Years ago I was looking so forward to XPages and what they could do (like making data more relational), but when I actually got my hands on it and tried creating some sites, I was not too impressed. I think the web pages that XPages spit out are ugly and I haven't found a theme or style sheet that makes it nice enough looking to use. I've also found XPages painfully slow. I use multiple templates for my sites and if I used XPages, it would bring a powerful server to its knees. I know with Domino 8.5.2, you can share the same XPage across multiple databases, but you need to restart the HTTP process every time you make a change. I don't know how IBM could believe shutting down a production web server and kicking everyone out (session based authentication) is a reasonable requirement!
I also don't like how poorly integrated XPages are into the whole Domino model, it just feels bolted on.
So I still do things the old way. Recently, I've found myself shying away from LotusScript and its limitations as a OOP language and limited feature set and I've been doing most of my new agents in Java. At least with doing things in Java, I can transfer my skills elsewhere when IBM eventually lets Domino wither and die. I'm also still bitter all these years later that IBM removed native JSP support from databases, which could have been a real game changer.
Years ago I was looking so forward to XPages and what they could do (like making data more relational), but when I actually got my hands on it and tried creating some sites, I was not too impressed. I think the web pages that XPages spit out are ugly and I haven't found a theme or style sheet that makes it nice enough looking to use. I've also found XPages painfully slow. I use multiple templates for my sites and if I used XPages, it would bring a powerful server to its knees. I know with Domino 8.5.2, you can share the same XPage across multiple databases, but you need to restart the HTTP process every time you make a change. I don't know how IBM could believe shutting down a production web server and kicking everyone out (session based authentication) is a reasonable requirement!
I also don't like how poorly integrated XPages are into the whole Domino model, it just feels bolted on.
So I still do things the old way. Recently, I've found myself shying away from LotusScript and its limitations as a OOP language and limited feature set and I've been doing most of my new agents in Java. At least with doing things in Java, I can transfer my skills elsewhere when IBM eventually lets Domino wither and die. I'm also still bitter all these years later that IBM removed native JSP support from databases, which could have been a real game changer.