I have got a web application which is speparated in a GUI (JSF 2.0, Orchestra, Spring) and service (Spring, JPA, Hibernate,...) project. Due to network issues between the web server and the database server, I neet to split the application completely, between the layers and deploy them on two different tomcats, for the service part close to the database server. I have generated allready a webservice and a webservice-client with the Eclipse WTP CXF Plugin.
My Problem is: For the client it generates a copy of the domain model classes, so I can't use them directly in my gui project and would need to introduce an conversion layer, between the web service client and the gui layer. Wich is cumbersome and error prone.
Is there a possibility to generate the web service client (out of the existing web service module and the wsdl) using the shared domain model (model classes are in an separate project, wich both - service and gui - projects depend on)?
desperatly looking for a solution, as the deployment deadline is close...
To generate a copy of the domain model classes (DTOs) is a good practice when you have two physical layers : Your Hibernate POJOs need to be deproxyfied before being sent to an other physical layer. Maybe you could use Dozer to do it, to avoid to spend too much time doing it.
Maybe you should use RMI instead of Web Services if you need performances.
If you're absolutely determined to use your domain objects in the presentation layer, you should look about Gilead (formerly known as Hibernate4GWT).
Pure DTOs, DTOs with Dozer, and Gilead use are described in details here : http://code.google.com/intl/fr/webtoolkit/articles/using_gwt_with_hibernate.html