What is the SEAM FrameWork and why would I want to use it?

I am a JSF developer and recently heard about the SEAM Framework but I don't know a开发者_StackOverflowbout it and what its benefits are.

SEAM tries to bridge some of the gaps between JSF and EJB. Part of the goal appears to be to reduce the amount of XML you have to edit to setup your application by using both annotations within the code and certain conventions to avoid needing as many annotations or XML.

Also, if you read Seam in Action or the Seam introduction you start to get a feeling that there's a certain rivalry felt with Ruby on Rails. Both try to cover a most of the tools needed for a web developer (some kind of ORM solution like ActiveRecord for Rails or Hibernate/JPA for Java, rails vs. seam-gen, testing, ActionView vs. JSF, etc.)

Seam takes it further in certain areas and Rails further in others. To me, I don't really see any rivalry. They're very different and I don't really see them as competing. To me, Seam might offer something to you if you'd like to see a more complete set of Java technologies with some attempt made to integrate them and you'd rather not do it yourself. That assumes however that you happen to like they particular set that they've chosen to try and bring together in Seam. So if you already know and like JSF and know and like either Hibernate and/or JPA, then I'd say you're off on a good fit to like what Seam has to offer. If you don't like those things, I'd give it a skip.

SEAM is a JBOSS framework that links JSF to their Hibernate ORM persistence technology.

I don't use it myself, but it claims to make development of web-based applications that access a relational database easier, faster, etc.

You are under no obligation whatsoever to know anything about it. But if you already know JSF perhaps it would be worth a quick look to see if you like it.