A rant, continued
As a follow-up to my mini-rant Yesterday, I want to say another thank you. This time for not being too scathing with your replies. In all I was pleasantly surprised at the response it got. It seems there are lots of you coming round to my way of thinking. Well, either that or the Domino Zealots have packed up and left a long time back.
You can probably guess that I love my job. I wouldn't change it for anything. However, I like to think my job is as a Web Developer and not as a Domino Developer. Okay, I know a hell of a lot more about Domino than any other web platform but that's not to say I can't imagine ever using anything else. Sometimes I wish people would look around them and stop being so single-minded. It's a simple message I am trying to spread and one I am bound to earn some enemies for. I don't mind that. For every person I upset I open the door to a whole new world for another.
Some choice responses from Yesterday:
Its good that you are understanding the requirement and selecting the best product to do the job. I have dealt with too many "consultants" who clearly use a certain product because its all they know rather than being the most suited tool.
I know EXACTLY what you are referring to! Hey, I love Domino and it's given me a good living but my new client is extremely impressed with PHP - I haven't had to say 'I can't do that' yet! And besides, he hates paying for Domino licenses.
As a former Domino developer, I understand your pain with the product.
imho, too many kludgy workarounds with domino apps; when doing a webapp from the ground up its nicer to work with technology that's more recent and written to do what's expected of a web app.
Domino is a great technology - BUT - shouldn't be used blindly for absolutely everything.
I have to say that I find the ability to create dynamic websites easier and quicker in Lotus Notes... but as soon as something gets complicated you just know there's a whole heap of workaround that you'll need to get it to work in domino.
You see? I'm not the only one with issues!
The main argument for Domino seemed to be that it would be easy. Well, yeah, it would be, initially. I'm not interested in easy though. I read easy and hear lazy. Anyway, why would I want to get them started with Domino? They don't really need replication or calendaring or any of the other stuff and they already have mail clients.
If you still can't decide which platform is best for you, why not ask the HORSE? I'll leave it down to you to decide who sent me this link...
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Easy is not necessarily lazy, sometimes its smart. I'm in agreement that you should look at a variety of tools. I am certainly guilty of using domino because its what I know so well. However you havent really given us a good idea as to why you arent using domino other than the vague...
"It would be easy to do so for the initial phases but it's when the customer starts getting fussy. I hate having to say "We can't really do that". "
Job postings/recruitment sites lend themselves very well to domino. Easy way to have content mgt for recruiters, users can easily enter a preference/profile saying "hey, notify if these jobs appear". There are a whole load of things that can be done around a site like this that makes domino the ideal solution. Unless there is something i am missing, domino does seem to be a better tool for the job than php. Sometimes I also think you love to get a rise out of some of us, lol!
You're right Joe, sometimes I do like an argument for the sake of an argument. You're also right that easy can sometimes be smart. Maybe I'm not smart enough to see that ;o)
When you say: "domino does seem to be a better tool for the job than php" do you have the knowledge of PHP to back that up?
Once you've developed a set of core libraries and scripts, wether it be PHP or Java or Perl, the supposed "easy to build advantage" of Domino becomes a lot smaller than you'd believe.
For Websphere/Apache, we have a common set of abstract classes and common JARs that let us create an application framework with full authentication and external JDBC/JMS/Domino access within about 1-2 hours. It's marginally more than Domino, but in the context of even 2-3 month projects, it's nothing.
Personally, my (anecdotal) beef with PHP is that the database code gets too wound in with the presentation stuff, but never having seriously worked with it I wouldn't take that opinion as gospel.
Cheers!
Luke
I too have been looking for a replacement for Domino for the things that I can't easily do, case in point multi-row dynamic tables that can be stored easily to a relational database. The tool I have been playing with is Flowbuilder XSP studio from www.flowbuilder.com. There are several versions from small business to large enterprise. Like Luke mentioned once you build code libraries and scripts you can develope applications rather quickly, Flowbuilder uses what they call Beans to contain this prebuilt code, rather slick system just hope I don't sound like an advertisement.
According to me, technology choice should mainly depend on what you have to do. The more you manipulate raw data, the more you go on the SGBDR side (then with J2EE/Php/.net whatever...). The more you manage information, the more Domino becomes interesting.
The advantage of using PHP over Domino for a web dev may be, at firts (tell me if you see anything else, besides the fact that php/j2ee implies SGBDR), html rendering control and better overall control of what is automatically done "behind the scene" with Domino. (and maybe not in the way you want). According to me, this approach it bad. I see domino as what we could call a framework for information/document managment. When trying to solve a pb, I try not to think as in J2EE/PHP mode where your mind is free (and often beeing too free leads to build some ugly monsters for unexperienced developers - remember that 80% of J2EE project actually fail !!!). I think : "What does the Domino framework brings me and how can I leverage the Domino assets to solve my pb". It appers than thinking this way has considerabiliy reduced my dev time !
Anyway, use the right tool for the right job is the way to go in my opinion (it can often lead to an hybrid Domino/SGBDR/J2EE stuff). Then, choose the techno that you know better and are efficient in. Nowadays, I would (and have) certainly choose J2EE that offers the complete range from freeware to entreprise class products.
What do you think ?!
Have you seen this "domino" site {Link}
It's an example of Domino being used for a job posting/recruitment site.
The puakma.net log now contains a few of these:
"No Anonymous access is allowed to '/names.pma'. Requesting login".
I'm guessing there are some Domino die-hards that just want the NAB to live on.... ;-) /names.pma does not exist.
Brendon.
Jake you have a great site,
You have helped me countless times,
I don't want to sound too negative,in the present time you have to consider other technologies, Lotus domino isn't as appealing to customers, its too expensive to implement, the flexibility isn't there, the user community is shrinking, IBM are doing more harm than good by integrating more and more with websphere (they may see as a positive), I can't see any light at the end of the tunnel, it gets me more mad when organisations migrate from notes to exchange
There is a core belief that the end is near for domino, I read a majority of the domino developer web blogs, no one is really upbeat about domino and that comes from the users we are supporting.
we have to do something or we will be developing applicationss in .net
{beef with PHP is that the database code gets too wound in with the presentation stuff}
This is somewhere that domino seems to excel. You can do the model-view-controller seperation in PHP but it does take a little planning up front. Well worth it in the end.
I develop domino by day and php by night. Both great but for different solutions.
1) Kuldpic : please do not participate propagating the 1036th "Domino is dead" rumor. I hear that since I discover Notes in 1995 ! Even if IBM enphasis is on websphere now (which is logical both for the colossal investment IBM has done to catch up on J2EE and Java, but also cause they need some new stuff to sell...it's a commercial company after all). The support for Domino and further development as be confirmed and reaffirmed at least 10 times by all IBM managers. Just take a look at the forthcoming Domino 6.5 & 7 ! We as a community have to help Domino become more popular !
2) a recruitement site I helped build 3 years ago is {Link} still up and running without any pb !
3) Carl Joseph : 100% agree : both are great for different solutions ! That's the goal you want to reach that should help you choose the techno to use. A techno is never "better" than another, it's only more suited to a particular project...and I think Domino is versatile enough to be a very reasonable choice in much projects.
My opinion.
Jake,
interested to hear your musings on Websphere ... I'm not that familiar with PHP, so I'm curious as to why you'd jump that way ? Is it because of prior experience, or have you evaluated many technologies and PHP is best, hands down?
Jake,
I have also built a recruitment system in Domino. It depends on your requirements but it didn't work in my case. The client ended up wanting a CRM solution with job postings cross referenced with clients / companies cross referenced with candidates. With the whole thing handling activity (job replies, T&C's posted etc). The only good thing about using Domino was the mail processing when dealing with inbound job replies and matching against vacancies.
I learnt a thing or two here about requirements gathering ;-)
So in this case Domino was definitely not the answer (at the very least for the data store).
Have you considered .net ? Looks interesting.
Jake,
How timely your blog was, about 2 weeks ago I was trying to figure out how I was going to pull a bunch of employee data from an Oracle table and also include a few dblookups for employees to select their name etc..
Well, I 'stepped out of the box' and decided to build an easy .ASP (gasp!) page that fronts my domino workflow application. The .ASP page queries our Oracle table, pulls in all the information about the currently logged in employee (via a hard cookie set on our intranet).
I then ask a few questions of the employee and finally "post" the .ASP form to an agent waiting on the domino server. The agent kicks off the workflow and away it goes.
So simple, and no connections between servers!
-Lance
Hi,
besides all the talk about Domino being inflexible or limited.
I still have a single reason why I sometimes do not tend to use Domino.
It is slow, it has always been so. This is a real pity (and yes, I am familiar with caching). You will find Domino used for company Intranets but many customers prefer other solutions for the outside world. Yes, it has improved from nearly unusuable (R4) to acceptable (R6) but it still has a disadvantages, even to scripting languages like PHP (which proves that there is still room for improvements). This is a real pity because I still love the concept of Domino (and besides this our company uses Domino for their website).
Cheers
Heini
My girlfriend is so slow at the marathon! She really sucks!
What I prefer to do is look at the possibilities something/someone offers you and try to overcome the difficulties or try to influence them to change. I don't rant about my girlfriend, she is not bad, I am not good, if it doesn't work out, we are to different. Either find another girlfriend or learn from each other.
Ranting about Lotus Notes is the same as ranting about your girlfriend. If you fall in love with a product, you may be disillisioned that it won't be able to satisfy all your needs. Jake is realistic enough about this, since he works with other products as well. Jake also tries to get the most out of Notes, as he demonstrates on this site. There is no need for ranting, other than it being a psychological phase he is going through.
Off course there are things that I would like to see changed as well in Notes. There are also many things that were changed without me asking for it, but making me very happy.
My knowledge develops, Notes's possibilities develop. The only question is, can Notes keep up with my speed, and can Notes keep up with the competitors (my neighbours wife is good at the marathon).
What would really help Notes keeping up is a structural better way of learning from it's clients and it's developers and using the thus acquired knowledge. Three simple actions could help Notes with this:
1) create a Notes wish list, were people can suggest improvements and possibly vote in which order they should be realized.
2) buy articles from Jake and Mike and people like them, and publish them in Notes today.
3) structure the answers to problems in Notes net forums, so developers have to search and experiment less. Update the help files / an other repository with solutions people have come up with.
It is like talking with your girlfriend about the things you like and the things you both want to work on.
I've been hearing the Domino is dead rumour for over 6 years now. There's always some new technology coming out that's supposed to be better. It hasn't happened yet.
For easily building highly functional web apps, Domino is hard to beat. From J2EE to ASP to Perl-based systems, I've seen developers struggle to build stuff I could do with my eyes closed in Domino. Domino systems are generally more robust from my experience as well.
Yes, it isn't perfect, but it's still pretty goddam good.
hi all