Developping Distance

As promised in a previous post, Here is a shortlist of the first things I discovered when moving from Lotus Domino to ASP/SQL as an application Development platform.

Of course this is far from complete, but gives you an idea what its about. I will populate it over time. As I have just created one small app, I cannot list all the possible differences….. for the moment, the most obvious:

biggest differences between developing a simple database driven application on the Domino platform compared to the MS ASP.NET/SQL Environment
		DOMINO		ASP/SQL
Data Layer	No Intervention req. Using the Domino designer, only the fields need to be planned.		+	SQL Database needs to be planned and set up.	-
				Data connections need to be planned and set up.
Application Layer	Formula language, very easy to learn. (ex. @mailsend(“Alex K”;”cc name”;”bcc name”;;”Subject”;”Mail Body text bla bla)		+	ASP / SQL Both not an easy language to learn. However not impossible either, depending on your capabilities.	-
	Lotus script, very similar to plain VBScript.		-/+	to create a simple application, no coding is required.	+
Presentation Layer	Domino Designer is not really made for developing for web clients. However, using css pages, and “render as HTML” make it possible to layout your site well. However This is not very straight-forward, and will take a bit to get a hang of.		-	The Microsoft VWD is clearly a web development tool. Layout and design are really easy.	+
Other	Access control easily managed, up to field level		+	Access control depends on set-up, Active Directory access makes things easier, while using roles in the asp.net user management console can be quite complex when managing multiple applications	-
Application: 1 database table 1 form for entering data 1 reporting view Access Control

The Idea, The Challenge…

Good, even though I am just starting to have a look at the development of web based applications I received a comment on one of my previous posts that maybe comparing Domino development against ASP/.NET could have interesting results.

I believe this to be a good Idea, but my only worry is that my lack of knowledge, as a .NET starter will bias the outcome of this “test” a bit. However, if I choose to make something really simple, this should not be that much of a problem.

I am looking into developing the same project twice. Once in Domino, and once in VWD (Visual Web Developer), the tool I am using at the moment to learn more about the development in ASP and SQL.

This is a bit of extra work, but I believe I can make the time to do this, and that it would  be very valuable, especially to see where major differences create delays, or make things slower (or faster, probably in rare occasions). Therefore I will try the following:

An application (I am thinking about one I have to make soon anyways, which will be an IT Asset Management Tool), Web based,containing:

* Standard Navigation
* 1 Form
* 1 View for reporting

There are a few things I cannot really test yet. For example, the (ASP/SQL)environment I use now @ work is purely local, and I cannot query Active Directory for user management. Therefore, Ill skip the whole access and security part (which usually takes quite a bit of planning and work), also, I cannot use Mail functionality, as our development environment does not have Domino, nor an Exchange server.

The aspects I will look at are:
- Time spent on each part
- Effort/Knowledge required to finish each part
- General Overview of differences/problems encountered

As mentioned before, I will have to find time for this, and I will probably post it all bit by bit, and join all bits together at the end. Stay posted!