A couple of wake up calls
Yesterday I published the latest article in the LAMP series. With this I have just about covered everything you need to know to create a web application in PHP. All that's left is Part 6, Subforms and then we can move on to the advanced stuff. I had no idea I would get so carried away with it.
Meanwhile, Erwin has been at the View Conference, in Amsterdam. He's been dropping me the odd snippet of gossip via his Sony-Ericsson P800.
I asked him to write up the interesting bits so I could pass it on. If you're planning on sticking it out with Domino, you might want to read what he has to say. It won't be news to us all but it will be soon:
The keynote speaker was Ken Bisconti, who is Vice President of Messaging & Advanced Collaboration Solutions, Lotus Software, IBM Software Group (ever read SUCH a lengthy job title?).
He told us that Domino will become part of what IBM calls the Lotus Workplace Platform. And that platform has it's roots in Lotus Software, however, is mainly based upon IBM Websphere technology. You should see Domino as one of the 'content providers' to the Lotus Workplace platform (besides DB2 among others).
Ken presented us the path IBM/Lotus is going to walk towards the future. In this future is the introduction of a new client, being the Lotus Workplace client. Domino will not go away, nor will Notes. Don't think of this client to replace Notes. Envision the users of the upcoming Workplace platform. Those users might want to have an offline experience. That's where the new Workplace client comes in.
What's interesting about this client is the fact that the client will be based upon the Eclipse Platform. So it's not going to be a developer tool, it's going to be a end user tool, but then based on Eclipse. Interesting isnt' it? Ken said that the way it's going to support offline replication is by way of SyncML, which makes sense I think. It will be released next year we were told.
Anybody as confused by all this as I am?
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On the Workplace front - and where the 'different' clients fit in - I found this pdf as a useful resource>
{Link}
Additionally - the P800 rocks - it truly is an amazing mobile/pda/anything you want.
I think that this is just a part of the writing on the wall that we've been talking about for the past few years. Now it is just becoming a reality. I know that they are saying that the existing Notes client is not going away, but it will become such a legacy tool in favor of the new Workplace client, that it will eventually just die a slow death. They are placing tons of money into this new product and they want it to succeed. So I guess we'll all see...
Re: Erwins notes;
Yeah, PHP -is- awesome.
Jerry?
My CV no longer even mentions the word Notes or Domino and I've been at it for years. I just talk about web apps, HTML, DHTML, Javascript, XML etc.. If I received a CV with Domino all over it I'd think "Just another Domino Developer desperate to get out."
The future of Notes has been a subject of dischord for me for over a year now... ever since I heard about the role Notes would be playing, subserviently, to WAS. Even adding a DB2 backend seems a grossly unncessary step. I understand it's all business at the end of the day, but what I see, looking at IBM's efforts now, is way too much way too late. They're overkilling a dead horse, in some respects. Domino is too big as a single application to keep up with the constantly evolving world of web development and open standards. Further complicating it will not help. It's -almost- perfectly balanced at the moment. Smaller more agile technologies like PHP are going to lead the way, though, as Notes devolves. Any hope for preserving our income based on notes expertise moving forward will be in gleaning what funcationality we can from it to mold it and mesh it with new standards and technologies. Altogether, not an impossible task. But when I see the cluster that IBM is unleashing, PHP looks so pristine.
I'm not all about talking up PHP, though - that's your mantle at the moment, Jake. :-) My point is that small, simple and agile are the buzzwords of the near future. What you have shared with me from what Erwin has had to say makes this crytal, if not painfully, clear.
Jerry,
Interesting comments, but I don't think php will be leading the way anytime soon for big business, which is where most of us make our livelihood. They will be resitant to going with anything that is not supported by a vendor and doesnt have that cool word "java" in it. Doesnt make sense does it? Then again decisions in big business rarely do.
HUK,
I agree with you on the sense-rating of big business, and thanks. And I'm not necessarily saying it will be PHP... but you hit on something there. Java, for all it's big company adoption and sponsoring is helped along by a sizable open source community, the same ideology that gives us wonderful things like PHP and MySQL and directly Apache and tomcat. What I don't expect managers to realize is the makeup of their expensive solutions.
As software development becomes decentralized through open collaboration, companies like MS and Big Blue have to get agressive in squeezing out those of us who are strictly service providers. Witness Xforms, IBM's past attempts to hit the small business segment with web dev services, MS hijacking of java to make .net, etc.... I honestly think these companies are becoming hostile to those of us who make a living simply having skill sets related to their software. It appears more and more like they would rather we work for them rather than our own firms, if at all.
As service providers who have to make our big and sometimes ignorant customers happy, adopting scads of small scale open standard methodologies and technology is going to keep us afloat through the ever changing world of business application software. It's clever of MS and IBM to repackage open source technology and make people pay the big price tags they've come to expect for it. We can ride that wave too by increasing our knowledge base. The old days of making a living just knowing LotusScript are fading fast, unless you like maintaining legacy systems.
Overall, I guess, I see Erwins report as validating Jake's persuit of PHP knowledge. That he has the foresite to write it up and educate the rest of us is brilliantly positioning our segment of the coder-scape to survive.
Buying in Lotus Domino for its support would be one of the stupidest business decisions you could make.
Ok, I understand the position of the decision maker. If it all goes wrong you need someone to blame and to get it sorted. Obvious enough.
BUT, take Lotus Support. What's the point of that?! The manager may sleep well at night, safe in the knowledge his business apps are supported. But, us developers know what a waste of time and money the support contract is. Don't we!
My bet is that you easily get an answer (and probably a fix) to any bug/problem with the open source gang (for free) than you ever would from Lotus (not free).
Lotus Suport. Don't make me laugh....
(okey, maybe a bit off topic, but here we go:)
to be quite paranoid, one could say that ibm is all about revenue, about making money.
- like a normal business.
hmm...
- maybe one doesn't need to be paranoid at all to think that a business is about money?
New licences are a he£# of a lot more revenueboosting than plain ol' maintenance, so let's make something brand new to sell!
JAA, gunther, ich komme ! Geld! Dollars!
Hmm... :-)
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But, truthfully, I'm not confused. It all makes sorta sense. Now. If you accept a couple of "big business logics" 'truths'. And I can play that game. So bring it on!
Jake, I concur on the vendor support issue, but it seems to be the argument against open source. Vendor support, what a joke,"we'll need a cr card to open that issue.". ridiculous considering the times i have seen the sh*t hit the fan it is typically smart consultatns and employees who figure out the issue and get it solved vs vendor support. i am excited about getting into more php/lamp. i think smarter companies will get into it. java has its uses but strikes me as far too complex and cumbersome
I'm looking forward with some interest to how IBM rides the open-source snake. Today, the OS, tomorrow the database, the application server... which makes me wonder where the IBM software landscape is going to be moving in 5 years' time.
We could speculate that IBM will be fighting the 'enterprise' battle, while smaller organisations will increasingly move to open source software. IBM won't mind at first because they're a big tin kind of company and it's what they know and what they feel safe with. There's one problem with that - let's call that the 'Sun dilemma' and leave it at that.
Fwiw, the LAMP online support community is a zillion times better than anything proprietary vendors can come up with. Research a Notes problem and Notes.net or a coupla blogs and sites are your only resources. On the other hand, Linux and Google are a match made in heaven. If anything, the problem can be solution overload.
Jeez, I've even solved some Linux problems by having someone on a Linux mailing list referring me to the source code! (just the comments in the source code, but still...). That's a whole new world of empowerment. That's the way of the future (I believe), except for big corporates and/or places where CYA myopia means they'll never invest in technology without someone to point fingers at if things break.
A for PHP vendor support, {Link} is a commercial company supporting the development of PHP.
And as for big business, Yahoo chose PHP for it's language of choice a while back. {Link} Can't get much bigger than Yahoo! !
Domino Client/Designer implemented in Eclipse will be value-add for java developers coding in java as first class language in designer , among others. LotusScript can be implemented to run as sript language on JVM (proven concept), for backward compatibility. Also posible for Formula Language. In that way , IBM can continue with fat-client strategy (partly abandoned and replaced with thin client) as rich-intranet/internet client giving extensible tool with no counterpart on client side.
Interesting initiative is promotion of Universal Semantic WEB client based on RDF XML standard (see: {Link} ).
Personally I prefer Java Swing as GUI framework on which new client may be based , gut *war* is already started
Anybody tried to code Java in the Eclipse 3.0 milestones builds? It very good, especially when it comes to formatting, auto generating code, and refactoring. It's a dream compared with the Designer.
I see no reason that you cannot build a very good thick end client upon Eclipse.
As to the immediate death of Domino, it is all so 2002...
Currently there are no real competitors and there will be none in the foreseeable future that can match Domino main selling points, that developers with low programming ability can create quick & dirty but functional applications. Of course you can create better applications on other platforms, but that is with high quality programmers, and unfortunately they are not always equipped with the social abilities needed to create a good business solutions.
My personal opinion is that there will be plenty of work for people with Domino competence the next 5 years or so (Also for hard core programmers that are needed to correct the mess that the other developers have created), and after this there will be other RAD tools where we can use the same abilities. Currently people are very focused upon cost control, and big Java or SAP projects are very unpopular.