"Personally I'd always prefer to use my approach as it keeps all the design central and, as it's in the same database, under the control of the same ACL etc."
I think there are some circumstances where you would not want the RSS feed to be behind the same ACL as the main database. We've added some feeds to databases that use the Notes SSO login setup, this unfortunately does not play nicely with RSS feed readers. Some can be configured with a username and password if it is behind standard authentication, but not the Notes form. By putting it into a separate database, we can drop the authentication requirements and allow access to the feed. Obviously we're careful about what information is available there, and require that they click a link and actually log into the database if it needs to be confidential.
"Personally I'd always prefer to use my approach as it keeps all the design central and, as it's in the same database, under the control of the same ACL etc."
I think there are some circumstances where you would not want the RSS feed to be behind the same ACL as the main database. We've added some feeds to databases that use the Notes SSO login setup, this unfortunately does not play nicely with RSS feed readers. Some can be configured with a username and password if it is behind standard authentication, but not the Notes form. By putting it into a separate database, we can drop the authentication requirements and allow access to the feed. Obviously we're careful about what information is available there, and require that they click a link and actually log into the database if it needs to be confidential.