I have been reading different web frameworks comparisons. The most accurate I have found is a little bit old, 2008, and it is part of a project by Polytechnic University of Madrid now abandoned. This article was written by José Ignacio Fernández-Villamor, Laura Díaz-Casillas and Carlos Á. Iglesias. It can be found here. It is a comparative study focused on agile web frameworks, high productivity frameworks. It compares Ruby on Rails and its Java partners: Roma, Grails and Trails.
Comparing web frameworks lacks objectivity and it is a hard task. It has been impossible to reach a neutral view until now. Nevertheless, they try to reach a model described by a set of parameters:
- Domain & Persistence
- Component orientation
- Presentation
- Service orientation
- Usability
- Security
- Adoption
- Testing
To evaluate these parameters, they ask some questions and give them a grade. For example, for Domain & persistence, one of the questions is: Is domain definition automatically inferred from schema data? and it has a 20% grade. Answers to the questions can be given a percentage too.
Results are shown in a graphic way which leads us to understand best framework does not exists, it is a question of parameters.

Nevertheless, I found interesting to know which would be the result if an addiction of all the grades is calculated:
Roma | Rails | Trails | Grails |
---|---|---|---|
750 | 650 | 600 | 475 |
Roma is the winner but I have not heard a lot about this framework recently.
I guess that things have changed a lot in the last 4 years, what do you think? But the model seems valuable to me. I will try to review questions and answer them for analyzed frameworks.
Thanks for reading. Comments, criticism and sharing will be appreciated.
Warning: Declaration of Social_Walker_Comment::start_lvl(&$output, $depth, $args) should be compatible with Walker_Comment::start_lvl(&$output, $depth = 0, $args = Array) in /homepages/17/d418276000/htdocs/websitesframeworks/blog/wp-content/plugins/social/lib/social/walker/comment.php on line 60
Warning: Declaration of Social_Walker_Comment::end_lvl(&$output, $depth, $args) should be compatible with Walker_Comment::end_lvl(&$output, $depth = 0, $args = Array) in /homepages/17/d418276000/htdocs/websitesframeworks/blog/wp-content/plugins/social/lib/social/walker/comment.php on line 60
[…] are Rails, Grails and GWT. It is important to notice that Grails and Rails were compared in the Villamor’s article, they were considered as agile web frameworks and Rails won over Grails too. Unfortunately, Trails […]
[…] a Java developer because he has to learn Groovy first, explains Wähner. Nevertheless, according to Villamor and Matt Raible, Grails is an agile framework which can be compared to Ruby on […]