RAD of Tomorrow

06/26/2008 12:55 PM by Chris Toohey

I was in the middle of writing this arm-length article on why you should know XML and XSLT... and realized that I was well onto writing a book on the subject. Wanting to get the point across, here's the highlights on "Why you should know XML and XSLT as a Domino and Lotus Notes Client developer":

First, the more "in general" thoughts:

• Everything that you see in your Browser is logic-driven content.
• Content consists of either resources or markup.
• Markup is text.

XML, which is nothing more than structured text, can be translated on-the-fly via XSLT into anything that is "text"-based - HTML, XHTML, JavaScript, CSS, ... etc., so let's keep that in mind.

Now for something more Domino/Lotus Notes Client friendly:

• DXL is here and readily available to us Domino Web and Lotus Notes Client developers. (Sure, still not complete, but for NotesDocument management...)
• XML, XSLT, and DXL can all be combined (DXL is simply XML after all) to make some pretty amazing advances in both Domino Web and Lotus Notes Client development.
• With XPages possibly alleviating most of the hacks we rely on today for Domino Web Development (and eventually Lotus Notes Client Development), the more flexible and separate from application UI we store and maintain our data, the more "forward-ready" we are when we are presented with new presentation technologies and capabilities.
• Everything changes - RAD today is not going to be RAD tomorrow. If we do a little more architecture work up-front today to align with the RAD of Tomorrow... hell, you could wizard-build applications, Domino data stores, etc. en masse.

If you take only one thing away from this post, be it that the conventional way we all develop applications is changing - evolving - and we're finally on the way to getting what we've always wanted out of the platform: control.