When will the Domino community learn?
A few weeks back we had another round of Domino wish-listing over at Jake’s place, with Ed Brill popping in and adding fuel to the fire (Damien Katz chimed in on this round too). So then Ed asks for another repeat which yielded more of the same. At one point Ed makes a reference (comment 121) to Ferdy’s post where Ferdy hammers the nail perfectly, which lead me to wonder, was Ed agreeing with Ferdy? Was Ed admitting that the Domino engine is dead as a web development platform? If so, it would be the first honest thing that IBM has said about Domino, it just wasn’t actually said.
I am in the same camp as Ferdy; as a web platform Domino is a dead end, and some folks simply need to learn to live with this fact. Whether you go down the J2EE path, the .NET path, or the PHP/RoR path, you will need to adjust your skillsets since Domino will not be moving forward. Domino will be a back-end part of many web solutions, but as we know it today, it will stay. There will not be any retroactive patches to the platform. There will be no fixes in any version in the forseeable future. IBM will never open up to code for the public to scrutinize.
Time to move on folks.
December 3rd, 2006 at 10:49 pm
I am slowly coming to the same realization, although in denial for quite some time. I used to think anything could be done in domino (thanks in part to codestore.net, notestips.net, and the rest of the domino community) but as I have to started to play with RoR and other technologies I have come to realize that Domino Web development just isn’t efficient or practical anymore. Now the major hurdle is picking a new technology or technologies that I can work with and have the same vigor I do for domino but also will pay the bills. ; )
December 4th, 2006 at 8:11 am
Do what you enjoy, the rest will come in due time.
December 4th, 2006 at 4:44 pm
I’ve only done extremely simple Domino web development. How do you get Notes data into a non-Domino website? Is that done using ?ReadViewEntries or some similar mechanism? If someone somewhere could post some articles (or direct me to some existing ones) that would be a tremendous resource.
December 4th, 2006 at 5:51 pm
ReadViewEntries is a common approach charles, as is the COM interface, and even web services. Here is an IBM article that covers them pretty well:
http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/library/domino-msnet/
December 5th, 2006 at 6:35 am
Yes, after 5 years of IBM trying to force feed Webshpere to Domino users I have given up. Use Notes to build applications for the Notes client and leave web development to tools that are optimized for the task. IBM would do better by stopping all Domino updates and focusing on the Notes client, which also needs some major updating. Oh wait - that is what they’re doing!
BTW - Websphere/Rational won’t be the tools that I use for web development.
December 5th, 2006 at 8:05 am
I have only about six months experience on WSAD and Rational tools, and my only memory is the amount of effort to get them all working together!
December 5th, 2006 at 11:57 am
Wonderful, thanks for the help.
December 29th, 2006 at 7:19 pm
have a look there
http://www.ferdychristant.com/blog/archive/C32065BD01D61C158025722E006BB318#DOMM-6WXV4W
December 30th, 2006 at 1:09 pm
I read your reply to Ferdy, and you are certainly entitled to your opinion. Yet your entire post is dependent upon the assumption that the technology is not important, but those of us who work in the world of integration know that the technology is critical, lest you be stuck in the COM API/WIN32 world.
I actually found the “maintainability” argument the most entertaining. If you think the idea of embedding workflow logic into buttons, or parsing through multi-value fields is “maintainable”, I shudder at what you would consider “difficult”.
If you spend alot of time in the J2EE world then I can see why you feel this way. Websphere is a nightmare that I will never go back to. Take a peak at my .NET for Domino Developer series to see how well MS has done in the fight to beat J2EE.
December 30th, 2006 at 10:05 pm
Of course Technology IS important for me but not for my customers.
I also don’t really understand why you are talking about a workflow using a multi-value field. Are you telling me that this is what you do when you want to implement a workflow ?
Anyway I am not a pro .Net, a pro Java or pro anything. I like productive tools. If you show me something I can use with my voice for creating applications and not coding one single line I will give up everything.
meanwhile I see that all softwares I have seen are not suitable for web…. and your domino platform is not so bad compared to the rest.
I will read your articles.
regards.
December 31st, 2006 at 12:09 am
Sorry about that Pejman, you caught me in a bad mood this afternoon
I know all too well that Domino is a very rapid application development environment that is greatly simplified by its data storage mechanism, and security model. Yet where Domino is today (with respect to web development) is where the rest of the world was 5 years ago, and I cannot wait anymore.
Simple things like session management, consuming and providing web services, properly formatted XML and/or HTML, control over rendering, and in-memory caching should be standard development tools and not something you have to hack together or live without. It’s not a matter of coolness, it is simply where the market has gone and it has become what developers and users expect.
Notes/Domino is what got me into the IT market, but when it comes to web development, it has lagged too far behind for my taste. You can still create very simple applications, very quickly, but performance, maintainability, and scalability will be the long-term price that most end up paying.
The multi-value field comment was because I recently spent a good number of days extracting data from a Notes application where a developer used multi-value fields everywhere. These fields are convenient but when developers start using them to simulate tabular data, it makes me want to pound my head on a table corner.
The logic-in-a-button comment is just a bugaboo of mine that drives me crazy every time I have to hack through some consultants “workflow” application where every one of 20 different buttons has 300 lines of un-commented LotusScript embedded in it.
Again, sorry for the sarcastic tone. I’ve had my herbal tea and all is calm……
January 1st, 2007 at 10:27 am
no problem !
I understand that the Domino community, which is a passionate one, to be scared of the IBM behavior these last years. They had been very talented to market some known products like OS2, 123 … and we know what they became.
I think that the community should complain less in public threads and put more pressure on IBM to make them change their messaging strategy…
of course it’s easy to say, not easy to achieve!!
happy new year
February 1st, 2007 at 4:08 am
I stumbled across this website and found the entire series of articles regarding Domino -> .net very informative and very well done.
Thanks for your efforts Jeff.
However, a simple question is bugging me these days. Quite obviously I am now looking to convert my knowledge from Domino to .net, and am studying the later technology (beginner phase now).
I have lot of doubts about the portability. In a world that’s changing in terms of platforms, clients, do we need to be stuck to another Microsoft server platform today? What are the advantages of this move? What does .net offer more than , let’s say, PHP or Ruby on Rails or J2EE?
I’m very looking forward to this matter, I am a beginner and I’m only asking a question
Thanks and regards