Architectural Differences

Read the following description of a technology, and tell me which one I am referring to:

• Back-end DB that holds the structure of a web site, a list of available data stores.
• Front-end that provides navigation into the data stores, and allows the user to both create new apps and modify existing apps without coding.
• Meta-data driven applications, where the actual database stores field/value pairs as metadata within a more structured DB.
  
• End users never need to worry about the actual DB structure, nor do most developers.

The correct answer is that the above description describes both Domino and Sharepoint. It isn’t a perfect description of either, to be sure. But that fact that a common description can be made of both technologies is certainly food for thought, especially when corporate politics are driving the decision of which platform to use. If the technical architecture is fairly similar, why would a corporation NOT choose the more mature product?

I can think of some answers to that. But it is definitely a question worth asking.

First Thoughts

Having spent the last 3 days in training for Application Development in Sharepoint 2007, I have two overall conclusions:

1) Sharepoint has some decent power to it. I can see some very effective uses that an organization could get from Sharepoint very quickly.

2) This power is limited. It probably has only 20% of the functions of a Domino server out of the box. It is extensible via .net coding, of course, but the built in functions seem equivalent to about Version 2 of Notes/Domino. With a nicer interface. It probably will not take the 10 years Domino took to mature to the current state, but I do suspect it is 3-5 years before it is truly a full application development platform.

Overall, the lack of power of Sharepoint might not be such a bad thing. It is only one tool in the Microsoft platform. If you need more power, you can use other tools. This seems like a bad thing to a Notes person, as we are used to having everything in one place. But that is really personal preference. I don’t have a strong business case for any complaint.