Hi,

I have to confirm the first part of your post. I have been using Cocoon since 
1.0.8 (I think) ... those were the times with processing-instructions, 
plain-xsp and no sitemap whatsoever and have used it in a number of projects 
verry successfuly. 

Currently I am considering using other frameworks for my newer projects though.

1. Starting a large and complex Cocoon project without a local Cocoon-Guru is 
very dangerous. 
2. There are so manny components involved in serving a response, that it's 
sometimes impossible to track errors back to the cause.
3. Even if I may be able to find these problems, it turns out that in larger 
projects I'm the only one permanently sorting out the problems, because I'm the 
only one able to find them (There is a really big difference between being able 
to solve a task using Cocoon and to understanding how Cocoon thinks) ... so I 
end up solving problems while all the others do the cool and fun stuff.
4. It is allmost impossible to find employees that are willing and able to 
withstad the increasingly steap learning curve. I end up assisting them more 
time than they save me. So from a financial point of view this is not very good.
5. The step from Cocoon 2.x to Cocoon 2.2 was at least as challenging as the 
step from 1.x to 2.x (from my point of view). Even if you have a full 
understanding of Cocoons internals, the Maven build-process, the maven-plugins 
needed and the changes in the project-structures gave me the impression of 
relearning the entire thing from scratch. I had to try settin up a Cocoon 2.2 
project 4-5 times untill I finally managed to understand what I was doing (Most 
of the examples available only tell you what to do and not why).

I have to admit that I have done Projects with Cocoon on my own, which I 
propably wouldn't have ben able to achieve using 4-5 Employees in the same 
time. I have done Projekts with 4-5 Employees and ended up in supporting and 
coaching them with allmost the same result als if I would have done it allone. 

On the bottom line, for me Cocoon is great for doing middle-sized projects on 
my own, because I am very familiar with the whole thing. As soon as the Project 
size exceeds my own working capacity and I need to do the Project with several 
people, I won't use Cocoon any more. 

Perhaps someday there will be a good Book on Cocoon 2.2 as the one done by 
Stephan Niedermeier which would enable me to tell my employees "Here .... Read 
this and let me work" ;-) ... I'd come back to Cocoon. But I have to admit that 
the simplicity of a Spring+(Flex+BlazeDS)/CXF+Aegis application is far more 
tempting for me at the moment because of its simplicity.

Chris


________________________________________
Von: Merico Raffaele [raffaele.mer...@less.ch]
Gesendet: Freitag, 24. April 2009 14:17
An: users@cocoon.apache.org
Betreff: AW: Re: XSLT is Dead ?!

Dear Cocoon Community

First of all I have to say that I am a Cocoon lover.
We are working with this framework since 2005 and we have developed many
different types of applications that include:
- integration of a legacy system with WebServices
- complex e-commerce solutions
- graphical rendering of data with fins
- or just simple web sites

Our experience is that Cocoon is a stable and scalable framework.
Furthermore it does a great job concerning the separation of concerns.

Now I come the point. What I did not like on Cocoon was the way XSLT was
used to render the final output. Therefore I developed XSLTg (an XML
template engine) that centres the XML template by supporting full standard
XSLT/XPATH 2.0.

I took me some time to publish a documentation that is up to date. Now you
can find it under http://www.xsltg.com. I am convinced that XSLTg solves
many of the problems addressed in the article.

Please have a look and let me know what you think about and if
http://www.xsltg.com may be able to become a part of Cocoon.

Many thanks in advance
Raffaele

PS: Be warned, my English is not really the best. Improvements are welcome,
I will be happy to clarify any obscurities.


-----Ursprüngliche Nachricht-----
Von: Derek Hohls [mailto:dho...@csir.co.za]
Gesendet: Freitag, 24. April 2009 09:14
An: users@cocoon.apache.org
Betreff: [!! SPAM] Re: XSLT is Dead ?!

Oh, and on the flip side, there's this article:
http://www.onenaught.com/posts/8/xslt-in-server-side-web-frameworks
(but I would guess that is "preaching to the converted"
on this mailing list!)

>>> On 2009/04/24 at 09:03, in message <49f1805f.5ce9.00d...@csir.co.za>,
"Derek Hohls" <dho...@csir.co.za> wrote:
Carsten

I had hoped comments like these would be added to the blog :)

One other point, you say:

"The attraction of Cocoon as a separate framework has decreased,
but that's definitely not due to XSLT."

Why do you say Cocoon's attractiveness is decreasing... should we
all be looking around for a new framework to hop onto?

(I'm genuinely curious here, not "trolling", because the older
frameworks like JSP and Struts still seem to be going strong and
so I'm wondering what it is about Cocoon that is making it :go
out of fashion: )

Thanks
Derek

>>> On 2009/04/24 at 08:40, in message <49f15ece.5000...@apache.org>,
Carsten Ziegeler <cziege...@apache.org> wrote:
Derek Hohls wrote:
> At least, according to this article:
>
> http://java.dzone.com/news/death-xslt-web-frameworks
>
> Maybe some of the developers, or other power users here,
> would like to comment at this blog - I see Cocoon also gets
> a "dig in the ribs" ...
>
Without commenting on this specific article, my only general
comment is that you'll find articles for specific technologies/projects
and you'll find as many articles against these (I guess the most
famous topic in our area is Maven). Who's is wrong and who's right?
Or more important: is there such an easy answer? I definitly doubt this.
There isn't such a thing as the one programming language that rules the
world or the one framework that makes everyone happy and is the golden
hammer.

Everyone is free to use what he thinks works best for him.

Ok, coming back to the original topic :) Looking at the past 9 years
where I've been using Cocoon and done a lot of projects with Cocoon and
XSLT, I think it was a great tool by the time. And XSLT helped a lot in
getting up to speed (once you managed the high entrance barrier to
Cocoon itself). There are a lot of use cases still today for XSLT when
it comes to create web sites. It really helps to separate the content
from the layout. But in the end that's a matter how you design your
application. I see a lot of people using other frameworks than Cocoon
and pass the output from that framework to XSLT after the framework has
rendered the content. So I don't think that XSLT itself is dead. The
attraction of Cocoon as a separate framework has decreased, but that's
definitly not due to XSLT.

Carsten
--
Carsten Ziegeler
cziege...@apache.org




--
This message is subject to the CSIR's copyright terms and conditions, e-mail
legal notice, and implemented Open Document Format (ODF) standard.
The full disclaimer details can be found at
http://www.csir.co.za/disclaimer.html.

This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by
MailScanner,
and is believed to be clean.  MailScanner thanks Transtec Computers for
their support.


---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@cocoon.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@cocoon.apache.org



--
This message is subject to the CSIR's copyright terms and conditions, e-mail
legal notice, and implemented Open Document Format (ODF) standard.
The full disclaimer details can be found at
http://www.csir.co.za/disclaimer.html.

This message has been scanned for viruses and dangerous content by
MailScanner,
and is believed to be clean.  MailScanner thanks Transtec Computers for
their support.


---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@cocoon.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@cocoon.apache.org



---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@cocoon.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@cocoon.apache.org
---------------------------------------------------------------------
To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscr...@cocoon.apache.org
For additional commands, e-mail: users-h...@cocoon.apache.org

Reply via email to