Spring Web Flow / Shale Dialog

Recently I got an opportunity to explore Spring Web Flow framework. Later I came to know that Shale Dialog also solves the same problem. JBoss Seam too solves the same problem.

Wizard and workflow navigation became a common requirement in web applications, these framework solves the problem of coding complex workflow navigation, and maintains state of the object transparently throughout the conversation. Both of these framework is not matured yet, may be we have to wait for few more months. The good sign is that Java open source community moving ahead with providing more solutions apart from a generic solution MVC kind of solution.

Spring Web Flow provides Search as an example to implement spring web flow design. When I asked the same question in their forum, they mentioned that “you would see more benefits in larger scope”. I am not sure whether anybody uses Spring Web Flow to solve search screen navigation. I can recall Bruce Eckel’s comments that many softwares not became popular because of poor examples.
JBoss seam has good documentation about the usage of conversation. Have a look into the link http://docs.jboss.org/seam/1.2.1.GA/reference/en/html/cache.html