David Leedy builds an XPages app in under 4 minutes

March 28 2011

The term "RAD" (rapid application development) is often used to describe the capability to quickly build and deploy applications on Lotus Domino. It's been one of the product's core strengths going all the way back. Of late the analysts say the term "RAD" isn't that interesting, but I think when you see David Leedy's demo of building an XPages application in three minutes forty five seconds, RAD sounds pretty compelling:



I've been spending a lot of time on the application development side of the Notes/Domino business in the last several weeks. I've learned that we'll be announcing XPages workshops like last year's series soon, more books, and more OpenNTF.org code. As I've also alluded to in comments on some of the other blogs, I'm looking at licensing and packaging options to make it easier for XPages applications to be built/deployed in a cost-competitive way.

This video got me jazzed up about the future with XPages. I feel like the timing is right to run harder at making XPages successful.

Link: Notesin9: The Great XPages Race >

Ed Brill | Highland Park, IL USA Category:  XPages  Add/View Comments [22]

Post a Comment

  1. 1  Mark Hughes http://hughesconnect.com | 3/28/2011 2:12:31 PM

    Though not as fast as this one, he has allot better instructional videos on his site, { Link }

  1. 2  David Leedy http://notesin9.com | 3/28/2011 2:31:53 PM

    Wow! Thanks Ed. Really appreciate the mention!!!

    In case anyone's interested in more XPages Videos - I have the NotesIn9.com XPages videos consolidated at { Link }

    Most of the videos are on the short side, 9 minutes or less, but there are some shows that are more in depth including a complete 2ish hour Jumpstart that's broken into two parts.

    And of course lots more information at { Link }

  1. 3  Andy Steven http://www.uptime100.com.au/ | 3/28/2011 4:16:46 PM

    I ran a competition about a year ago, to make a really simple project website, it took me 2 minutes. Best solution from my MS colleagues was a couple of days.

    IBM should run a competition, it could go viral, with a big prize, maybe $100,000.

    When they realise just how quick it is...

  1. 4  Erik Brooks  | 3/28/2011 5:27:58 PM

    RAD is awesome, but Domino/NSF is also RADD.

    The last D meaning "Deployment," where Domino/NSF shines in ways that makes many a developer and admin weep with joy.

  1. 5  Nathan T. Freeman http://ntf.gbs.com | 3/28/2011 5:33:22 PM

    Actually, it's almost exactly 3 minutes. If you start counting when he creates the first component until he saves the last one.

    There's another 20 seconds to actually test the functionality, but the total DEV time was 3 minutes.

  1. 6  Gavin Bollard http://dominogavin.blogspot.com | 3/28/2011 10:32:26 PM

    Thanks David (and Ed for helping me notice this)!

    I tried to follow an XPages demo a while ago but got all muddled and hadn't bothered to give it another look.

    It's quick slices like this that make it all worthwhile.

    Now I've just gotta find some time to give it a go.

  1. 7  axel  | 3/29/2011 6:18:24 AM

    Quote-->

    Of late the analysts say the term "RAD" isn't that interesting

    -->

    Not sure what RAD really means.

    Its still very important and allways highlighted in any school of the agile family of PM that early and often deployed prototypes are a good if not paramount thing for the projects success to get decent feed back from the end users.

    Maybe in the 90ties RAD was meant as simple apps for departments, which were created without much care for synergies in the IT of the whole company and often generated a costly to maintain siloeization.

    As such Rapid Application Development is what our job should be about.

    For a month I am sitting in a big project of a mayor company here in Germany. They started planing in 2007, coding in 2008 and this summer there will be a first prototype rollout. Generates its own flavours of weirdness.

  1. 8  Paul Farris  | 3/29/2011 7:57:40 AM

    Very impressive demo. Thanks.

  1. 9  Simon Mottram  | 3/29/2011 5:23:41 PM

    There isn't a single 'RAD' system in the history of development that doesn't have a demo of knocking up a CRUD app in minutes.

    We shouldn't be impressed by this kind of thing after all these years. All it demo's is that someone can drag and drop.

  1. 10  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 3/29/2011 5:53:45 PM

    @9 if the perception is that the system isn't "RAD", then a quick demo is pretty cool. More importantly, Leedy has many other XPages examples on his site that are more advanced and yet simple to code/implement.

    I think it's an important demo.

  1. 11  Erik Brooks  | 3/29/2011 9:27:33 PM

    @Ed/@10 - Totally. And in 3 more minutes that app could have full security added and be *live* on a Domino server, accessible from the net.

    Another 3 could make it quite pretty, too.

    This type of RADD app development is the kind of stuff that IBM could easily tout to help out in disasters, similar to what they did with the Chilean mine incident. E.g. I would bet some quick apps on the ground in Japan would be helpful. The offline capabilities of N/D can be of particular benefit. The marketing angle of those efforts could be very positive, as well.

  1. 12  Mark Davids  | 3/30/2011 8:40:31 AM

    If it's so quick and easy to develop and update applications with Domino, why are there so many long-standing bugs that haven't been fixed in the templates that ship with the product?

    My experience of Lotus support and development is the very opposite of agile or RAD.

  1. 13  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 3/30/2011 8:50:46 AM

    @12 Damien Katz, who worked on Notes about a decade ago and since has gone on to fame and (hopefully) fortune with CouchDB, wrote this in response to that exact thought on vowe.net:

    Volker, that's the way it's always been, even way back in 97 when I first started there. The features for developing templates are RAD, but that doesn't mean creating production ready, shrink wrap software with them is easy. You still need lots of fit and finish, testing, documentation translation, support docs etc. All those things are often unnecessary overhead for an enterprise to adopt a new RAD dev feature, they can often just grab and go and be productive and deploy their app to their 5 users. True RAD development. But apps that ship with Notes have to worry about a lot more than layout the the initial form and adding in a few code events here and there. It's internationally deployed software that millions of people end up judging a billion $ product on.

    It takes a release to produce the tools, then another release to produce good production apps on top of it. As with most features, the RAD features often aren't production ready until late in the product dev cycle, so building production ready templates with them is challenging when they are buggy, and time compressed once they are ready. So it's typically limited to a few cool proof of concept demos in the first release.

    Anyway, just defending my long times peeps back at lotus. I know what a hard time it is producing these tools and building stuff with them. They are chronically understaffed and underfunded and produce still an amazing tool that I have a very soft spot in my heart for :)

    Damien Katz, 2011-03-29 18:20

  1. 14  Mark Davids  | 3/30/2011 11:13:56 AM

    @13 A nice answer. I appreciate the difficulties of testing and getting something production ready, and obviously my comment wasn't entirely serious.

    But I've just come from (yet another) support call where there's a small irritating bug that development aren't going to fix. To then be told that it's quick and easy to build things with Domino is - ironic, at least.

  1. 15  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 3/30/2011 12:06:37 PM

    I think that is the distinction between saying that you can build something quickly and that you can modify the building materials less quickly.

  1. 16  Mark Davids  | 3/31/2011 3:06:17 AM

    The mail client isn't building materials, it's your building.

  1. 17  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 3/31/2011 10:14:43 AM

    But it is built with those materials.

  1. 18  Charles Robinson http://www.cubert.net | 3/31/2011 2:27:07 PM

    @17 - Volker's point seems to have been that IBM isn't using the new building materials themselves. Not the presence, absence, or rate of development or delivery of those materials. The actual usage of them. Would you be able to comment on the use of layers in IBM-supplied templates? Those are not new.

  1. 19  Steve Medure  | 4/1/2011 12:33:40 PM

    @Ed. I'm with 14. Maybe if IBM cleaned up it's development methods we'd buy into the RAD marketing message. And if they are chronically understaffed and under funded who's to blame for that. Does IBM want to grow this product line or not? I know you will defend the product(s), as you should. But all of the little buggy stuff with the software has to stop. The latest Fix Pack for 8.5.2 is causing issues with Mac's, simple things like reply just stops working and creates a new message rather than a reply. This one was driving me nuts the other day, trying to do a simple reply all and it created a new message with my name in the to. Earlier this morning I saw a tech note that described the issue and the only solution is to reboot. I guess I'll have to keep dealing with that and all the other irritating bugs until IBM replaces it's current building materials with something a little more solid.

  1. 20  Carlos Casas http://lotusrocks.tumblr.com | 4/5/2011 7:41:31 PM

    Great post and an even better Instructor in Dave Leedy. I wish more of our own clients took the time and energy to invest in this direction but unfortunately many have not. To get to this level of development and go up the learning curve for many classic Notes developers isn't overnight and the time investment from both the organization and the developer is traditionally deep. David first got his xPages chops with LEOnline.Net doing his first webinar with us back in late 2008. It's now 2011 and he's clearly demonstrated some real value in the product's development potential. How can we close the gap in the learning curve? This is the battle I fight daily with clients.

  1. 21  Chuck Savino http://www.csavino.com | 4/11/2011 2:27:48 PM

    I don't this type of pissing contest really serves the technology well. Great development solves business problems; it's not about being the fastest or the first to effect change.