Scala - learning by doing

Question

coming from the PHP-framework symfony (with Apache/MySQL) I would like to dive into the Scala programming language. I already followed a few tutorials and had a look at Lift and Play. Java isn't a stranger to me either. However the past showed that it's easiest to learn things by just doing them.

Currently we have a little - mostly ajax-driven - application build on symfony at my company. My idea is to just build a little project similar to this one which might gets into production in the future.

The app should feature:

• High scalability and performance
• a backend-server
• web-interface
• and a GUI-client

There are plenty of questions arising when I think of this. First of all: Whats the best way to accomplish a easy to maintain, structured base for it? Would it be best to establish a socket based communication between pure-scala server/client and accessing that data via Lift or is building a Lift-app serving as a server and connecting the gui-client (via REST?) the better way?

Furthermore I wounder which database to choose. I'm familiar with (My)SQL but feel like a fool beeing confronted with all these things like NoSQL, MongoDB and more.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

Would it be best to establish a socket based communication between pure-scala server/client and accessing that data via Lift or is building a Lift-app serving as a server and connecting the gui-client (via REST?) the better way?

Lift is not the only one Scala-based framework, for example, you can take a look on Circumflex. So, if you will split your project into server and web/gui clients, you will have an opportunity to try different frameworks without changing other parts of project, if you will get no satisfaction with Lift.

Furthermore I wounder which database to choose. I'm familiar with (My)SQL but feel like a fool beeing confronted with all these things like NoSQL, MongoDB and more.

If you don't know exactly why you need NoSQL storage - in most cases this means that you don't need it. NoSQL is gaining popularity (and there are reasons for that), but it doesn't mean that you should use it for every new project.