A good example of .NET / Domino co-existence
A business need has recently forced the issue to create an interface that can read an RDBMS, collate the data, present it for informational purposes, and provide a reporting mechanism to collect errors in the data. Not very unusual requirements, but a good example of how “competing” technologies can be used in tandem, both showing their strengths. .NET with its rapid data binding model, and flexible web controls, and Domino with its rapid UI development model, and a plug-n-play security model.
With the portion of the app that connects to the backend source, we decided to make it a web service since the data will be presented to both internal employees and outside customers. This way, we can reuse the same logic. In addition, we wanted to be able to sort results based upon the proximity to the customer. This piece of the logic was also suited for a seperate web service. It is pretty much a no-brainer to realize that both of these tasks are better suited for .NET than Domino. (I’ll have a seperate entry to highlight .NET’s DataSet object that is an in-memory database that we used to merge the results from two services).
So we have approximately 20 various fields to limit the results, and a zip code to sort by proximity to a user supplied value. So the user has the results, but in addition they need to have a method to report inaccuracies in the data. So we add a little icon in each row of the results, that when clicked, will display a form to report what the error is and the proper information. The results of this data entry need to be placed in a queue where data specialists can review the error report, verify the change, and mark completed when done. With the promise that this part of the application will be able to show patterns in the inaccuracies and further assist our data integrity efforts (categorization by various fields can show these patterns without any additional effort by the Domino dev).
Here is where Domino’s strengths come into play. About 2 hours to write a basic web service (R6) to take the parameters, write a new document, and return the result; then another handful of hours to create a 12 field form, 10 views, and some basic workflow where the data specialist can verify the completion of the error change. Then with 10 minutes to find out which groups will need access, and adding them to the ACL. For those of you that have followed the .NET for Domino series know that to do that in .NET would take longer no matter who you are.
Wave the magic wand and management is pleased to see applications making use of all the platforms they have invested in. When we feel that R7 is rock-solid we can simplify the web services by avoiding that god-awful request_content field.
Love it or hate it, this is the role that Domino is being relegated to by IBM.