Re: Another perspective on WebObjects
Re: Another perspective on WebObjects
- Subject: Re: Another perspective on WebObjects
- From: mmalcolm crawford <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 12 Dec 2002 23:08:27 -0800
Chris Hanson has already made many of the points I'd make, but a few
additions:
On Thursday, December 12, 2002, at 10:43 AM, John Martin wrote:
We are a small company that needs to migrate some PC based applications
working with SQL Server to browser based applications and currently all
of our apps depend on MS SQL server. I was very impressed by what I had
read about WebObjects, and I went and purchased a new G4 Powerbook and
ordered a copy of WebObjects from Amazon.Com. "Incredible", is an
understatement to describe what WebObjects produces provided you use
the
OpenBase database and follow the tutorial application. But after 2
frustrating weeks, I believe we will pull the plug and use CodeCharge
instead for the following reasons:
1. WebObjects is supposed to connect to MS SQL easily. It doesn't,
and finding documentation for the process is more difficult than
finding
the Holy Grail.
The process for making any JDBC connection is well documented. What
problem are you having?
Making connections difficult to MS SQL may delight some, but it makes
adoption for the
majority of businesses prohibitive.
No-one at Apple is delighted by making any connection difficult.
2. I bought WebObjects brand new from Amazon.Com, unfortunately I
was stupid enough to buy 5.1, if I want the version that is supposed to
work, I need to buy 5.2 all over again at full price. I know other
software companies have deserved reputations for sometimes really
sticking their customers, but this has to rank up there in the hall of
fame of customer sticking.
I bought a 2001 car. In 2002 the company brought out a new model. I'm
still waiting for the upgrade offer.
The questions you should ask are:
(a) When you bought WO, was it worth the money? If not, sorry, but
fool you for paying.
(b) Is 5.2 worth the cost of the upgrade? If so, then it's worth the
money. If not, see (a).
3. Third party documentation. Good luck walking into Barnes and
Noble and finding a book that even mentions WebObjects, or anywhere
else.
I had good luck finding the Wrox book in B&N on Stevens Creek...
Am I the only person who has spent an afternoon desperately trying
to find even a page of documentation at any thing that resembles a
computer or book store?
Probably not, but personally I don't judge software by the number of
bookshelves of documentation...
Online documentation, it's "fantastic", as long as you
want to create anything like the tutorial apps, forget about anything
different that the tutorial apps. Take a week of education, that would
be nice, but a week of education is not needed for other productive
development environments, they have something called documentation, not
secret handshakes and decoder rings.
I would very much recommend a week of education -- namely Apple's WO
training course. The majority of those attending have found it more
than repays the investment.
If you seriously believe that other environments do not require any
investment in time, then I would be keen to know what they are. I
would also be keen to learn how productive those environments are in
the long term. If you do not have the requisite skillset (OOP, Java,
database knowledge) then yes, WebObjects will take time to learn. But
when you have learned it, it is astonishingly productive, and again
will more than repay the investment.
I really liked the potential I saw in WebObjects, if it had worked out,
then I had planned to buy another Powerbook for our Senior Programmer,
and an XServe system to serve up our apps, but IMHO if Apple wants long
term switches from the PC platform to the Apple platform, then they
must
aggressively support the application development community and make it
easily to migrate application software from the PC's to Macs.
WebObjects is a cross-platform environment. It's primary goal is not
to generate "switchers".
mmalc
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