Suitable frameworks for ERP like application

Question

I want to create a production management system to be used by a small manufacturing firm. The system will allow to document different stages in manufacturing of equipment. The requirements are as follows:
1.Non browser based interface.Need something like Swing or AWT based.While i understand the convenience of implementing a browser based solution,the business owner insists on a non browser interface
2.Accessed from multiple systems.These systems will allow CRUD operations on the central system (Thin Client?)
3.The application will not have more than 3 concurrent users.
I need some advice regarding what would be a good path for this kind of application.Currently, i'm thinking of using Griffon with RMI. However, i don't have much development experience.Read a bit about Apache River (Jini) too.Would it be a good idea to use Griffon with RMI?

Please provide some advice. Thanks.
EDIT:after some reading, i've decided to use more mainstream frameworks.So, Griffon is not an option. How about Jini(Apache River) or OSGI (Apache Felix)?

Answer 1

With what seems to be your current understanding of the problem, I would not recommend OSGI, especially for a small manufacturing firm (Possible maintenance issues, depending on the "personel").

The main reason why I wouldn't advocate JINI or OSGI in your case is because of what you said

However, i don't have much development experience.

JINI (Apache River) is a viable option as long as you fully understand the concepts of LookupService and service registrations, etc. There's tons of RMI going on here with possible firewall implications...

OSGI is not difficult but you may have issues deciding how to structure your applications as well as interacting with services, etc.

Try to stick to the simplest approach that you can handle for the implementation (Flexible design in mind): Make it work and then improve it.

There are simple Web Services options such as Spring Remoting (over http/https for example), unless Spring introduces too many concepts and headaches for your app.

Answer 2

Hmm how is that a project which recently moved out of the incubation phase be considered mainstream vs a project that's been used in production for more than 3 years now? Anyway, Apache River gives you access to Jini technology and nothing more; meaning you can't achieve item #1 of your list with River alone. River may use RMI for accessing remote resources, however you can use RMI directly, or try out DRMI, Kryonet, Hessian/Burlap, Spring's HTTP Invoker, Protocol Buffers, Avro/Thrift, REST, SOAP, ZMQ and many more.

Even if you choose one of these options and/or River you still have to define the following things

• application structure (file structure and runtime behavior)
• build setup
• dependency management
• testing profiles
• packaging
• deployment strategies

These things and more are what Griffon brings to the table. As you may have noticed the framework allows you to build up applications by adding plugins, reducing thew amount of time you must allot for hunting down dependencies, setting up bootstrap mechanism and getting things done. On the subject of remoting technologies have a look at the different options Griffon has to offer http://artifacts.griffon-framework.org/tags/plugin/remoting

Even more, you can also combine OpenDolphin (http://open-dolphin.org/dolphin_website/Home.html) with Griffon. There's even an example application found at the opendolhpin repository showing a full client-server application (build with Griffon, Grails and OpenDolphin) https://github.com/canoo/open-dolphin/tree/master/dolphin-griffon-crud