Hello again,
Thanks for the responses I have gotten, they are certainly giving me a lot
to consider.
>> It is certainly possible to run Cocoon from a CD without any
>> installation, but you didn't indicate what kind of apps you're thinking
>> about, is that browsing and searching documents or more than that?
Actually the reason I wasn't more specific is because I am trying to come up
with a "framework" that will support several different applications, I can
probably categorize them.
There are really three types of applications:
First, we are a publisher of Banking information: training materials,
newsletters, magazines, reference materials, regulatory information, etc.... So
we DO have applications the provide very straight-forward "static" information.
However these applications need to be Browsable, Searchable, exported to Excel,
rendered in some "print-friendly" format (e.g. PDF), etc.... Since we already
have much of this content in XML form, it would seem to make sense to use something
like Cocoon to render it in various forms.
Second, we also author software to Banking institutions so they can file their Tax
and Regulatory information to the government. Think "Turbo-Tax" for Banks. The
government agencies are moving toward using XBRL (which is an XML Financial Reporting
Schema see: http://xbrl.org/ ) to define what they need. Like Turbo-Tax, there are
electronic formats to be filed via SOAP (or email, web site, or VAN ). The results also
need to be viewed and printed as well. Again, the ability to "manipulate" XML make
idea of using Cocoon very appealing.
Third, we build software that allows customers to do analysis on financial information we publish. This information is usually stored in some type of database (on our web sites
we use Oracle, but we have alternate read-only database systems we publish on CD).
We have versions of this software both on the web and on CD and would like to be able to
"share" the code between the two media. Using Cocoon for rendering the "reports"
very appealing.
I wasn't very clear about one thing. I used the term "CD-based application". What I meant by this is a program delived to the customer on CD. It doesn't necessarily need to "run" from the CD. We don't mind installing "some" software on the clients computers, but we obviously want to minimize its complexity as much as possible. Installing a JVM is probably reasonable, and
since Cocoon seems pretty "tightly packaged" installing it doesn't seem too extensive either.
Unfortunately we can't force our clients completely off the CD platform because they want
the high level of U.I. interactivity CD products provide and because there are serious
security concerns for Banks (obviously) and many of our products run either behind
either a VERY thick firewall or on a network which is physically separate from the Internet.
So the question is: how do I best package Cocoon for the CD deployed applications?
Tomcat however has a lot of components and configurations that come in the default installation - which makes if very powerful - but because of this complexity I am concerned that it might be difficult to create a "generic" installation that works for all users without significant problems. For instance, what if the customer already has a service running on port 8080?
I am not ruling this out as an option - but is this really the "best way"? Any complexity
in the installation that can be removed is beneficial.
>> You can also use "build standalone-demo" to build a standalone version
>> of Cocoon which uses the same limited version of Jetty contained in two
>> subdirectories of the build directory. This might be able to run
>> straight from CD as Jetty uses the standard temporary directory of the
>> system (/tmp for example), but I haven't tested it.
This is also a possibility, and I am going to look into it.
To say it more generally:
The aspect of Cocoon that is common among all our application is its ability to act
as a "report engine". CD based report engines are very popular. In fact we, like many development teams, have built proprietary application specific report generators for some of our products. We have also used tools like Seagate's Crystal Reports to do the similar things for some internal applications. Cocoon has most of the fundamental elements needed for this purpose - but can we use it for applications distributed on CD as well as those delivered via the Web?
We certainly can't be the only development team to face the problem of supporting applications
both on the Web and on CD that generate reports and have to deal with XML - can we?
Again thanks for any comments, suggestions, or ideas that may be offered.
-alan ramsey
