Improving Wicket's Support for Java EE5 Applications

I am a huge fan of the Wicket Web framework. Wicket has made Web application development fun again for me and for many other developers by greatly lowering the impedance mismatch that exists between HTTP and the Java language. As perfect as Wicket is, though, it could use some improvement in its ability to support Java EE5 based applications. So here I offer my take on what I believe can be done to make Wicket an even better framework. Currently Wicket's support for Java EE5 applications is provided by wicket-contrib-javaee. By adding this add-on to your Wicket application you can reference the functionality exposed by any EJB simply by using the @EJB annotation and adding a few lines of initialization code to the Wicket WebApplication class. However, some developers who have worked with this add-on have voiced concerns about it causing problems in their applications. At the same time, the support behind this add-on appears to be somewhat questionable. This is an unfortunate state of affairs but one which could be rectified if the functionality provided by it was instead folded into the core Wicket distribution. This should not be seen as an endorsement of EE but rather as a recognition that there is a significant interest to employ Wicket in EE applications. This recognition would be similar to that which has already been given to Spring and Guice by having included their interfacing libraries as part of Wicket's core distribution. Such an adaption could result in a greater acceptance of Wicket in environments where EE is the chosen platform for Enterprise applications. In conjunction with this I would also suggest that the next edition of the marvelous Wicket In Action book include a new chapter dedicated to showing just how easy it is to create this type of application. I would gladly contribute it myself if I were asked :) Sincerely, Jeff