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or you can just build in XPages and have them hide the majority of this stuff for you ...

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@John:
Yeah, okay - but that's a house on a sand foundation to me. You want to know what's the catch for me? Putting in this up-front time to build the data store properly, and build the - ahem - logic broker to facilitate data management. When done right, you get an API for your application - allowing you to easily integrate existing and future technology investments, pretty-easily create new UI entry points into your application, and easily expand the scope and functionality of your applications.

Maybe I should just write a public version of this logic broker I keep talking about and put it out there for mass consumption...

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"Maybe I should just write a public version of this logic broker I keep talking about and put it out there for mass consumption... "

Yeah, that would probably help your case quite a bit. :-)

But you're still confused about how xpages IS a broker, man. XSP is basically a Java class generator on a Domino servlet engine.

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but can I use the XPages business logic without the UI? Let's say I build an XPages app then I want to use some of the app logic and data for an RCP app. Does XPages provide a clean separation of UI, Logic and Data that can be repurposed? How tightly bound is the UI to the schema and logic?

For the record, XPages rocks and keeps the RAD while moving Domino web apps in to this century.

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@Nathan:
Well, until XPages make it into the Lotus Notes Client - which can't happen soon enough - I think having such a logic broker in today's available elements will allow people to start architecting their current projects better in-line with to-be-released functionality.

@Dan:
I think that you can... but I'm a noob when it comes to XPages. Maybe it's just a matter of putting the XPages on it's ear and not considering it UI-only... as I'm pretty sure that you can 1) control the Content Type and 2) use them to broker messages to and responses from an application.

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Tragically, you cannot control the ContentType in xpages yet. :-( The response I got from the xpages team was "why would you want to do that?" It's not 100% clear that there IS a circumstance where I'd want to. The only scenario I could come up with was to use xpages to do a view JOIN, and then feed that as XML to a data grid widget. The response seems to be that the data grid widget would itself be a custom control in an xpage anyway, so the data feed can be constructed and managed server-side -- which I had to admit was a good answer.

And that's really why it's hard to wrap your head around how game-changing xpages are. So many old techniques are just obsoleted right away. Xpages don't have a steep learning curve; they have a steep UNlearning curve!

@Dan - no, you can't use app logic directly. But if you coded your logic in Java or Javascript libraries as a specific layer, then you could reuse them. But you can't tell an RCP "use this xpage custom control in this Eclipse widget." Not YET anyway. :-)

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Well, this goes to show you how much I know about XPages. I'll try to take a further deep-dive into it this weekend...

The one thing that scares me is the mention of not being able to control the Content Type in XPages (yet)... and from the sounds of it there's no foresight into the need for such ultimate flexibility.

Now I know that there are untold treasures that await us in XPages... but hearing that I can not control the Content Type like I can with every other major Design Element today puts me off a little. Hopefully this is just something that we're all overlooking here.

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