Is there a need for YellowCake? How about a version 2.0?!

09/30/2009 04:43 PM by Chris Toohey

I was asked the other day by a fellow developer if I had an example of a really solid Web UI for creating, reading, updateding, and deleting (notice the order) NotesDocuments in a target NotesDatabase.

My immediate thought was to create a simple NotesDatabase example and download that did just this... but I wanted to make sure that it was something that anyone could apply and see immediate results with... so here's the idea:

• I'll create a really solid Web UI for a data proxy that will handle all creates, reads, updates, and deletes of NotesDocuments for any target NotesDatabase (HTTP-accessible or not) on any Server (HTTP-accessible or not).
• This data proxy will use a series of configuration-styled NotesDocuments to set not only the target NotesDatabase, but what is returned on Read requests, what data is submitted for Create and Update requests, and what should be done with Delete requests.
• As I'm basically re-creating the Domino CRUD API with my own custom CRUD API - I'd do it right: I will allow total separation of UI and NotesData; I will support any and all content types HTTP responses; I will allow for custom HTTP Header responses, including etag support.

This all sounded great. In fact, it sounded like something I had done before... in fact, I had... although it was never officially released.

So before I pour hours into a version 2.0 of Yellowcake - a configuration-based Domino NotesData REST CRUD Engine - I wanted to make sure that there was both an interest and an need in such a solution.

The pitch is this: BYO-UI. I don't care what the front end is; this is an engine that will proxy (and logic-defined handle) requests for NotesData Creates, Reads, Updates, and Deletes. Yellowcake will be more of a Cloud proxy - taking Lotus Notes Client applications to the web within minutes and via configuration versus the need to secure and enable a single Lotus Notes-accessible Only to be accessible not only via any front-end UI, but also from any device and client type that can interact with CRUD API calls.

Thoughts? The more I talk about it, the more interested I am in putting this as the next project on my list - I just want to make sure that there's an interest before doing so...