeam helped iLocal by empowering the in-house development organization) using Lucene and Solr. It showed the rationale for the iLocal management trading in their existing commercial search solution and replacing it with an in-house developed solution (on top of Solr). Their main reason was that this provided them with the flexibility and time to market that a company like iLocal needs.

The findings included the fact that the project was very successful, a huge increase in performance they gained and an overall vendor independence. One interesting thing that came up was that Adriaan at some point commented that iLocal is a good example of what he highlighted in his presentation: that you need to know your requirements in detail. At iLocal they knew exactly what they needed and therefore was able to make the right decision. But iLocal is a project where the problems with search implementations are sort of put under a magnifying glass. All the challenges that you are likely to encounter in a search project became very obvious in the case of iLocal. In most search projects they are not that obvious and therefore get easily overlooked until they become too big and are harder to fix. So the need for knowing your challenges and needs upfront was illustrated once more.

After a short break, the meeting continued with an open discussion between all attendees. With some guidance in the form of statements regarding business cases, open source vs commercial, and etcetera, the discussion went on for about one and a half hour. It was a good and vivid discussion, which was also very broad, a little bit too broad in my opinion, from the value of open source in general to large-scale government projects. However, a lot of food for thought

The one thing that I got from the whole symposium was that there are many different perspectives on search and most of them come with their own set of challenges. So again, think well about what you want to achieve with your search solution upfront, try to match the best solution to that and then make it happen!

Due to the success and the enthusiasm of the participants, we will definitely follow up with more meetings related to search. We got some valuable feedback from the evaluations we sent out, which we will incorporate into the next one to make the next one even better. Looking forward to seeing you all there!

More information about the training can be found here.

The first training is scheduled for September 28-29
(Early Bird discount until August 10).
To register visit: https://www.regonline.co.uk/63382_752732J

The next training is scheduled for November 30 and December 1
(Early Bird discount until October 12).
To register visit: https://www.regonline.co.uk/63382_752742J

Both of these trainings will be held in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. The exact location will be disclosed prior to the start of the training.

More information about the training including an outline can be found at the jWeekend site: http://jweekend.com/dev/JW703/
JTeam is a jWeekend “Expert Partner” delivering jWeekend trainings in Nederland / The Netherlands / Holland.

Hope to see you at our next Wicket trainings!

Let me start off by providing some background on the web frameworks we currently use within JTeam. In general we roughly distinguish three categories of web applications with their own distinct requirements:

1. Rich Internet Application (RIA) (a.k.a. ‘Filthy Rich Client’, a.k.a. ‘Fat Client’)
   This category of applications make up applications which tend to depend heavily on rich user interaction to accomplish certain day-to-day tasks. They are typically build as a fat client, containing part of the application logic and only communicating with a server backend when really needed.
2. General-purpose, public website
   As opposed to the previous category, this category makes up interfaces that people do not use to perform day-to-day tasks (although some spend a large part of their workday on Facebook and the likes). These applications usually require SEO friendliness, fast loading, and etcetera. However, they also usually require some enhanced interactivity (read: Ajax, Web 2.0) but only when indexability and accessibility are not compromised.
3. Miscellaneous website
   The last category holds those applications that do not belong to the previous two. Usually these are the more low-level like applications like a search engine frontend designed to just publish content retrieved from a search backend and / or content repository. But this might also be a REST-like API for a partner program or mobile application.

For each of the above categories, JTeam has its preferred technology to build these applications. For instance, we prefer GWT and Flex for the first category and usually fall back on Spring MVC (especially since the addition of @Controller and REST support) for the third one. But for the second category, we tend to use Wicket as our preferred web framework. The remainder of this blog post tries to explain why.

Why Wicket?

As with any development framework, what we are looking for in a web framework are things like a good abstraction over lower level constructs (e.g. request and response), state management (when needed), convention over configuration and support for things like Ajax. This is why component-based web frameworks have become so popular. In short, component-based web frameworks bring Object Orientation (OO) to web development, allowing developers to write reusable components and use these to assemble a page that is rendered to the user. Frameworks like Tapestry, the different Java Server Faces (JSF) implementations (e.g. JBoss Seam) and of course Wicket are component-based.

But Wicket has some clear benefits over the other component-based frameworks:

• Clear separation between logic and view
  In Wicket the view is in standard (X)HTML and the logic is defined in Java. This makes it really easy for web designers to focus on the design while the programmers focus on the Java code. So no mixing of the two using JSP or something similar.
• No configuration in XML
  All of the Wicket specific configuration can be done in your Java code. Although this is not an important benefit for everyone, it is for some.
• Promotes reuse
  Although all component-based frameworks promote reuse to some extend, Wicket does that even more partly because of the previous two points. Having a clear separation between logic and view and having configuration in your Java code allows you to easily reuse those components and configuration.

Already using Wicket?

Are you already using Wicket on one of your projects or are you considering to use it? Let us know so we can share experiences and best practices or maybe you have some issues we can help you with. And keep in mind that we have scheduled a public Wicket training (June 8 and 9) in Amsterdam, which might be interesting for you or any of your team members. More information about this and other upcoming Wicket trainings can be found on our website: http://www.jteam.nl/specials.html

At JTeam we have focussed recently on ‘empowering’ our clients, teaching them on the job about our preferred process and technologies. In that role, we advise the client on trainings for their staff when needed. For trainings about Spring and Hippo we usually introduce the client to our corresponding partner and for some topics (e.g. Hibernate and GWT) we have some of our own training material that we mostly use to teach on the job when needed.

Obviously training is not our core business as we are a software project company. But we still want to be able to offer high quality trainings as an added service to our customers. Therefore we have been talking to jWeekend about a partnership. Starting April JTeam will offer their Wicket training to Dutch customers. The training will be given by Erik van Oosten who has a good reputation in the Wicket community. For now we will focus on on-site trainings on demand, but we might collaborate with jWeekend on organizing public trainings in the Netherlands. So, if you are looking for a Wicket training in Holland, contact us at info@jteam.nl

For more information visit our website.