JMP302 - Workplace Designer 101
IBM Workplace is coming of age. Version 2.6 released just a few days ago seems to be the first one suitable to do some real world application. At the core of Workplace designer is XML and JavaScript. To make the transition from existing Domino skills easier Workplace Designer provides a host of visual layout and @Formulas wrapped into JavaScript.
What I liked:
All data in Workplace Designer is defined in XML Schema. IBM did embrace this open standard instead of creating something proprietary. The biggest advantage there is, that you can reuse industry standard schemata and base your Workplace applications on them. Why does that matter? First it shortens the definition phase of your data format, since other people defined it for you. Secondly it makes your application more portable between platforms and customers.
Deployment in a development environment is pretty easy and quite fast. While e.g. MyEclipseIde offers a similar speed of deployment for J2EE Workplace designer also takes care of the database and updates loss free the table structure.
What I didn't like:
There is a strict separation between JavaScript that is running on the client and running on the server. In reality that means, that in a lot of cases you send back the whole page to refresh just a part of it. With all the buzz around Ajax for web applications, this looks a little backward. But there is always the next version.
Deployment into development is pretty manual, with the capability to loss free updating the database.
As usual YMMV.
What I liked:
All data in Workplace Designer is defined in XML Schema. IBM did embrace this open standard instead of creating something proprietary. The biggest advantage there is, that you can reuse industry standard schemata and base your Workplace applications on them. Why does that matter? First it shortens the definition phase of your data format, since other people defined it for you. Secondly it makes your application more portable between platforms and customers.
Deployment in a development environment is pretty easy and quite fast. While e.g. MyEclipseIde offers a similar speed of deployment for J2EE Workplace designer also takes care of the database and updates loss free the table structure.
What I didn't like:
There is a strict separation between JavaScript that is running on the client and running on the server. In reality that means, that in a lot of cases you send back the whole page to refresh just a part of it. With all the buzz around Ajax for web applications, this looks a little backward. But there is always the next version.
Deployment into development is pretty manual, with the capability to loss free updating the database.
As usual YMMV.
Posted by Stephan H Wissel on 22 January 2006 | Comments (0) | categories: Lotusphere