Category Lotus Ideajam
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At Lotusphere 2008 I was honored to MC GURUpalooza, the panel session where all of the Best Practices track speakers are on one stage for a lively and fun question and answer session. In years past this has been one of the highlights of Lotusphere, and this year was no different. There were some great questions, some laughs, and overall a great deal of knowledge was shared with the audience from our expert panel of speakers.

One question that came up hit close to home for me. Someone asked about DXL, and why it isn't given a higher priority by Lotus. This same question was repeated at Meet the Developers, and the crowd enthusiastically let Lotus know that DXL is important to the community. However, I am not sure if it was enough. I want Lotus to understand how important we think DXL is, so I am asking for your support as well. I have posted an idea at Idea Jam (my first one!), and it calls for Lotus to support 100% round-tripping of design elements in DXL. I know that others have asked for 100% round-tripping of the entire database (design AND data), but I think that we should start small (relatively speaking) first - and get the design elements importing and exporting correctly. Doing so would open up the doors for a host of enterprising developers, ISVs, community members - and even Lotus itself - to do some amazing things with Domino. Coupled with the upcoming Domino Designer on Eclipse (DDE), you would have the perfect platform for expanding Domino development into untold and unimaginable areas.

I also think that Lotus should view this API as it does any other API - and give it the proper attention. As it stands right now DXL is broken, and as such is unusable; yet it is a released and (supposedly) supported API, and it does not get the attention that other APIs get - namely LotusScript and Java. The reason this is so is that there are some influential members of management and engineering at Lotus that feel that the effort to make DXL design elements 100% round-trippable is a low-to-nonexistent priority, and making it so is a "waste of resources". I believe differently - and while I was at Lotus I tried to convince Lotus that you believed differently too, to no avail. I believe that it is a "chicken-and-egg" thing - that DXL is not being used that much because it is broken. Fix it, and they will come.

Well, now I'm out of Lotus, so I am more free to speak my mind - and I believe that it is time to tell Lotus that DXL is important to us, the development community. Or, you could confirm what some folks at Lotus believe - that DXL is just not that important to their customers. And if that is the case, then I'll shut up and leave it alone. It is up to you.

If you believe, as I do, that Lotus must make DXL design elements 100% round-trippable with 8.5 then respond at Idea Jam. If you want to discuss it more, feel free to post here or there. In any case, please let me know, one way or the other, if DXL is as important to you as I think it is - and I will do my best to make sure Lotus listens.

Either way, thanks for your input.



Rock