Java desktop application to Client/Server (Web)

We have a desktop java application (image-processing) that is working great, now we have to add a client/server architecture using Java EE plateform.

We must use also MVC, and interacting with many other libraries like JDOM, JMatlink(MATLAB), and calling some exe files.

Based on your experience what is the best choice to do that (framworks, ... )

Correct, you must use an MVC framework to design a flexible and reusable web application on the Java EE platform.

I suggest the following design:

1. Use JSF (Java Server Faces) to design the front end. As you are migrating your desktop application then it will better suit you becuase it's Component and Event driven framework.

2. Middlware: EJB 3(or EJB3.1) This will provide best available flexibility, performance and security to call your Business components directy from JSF Beans or any other remote application.

Over here you can use various design pattern to encapsulate Library and database access i.e. DAO (Data Access Object).

Use DTO (Data Transfer Objects) to transfer your request/response.

Hope it will give base to start your research.

If you can abstract the layers that talk to the backends such that your frontend (Swing?) doesn't need to know where those service are located, you are half-way there.

The key should be a good module concept. Frameworks like the NetBeans platform help you with that, and they can easily integrate non-visual modules that handle the backend code.

I'm not sure what you mean with "We must use also MVC"
MVC is a design pattern not a library or framework.

But if you use something like the NetBeans platform, you'll be applying that pattern anyway, because it forces you to think in modules. Each module will have a defined responsibility and during startup it registers itself with the application.

Take an application that allows you to manage people (e.g. for a human resource department). One module is responsible for displaying a form where the user can look at a single employee. That module in turn looks for a provider that can load or list all employees. How that provider gets the data is invisible to the front end. It could use a flat file, a relational database or a call to a remote EJB server (this is were you could plug your JavaEE stuff in)

The application could even download the modules from the server if correctly configured.

The key is to make the modules independent from each other. This is true for any large scale application regardless of the technology used (web application, a server side daemon or a desktop application)