1Patrick Kwinten  21.02.2012 12:59:02  A few notes to ’Delving into XPages: Wins, Losses, and abject FAILs ....’ article

NSF improvements are high on the wishlist, indeed.

2Lars Berntrop-Bos  21.02.2012 13:45:44  A few notes to ’Delving into XPages: Wins, Losses, and abject FAILs ....’ article

re: c) Java API:

I cannot reproduce. Both in the Designer Help db and the online infocenter, the parameters are documented like this:

Syntax

public DocumentCollection getAllDocumentsByKey(java.util.Vector keys)

throws NotesException

public DocumentCollection getAllDocumentsByKey(Object key)

throws NotesException

public DocumentCollection getAllDocumentsByKey(java.util.Vector keys, boolean exact)

throws NotesException

public DocumentCollection getAllDocumentsByKey(Object key, boolean exact)

throws NotesException

no confusion there. Where do you get these generic parameters from?

3Martin Jinoch  21.02.2012 14:08:45  A few notes to ’Delving into XPages: Wins, Losses, and abject FAILs ....’ article

I agree.

Small correction: JSF under XPages is based on 1.1 but with some parts of 2.0 backported to it.

ad slow Designer) while developing complex apps I suggest you to never use db on server, always local replica. And turn off Build automatically.

4David Marko  21.02.2012 18:02:20  A few notes to ’Delving into XPages: Wins, Losses, and abject FAILs ....’ article

@ Martin Jinoch

I develop on local with local sever as I need ACL working properly. Regarding disabling 'Build automatically' a know it a I tried both mode but can't say whats better at the end :-(

5Michael Bourak  21.02.2012 18:04:05  A few notes to ’Delving into XPages: Wins, Losses, and abject FAILs ....’ article

I won't comment on all aspects but let me add some things :

- DDE Speed : when you are developing a Play!Framework app, you basically are in a text editor.Same with the enormous majority of web frameworks. You can't then compare the speed of a text editor with a designer tool. And in DDE you have the choice to be in "code" or "design" view...

- DDE Speed 3 : with any other web framework and with JEE in general, you have your code locally. So yes, replicate locally or have a domino server locally...it's much faster

- JSF Choice : JSF was certainly the best fit for Notes "Forms" driven app. And although XPages is at JSF 1.1, the engine has been greatly optimized and the majority of 2.0 features are in it and even some more...

- Support : yes, Play!Framework authors anwser a lot in forums...because it'a very young product and the owner is still one of it's developer. But what happens in 5 years ? See what happend with Struts which was quite hype 5 years ago and now totally outdated...and if you chose it you basically are encouraged to migrate ...

- Code Reuse : If you designed your LS and Java libraries in a OO way, there is a lot of chance you can reuse them. Of course it's require some efforts, but it can be done. I'm actually doing in in one of our quite big app and once the bases have been set, I found it quite productive to reuse LS libraries.

IBM could do better, for sure...but if you see things with a positive angle, you have a damn good framework for building web app with XPages.

6David Marko  21.02.2012 19:03:24  A few notes to ’Delving into XPages: Wins, Losses, and abject FAILs ....’ article

@Michael Bourak - DDE Speed : when you are developing a Play!Framework app, you basically are in a text editor.Same with the enormous majority of web frameworks. You can't then compare the speed of a text editor with a designer tool. And in DDE you have the choice to be in "code" or "design" view...

David Marko: In Play!( but in anothers as well) you also use IDE like Eclipse, Netbeans ... so you are on par. Yes DDE do more but ... if I have more advanced xPage DDE cant display it properly, its rather mess so I'm mostly using source tab. I would rather have more HTML friendly template engine and could use Adobe Dreamweaver. Even common Eclipse with WEB Tools have decent HTML editor with support fot HTML tags, their attributes ... there is no such in DDE.

@Michael Bourak - Support : yes, Play!Framework authors anwser a lot in forums...because it'a very young product and the owner is still one of it's developer. But what happens in 5 years ? See what happend with Struts which was quite hype 5 years ago and now totally outdated...and if you chose it you basically are encouraged to migrate ...

David Marko - hmm, hmm, I miss the point here. xPages are young as well, isn't it? I have just opposite filling. Simply compare the forums ... on xPages there are 5 messages per day .... a few times more on Play! (as example) xPages is completely unknown technology in the real IT world. Vendor should promote the pruduct in some huge way, in my oppinion.

@Michael Bourak - Code Reuse : If you designed your LS and Java libraries in a OO way, there is a lot of chance you can reuse them. Of course it's require some efforts, but it can be done. I'm actually doing in in one of our quite big app and once the bases have been set, I found it quite productive to reuse LS libraries.

David Marko: How do you resuse LS libraries in xPages besides calling LS Agent, which is very restrictive for most things?

@Michael Bourak - IBM could do better, for sure...but if you see things with a positive angle, you have a damn good framework for building web app with XPage

David Marko - There are not the complains only. See all our blog posts over the years. Most are positive :-) I just have a real worries about how the product with no marketing in our country can survive competition. In classic Notes app, there was/is almost no competition, but in web app world we have all Rails, Grails, Django, ASP, PHP environments which last for many years, are well known and therefore with better adoption at customers.

7Dan O’Connor  21.02.2012 22:42:03  A few notes to ’Delving into XPages: Wins, Losses, and abject FAILs ....’ article

For item (c) this is not really a Notes Java API issue.. I have seen this across the board when dealing with code completion in Eclipse. I am not sure if there is a setting in Eclipse to make it use the parameter names defined in the code or not.

For instance when I create an SWT Key adapter I get the following method auto created:

public void keyPressed(KeyEvent arg0) {}

it should be

public void keyPressed(KeyEvent event) {}

This is an Eclipse issue not a notes api one.

8Nathan T. Freeman  21.02.2012 23:16:04  A few notes to ’Delving into XPages: Wins, Losses, and abject FAILs ....’ article

@7 Dan, it's a compiler setting.

{ Link }

9Simon O’Doherty  22.02.2012 9:05:24  A few notes to ’Delving into XPages: Wins, Losses, and abject FAILs ....’ article

Hi,

Some clarifications.

> b) the documentation is horrible ...

The documentation is quite extensive and the developers took a lot of time doing videos for example on the Appdev Wiki for XPages. You have OpenNTF and numerous other sites that XPages dev + community contribute to.

Per Henrick did a nice list recently.

{ Link }

Alternatively you can check OpenNTF if you want to dismiss a blog post.

> Also the help(in forums) is not as it should be. I think the xPages core developers should read xPages forum every day(

They do, and sometimes there can be confusion as to what the forums are actually for. They are community forums, they are not Developers to respond to people forums.

While developers do read them (and support), we are not obliged to respond to posts there. As it is a community forum. Before there is any misunderstanding, what I mean is if someone posts "X is not working!" vs someone opening a PMR on the same issue, the PMR takes priority. This is the same with the ND forums as well.

Stuff gets reviewed and SPR'ed via those forums but as a conduit to talk to directly to development it would not be the best place.

I think you have an actual coding question vs a fault in the product, then stackoverflow would be a better place to post the questions. Although I do see a large number of responses to the posts you linked.

> a) xPages are based on wrong and old fashion technology.

One of your forum posts you link to a post where it explains why this is not totally correct.

10logan  22.02.2012 11:03:46  A few notes to ’Delving into XPages: Wins, Losses, and abject FAILs ....’ article

I can add few of my own to that:

i) The source building mechanism is buggy. Its a real pain to develop application with few controls written in java and another few dozens xpages and custom controls. It really cannot handle the complexity. And that is more there is no logs at all! I want to know what the build has done so I can find the reason why some custom control is still rendering in its old version. Right know the only option is to hit clean few times and pray that it will work.

j) It the IBM cannot deliver proper and organized documentation then maybe at least it should release the source code of the xpages engine. Probably lwpd.xsp.core.jar would be enough. This would allow us at least to understand what is going on under the hood and describe mechanics with certainty that we lack right now (I dont see many people in the community who understand anything connected with inner construction of this framework). What is IBM afraid of to release this few libraries? That someone will still those? They are worth s**t outside of yellow bubble!