You are viewing a plain text version of this content. The canonical link for it is here.
Posted to dev@cocoon.apache.org by Gianugo Rabellino <gi...@apache.org> on 2003/09/17 12:17:28 UTC

OXF rebuttal (was: Re: Interesting comparison)

Ricardo Rocha wrote:
> http://www.orbeon.com/oxf/cocoon
> 
>

Well, at a very least the information is incomplete, not to mention that 
it's a bit biased and somewhere just plain wrong. Some marketing is 
understandable, but I think that a few corrections are due to make it fair.

However, Orbeon is solicitating comments, so I've put them in CC: I hope 
that they will be so kind to discuss and possibly update their informations.

Walking through the page:

Plaing wrong stuff
==================

   OXF provides the following advantages over Cocoon:
   [...]

   Professional support. The OXF mailing-list provide free support
   from our responsive development team. Additional professional
   support from the people who designed OXF can be obtained.

Cocoon here is no difference. There are a lot of free support resources, 
like mailing lists and Wiki (I might even market the Wiki as a 
"Knowledge Base"). Additional professional support is also available: 
there is a whole organization of (currently) six companies supporting 
Cocoon in Europe in a consistent way (Orixo, that is) and there are 
quite a few independent companies providing the same services all over 
the world. Maybe it's time to add a prominent page on the Cocoon web 
site about it.

    Application-Agnostic	
    The Cocoon sitemap was initially designed to handle linear
    pipelines according to a generation / transformation / serialization
    pattern suited for Web publishing.

This is quite stressing the truth. Cocoon can be used in every 
request-response based environment. There is both a CLI command and a 
bean that allow Cocoon integration in heterogeneous environments. Cocoon 
is completely abstracted from the Web (Servlet) environment.

    Conditionals
    No. Very limited flow control with actions requiring Java.

Untrue. There are selectors too, at a very least. And there is Flow.

    XML Validation
    No

Uh? Just set your parser as a validating parser and you have validation.

    XPointer Support
    No

The Xinclude transformer has XPointer support.

    Support for J2EE Datasources	
    Configuration involves several files and does not appear to
    be encouraged.

Unfair and wrong: a J2EE datasource can be defined in a snap in 
cocoon.xconf. There is no need to involve several files and definitely 
Cocoon does not disencourage using J2EE stuff.

    EJB Support
    Possibly, through XSP.

Wrong! EJB's can be used all over the place and at a very least in 
Actions, XSP and Flow. Not to mention that nothing forbids writing 
generators/transformers/serializers based on external EJB components.


    XSLT 1.0
    Yes, built-in Xalan.

Nope. Cocoon is pre-configured to use TraX, plain Xalan, plain Saxon or 
XSLTC, just as OXF.

    JSP	
    With Tomcat only?

No. I'm not JSP guru, but I don't see any Tomcat dependency. One of the 
implementation uses the generic servlet RequestDispatcher, so it should 
be portable across application servers. Besides, there is a specific WLS 
implementation.

Flexed truth
==============
There are a few points hinted as Cocoon limitations such as 
sub-pipelines, aggregation, J2EE authentication, XForms. These are 
actually design choices, all with pros and cons, so blaming cocoon (at 
different levels) for not supporting it is somehow misleading.

Cocoon strong points
====================
OXF doesn't mention a few Cocoon strong points. I would like to see at a 
very least:

- Views;
- Pluggable URL-like extensions (the Source interface);
- WebDAV support, as client (stable), server (partial) and proxy 
(development);
- XML:DB support;
- SAP R/3 connectivity;
- Scheduler components;
- Velocity support;
- Python (Jython) and generic BSF support;
- PHP support;
- Lucene integration;
- Text to XML conversion using generated grammars (chaperon);

That's it for now, but I've sure left out something. I hope that Orbeon 
is willing to talk about their feature matrix in order to give a 
reasonable, fair and useful comparison tool to their potential customers.

Ciao,

-- 
Gianugo Rabellino
Pro-netics s.r.l. -  http://www.pro-netics.com
Orixo, the XML business alliance - http://www.orixo.com
     (Now blogging at: http://blogs.cocoondev.org/gianugo/)


RE: OXF rebuttal

Posted by Jeff Ramsdale <je...@earthlink.net>.
> Hi Jeff!
>
> I have to agree with you.
> I fact I just posted similar statements before reading your's - just in
> case somebody thinks I'm repeating you ;-)

Well then, rather than being bummed you stole my thunder I'll be honored
that you agreed with me. ;-)

Jeff

> Jeff Ramsdale wrote:

<snip>



Re: OXF rebuttal

Posted by Andreas Hochsteger <e9...@student.tuwien.ac.at>.
Hi Jeff!

I have to agree with you.
I fact I just posted similar statements before reading your's - just in 
case somebody thinks I'm repeating you ;-)

Jeff Ramsdale wrote:

> Chiming in on Stefano's comments...
> 
> I think Erik and Orbeon deserve credit for accepting this list's corrections
> and updating their page. And don't forget that they have every right to sell
> their product and support services. It might be worth occasionally looking
> at OXF and saying, "Yeah, that's a good feature--we should add that to
> Cocoon." Clearly they've looked at Cocoon in developing their feature
> set--surely it would be pure arrogance to think they are incapable of
> developing their own good ideas. Competition is good for innovation! And
> finally, ultimately Cocoon doesn't really HAVE to compete because there's no
> money on the line for us if someone chooses OXF instead, so no worries...
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Jeff
> 
> 
> 
>>-----Original Message-----
>>From: Roger I Martin PhD [mailto:hypernexdev@hypernexinc.com]
>>Sent: Thursday, September 18, 2003 4:16 PM
>>To: dev@cocoon.apache.org
>>Subject: Re: OXF rebuttal
>>
>>
>>Hi Erik,
>>
>>I don't see any "In the works" or "Upcoming" on the Cocoon column of the
>>comparison.
> 
> 
> <snip>
> 
> 
> 


RE: OXF rebuttal

Posted by Jeff Ramsdale <je...@earthlink.net>.
Chiming in on Stefano's comments...

I think Erik and Orbeon deserve credit for accepting this list's corrections
and updating their page. And don't forget that they have every right to sell
their product and support services. It might be worth occasionally looking
at OXF and saying, "Yeah, that's a good feature--we should add that to
Cocoon." Clearly they've looked at Cocoon in developing their feature
set--surely it would be pure arrogance to think they are incapable of
developing their own good ideas. Competition is good for innovation! And
finally, ultimately Cocoon doesn't really HAVE to compete because there's no
money on the line for us if someone chooses OXF instead, so no worries...

Cheers,

Jeff


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Roger I Martin PhD [mailto:hypernexdev@hypernexinc.com]
> Sent: Thursday, September 18, 2003 4:16 PM
> To: dev@cocoon.apache.org
> Subject: Re: OXF rebuttal
>
>
> Hi Erik,
>
> I don't see any "In the works" or "Upcoming" on the Cocoon column of the
> comparison.

<snip>



Re: OXF rebuttal

Posted by Sylvain Wallez <sy...@anyware-tech.com>.
Stefano Mazzocchi wrote:

> On Friday, Sep 19, 2003, at 01:16 Europe/Rome, Roger I Martin PhD wrote:
>
>> Some things are beyond one company to achieve in one life time.
>
>
> Roger,
>
> while I understand that you might have felt insulted by their 
> marketing action, I would suggest you to avoid being confrontational.
>
> This is exactly what they are looking for to show what kind of people 
> you get when you deal with those open source. It's like the DoS attack 
> on SCO: does more harm to open source than to SCO (and Eric Raymond 
> asked to stop it exactly for that).
>
> Like I said before: no matter what they write, if it isn't true, it 
> fires back on them. And if they compare to us, it means they fear us 
> or customers avoid buying their software because of cocoon.
>
> It does *NOT* matter whether or not that page is fair to us or not. We 
> do not need those pages to be fair, we need *tons* of unfair pages of 
> commercial products that try to compete with us, because that shows 
> our success more than anything else.
>
> Just ignore them and keep the focus.


Yep. And no need to be harsh with people wanting to make their living 
with what they do, even more when they listen to our remarks.

Sylvain

-- 
Sylvain Wallez                                  Anyware Technologies
http://www.apache.org/~sylvain           http://www.anyware-tech.com
{ XML, Java, Cocoon, OpenSource }*{ Training, Consulting, Projects }
Orixo, the opensource XML business alliance  -  http://www.orixo.com



Re: OXF rebuttal

Posted by Andreas Hochsteger <e9...@student.tuwien.ac.at>.
Hi!

Additionally I'd like to say - even if nobody want's to speak it out - 
that Erik has shown that he does take the Cocoon community seriously by 
being open to correct the comparison matrix (and already has done so: 
http://www.orbeon.com/oxf/cocoon).

What companies do with their business is only at their own 
responsibility and I think we should be friendly to those doing some 
marketing for us (good or bad) rather then be confrontational. As 
Stefano said, it doesn't really matter.

We don't need to hide and if a company has a reason to do something 
similar like cocoon, they might have a good reason to do so (e.g. lack 
of an important feature or completely different architecture). It's 
their decision, if they extend Cocoon or write their own solution and 
it's their right to compare it just to show why they did something else.

Come on, we all know, that Cocoon isn't the solution for everything and 
we should be above such things and should allow others to point out our 
weak points (even if misunderstood). That's the only way we can make it 
better or correct the statement by providing accurate documentation to 
prevent misunderstandings in the future.

Just my € 0.02.

Bye,
	Andreas

Niclas Hedhman wrote:

> On Friday 19 September 2003 07:56, Stefano Mazzocchi wrote:
> 
>>On Friday, Sep 19, 2003, at 01:16 Europe/Rome, Roger I Martin PhD wrote:
>>
>>>Some things are beyond one company to achieve in one life time.
>>
>>Roger,
>>
>>while I understand that you might have felt insulted by their marketing
>>action, I would suggest you to avoid being confrontational.
> 
> 
> In principle I agree, don't get into a shit throwing contest.
> But a continously evolving "Feature" or "Evaluation Overview" page is 
> something else, and a good thing that is coming out of this, which should not 
> be confrontational nor "compared with X" style.
> 
> Plain and simple.
> 
> Niclas
> 
> 


RE: OXF rebuttal

Posted by Reinhard Poetz <re...@apache.org>.
From: Bertrand Delacretaz

> Le Vendredi, 19 sep 2003, à 05:36 Europe/Zurich, Niclas 
> Hedhman a écrit 
> :
> > ...a continously evolving "Feature" or "Evaluation 
> Overview" page is 
> > something else, and a good thing that is coming out of this, which 
> > should not be confrontational nor "compared with X" style....
> 
> +1 - thanks to Reinhard for starting this at
> http://wiki.cocoondev.org/Wiki.jsp?page=CocoonFeatures - 
> people, please 
> have a look and help us make this page real good before it is 
> included 
> in the website docs.
> 
> And I totally agree that such a page should not be "compared to".

Yes I'm +1 too, a "compared to" was never intended and IMHO not possible
at this level. 

As Sylvain said "semi-techies" are the major target group of this
document - these are people that will never download and try out Cocoon
by themselves but talk and know ;) a lot. Ok, now you could say "who
cares?" but these people *could* also be your customer or your boss who
wants to find out more on something you talk to him the whole time.

Reinhard


Re: OXF rebuttal

Posted by Bertrand Delacretaz <bd...@codeconsult.ch>.
Le Vendredi, 19 sep 2003, à 05:36 Europe/Zurich, Niclas Hedhman a écrit 
:
> ...a continously evolving "Feature" or "Evaluation Overview" page is
> something else, and a good thing that is coming out of this, which 
> should not
> be confrontational nor "compared with X" style....

+1 - thanks to Reinhard for starting this at 
http://wiki.cocoondev.org/Wiki.jsp?page=CocoonFeatures - people, please 
have a look and help us make this page real good before it is included 
in the website docs.

And I totally agree that such a page should not be "compared to".

-Bertrand

Re: OXF rebuttal

Posted by Niclas Hedhman <ni...@hedhman.org>.
On Friday 19 September 2003 07:56, Stefano Mazzocchi wrote:
> On Friday, Sep 19, 2003, at 01:16 Europe/Rome, Roger I Martin PhD wrote:
> > Some things are beyond one company to achieve in one life time.
>
> Roger,
>
> while I understand that you might have felt insulted by their marketing
> action, I would suggest you to avoid being confrontational.

In principle I agree, don't get into a shit throwing contest.
But a continously evolving "Feature" or "Evaluation Overview" page is 
something else, and a good thing that is coming out of this, which should not 
be confrontational nor "compared with X" style.

Plain and simple.

Niclas

Re: OXF rebuttal

Posted by Stefano Mazzocchi <st...@apache.org>.
On Friday, Sep 19, 2003, at 01:16 Europe/Rome, Roger I Martin PhD wrote:

> Some things are beyond one company to achieve in one life time.

Roger,

while I understand that you might have felt insulted by their marketing 
action, I would suggest you to avoid being confrontational.

This is exactly what they are looking for to show what kind of people 
you get when you deal with those open source. It's like the DoS attack 
on SCO: does more harm to open source than to SCO (and Eric Raymond 
asked to stop it exactly for that).

Like I said before: no matter what they write, if it isn't true, it 
fires back on them. And if they compare to us, it means they fear us or 
customers avoid buying their software because of cocoon.

It does *NOT* matter whether or not that page is fair to us or not. We 
do not need those pages to be fair, we need *tons* of unfair pages of 
commercial products that try to compete with us, because that shows our 
success more than anything else.

Just ignore them and keep the focus.

Take care.

--
Stefano.


Re: OXF rebuttal

Posted by Roger I Martin PhD <hy...@hypernexinc.com>.
Hi Erik,

I don't see any "In the works" or "Upcoming" on the Cocoon column of the
comparison.

As far as what Cocoon "recommends", "does not clearly encourage", sheesh,
I've got the Cocoon source code; I can do anything I want.  Where Cocoon
documentation "is minimal"; remember I've got the source code.  Cocoon
doesn't discourage me from doing anything.

<quote>
cocoon supports proprietary actions and XSP
</quote>
Say what?

<quote>
cocoon supports proprietary actions and XSP
</quote>
How are you planning to convince an intelligent audience that JSP is
superior to XSP when XSP extends the concept of JSP from just html to all
xml documents?

<quote>
The Cocoon sitemap was initially designed to handle linear pipelines
according to a generation / transformation / serialization pattern suited
for Web publishing. This initial limitation has been lifted and Cocoon now
supports operating independently from a Servlet container.
</quote>
Can be rewritten
<rewrite>
Yes
</rewrite>
How the first version was designed is immaterial even to the biased
comparison your making with Cocoon version 2.1.

Your examples are painfully slow, tiny and unattractive at your site.
What's choking it? Validation? The xslt2 one doesn't work. Most of them are
based on sourceforge and other .org code bases where I can go and get better
examples and plug them into other publishing frameworks.

Your mailing list is smaller than tiny; more like puny.  You average about
38k of gzipped characters/month while Cocoon averages 831k of gzipped
characters/month just for their users list.  Many users are on the dev list
too.  These simple statistics belie your biased comparison.

You should put it at the top that you can't compare to open source because
your not and that you only support JSP and aren't anywhere close to
implementing XSP support(hint: you can get the source code from Cocoon to
get a start:-).  I'm part of Cocoon's quality assurance and robustness
team(world-wide users who can peek into the source code) while you probably
have just a handfull in an internal department.  When Cocoon hits an
exception, I can go right to the line of code and fix it myself instead of
waiting for the "professional help" to do it.  This stuff is not rocket
science. I cannot believe that things perform as well as the left side of
your comparison would have me believe.

Why don't you note where your documentation is barely existent?  At least
with Cocoon there is the source code.  On your web site your documents
appear to be fulfilling the requirement of existence for getting to market
rather than being full of real-world application meat.

I recommend you remove this pseudo-comparison/marketing page because it does
not "sell" -- what are you trying to sell?  Your going to have a
hell-of-a-time upkeeping this page.  There are so many new things happening
with Cocoon that you need to extend your list and proclaim that OXF
implementation is "No" and Cocoon is "In the works".  You appear to be a
small time blogger picking on a well-read blogger in his/her comment
sections just to increase your hits and get noticed. That is why it won't
sell.  On the other hand people who get to your site some other way will
find out about Cocoon thru this pseudo-comparison and "zap" you lost a
customer(For convenience you could provide a link).  The last thing you ever
want people coming to your web-site to know is the word Cocoon.

Your picking a tough market (IT developers).  We're a stingy bunch:-)  I
don't even begin to look at something that requires me to fill out marketing
forms just to learn about it.  Wrong customer.  What you want is customers
with lots of money who know nothing about software ; just want something
done.  This is what the open source crowd has realized and hence open
source.  Some things are beyond one company to achieve in one life time.

--
Roger
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Erik Bruchez" <eb...@orbeon.com>
To: "Gianugo Rabellino" <gi...@apache.org>
Cc: <de...@cocoon.apache.org>
Sent: Thursday, September 18, 2003 2:59 PM
Subject: Re: OXF rebuttal


> Dear Gianugo,
>
> We appreciate your comments about our OXF / Cocoon comparison
> matrix. We have posted an update to reflect most of them:
>
>    http://www.orbeon.com/oxf/cocoon
>
> A few additional comments below:
>
> 1. Professional Support
>
>     1. We clearly did not mean that Cocoon does not have free
>     support. 2. The main idea we wanted to convey is that the
>     day-to-day developers of OXF are also the people who provide
>     professional support for OXF. It looks like we were unfair to
>     Cocoon by not mentioning that professional support is also
>     available for Cocoon. The matrix has been updated to reflect this
>     better.
>
> 2. XML Validation and XPointer support
>
>     In OXF, these are feature of the pipeline language itself. The
>     validation feature is not about validation at parsing time (which
>     is clearly supported by XML parsers) but about being able to
>     validate each input and output of each component in a SAX pipeline
>     with a Relax NG or W3C Schema. AFAWK this is not possible with
>     Cocoon. The matrix has been updated to reflect this better.
>
> 3. J2EE Datasources
>
>     The Cocoon documentation on the subject seems to be lacking. We
>     have removed this item from the comparison. The lack of
>     documentation also seems to affect J2EE authentication and JSP
>     integration.
>
> 4. Tomcat / JSP
>
>     There used to be a JSP Generator based on Tomcat's Jasper
>     engine. Based on your comment, it looks like this way of calling
>     JSP pages is obsolete.
>
> 5. EJB
>
>     This regards the possibility to call EJBs from a pipeline without
>     writing any Java code. The matrix has been updated to reflect this
>     better.
>
> Regards,
>
> -Erik
>



Re: OXF rebuttal

Posted by Erik Bruchez <eb...@orbeon.com>.
Dear Gianugo,

We appreciate your comments about our OXF / Cocoon comparison
matrix. We have posted an update to reflect most of them:

   http://www.orbeon.com/oxf/cocoon

A few additional comments below:

1. Professional Support

    1. We clearly did not mean that Cocoon does not have free
    support. 2. The main idea we wanted to convey is that the
    day-to-day developers of OXF are also the people who provide
    professional support for OXF. It looks like we were unfair to
    Cocoon by not mentioning that professional support is also
    available for Cocoon. The matrix has been updated to reflect this
    better.

2. XML Validation and XPointer support

    In OXF, these are feature of the pipeline language itself. The
    validation feature is not about validation at parsing time (which
    is clearly supported by XML parsers) but about being able to
    validate each input and output of each component in a SAX pipeline
    with a Relax NG or W3C Schema. AFAWK this is not possible with
    Cocoon. The matrix has been updated to reflect this better.

3. J2EE Datasources

    The Cocoon documentation on the subject seems to be lacking. We
    have removed this item from the comparison. The lack of
    documentation also seems to affect J2EE authentication and JSP
    integration.

4. Tomcat / JSP

    There used to be a JSP Generator based on Tomcat's Jasper
    engine. Based on your comment, it looks like this way of calling
    JSP pages is obsolete.

5. EJB

    This regards the possibility to call EJBs from a pipeline without
    writing any Java code. The matrix has been updated to reflect this
    better.

Regards,

-Erik


Re: OXF rebuttal (was: Re: Interesting comparison)

Posted by Bertrand Delacretaz <bd...@codeconsult.ch>.
> ...However, Orbeon is solicitating comments, so I've put them in CC: I 
> hope that they will be so kind to discuss and possibly update their 
> informations....

Thanks, hopefully they will listen to your comments.

And by the way:

> ...
> - WebDAV support, ... proxy (development);...

FYI: nothing happening here ATM - I'm drowning in other stuff, and will 
also have a look at how hard it would be to graft a JDBC backend to 
catacomb.

-Bertrand



Re: OXF rebuttal (was: Re: Interesting comparison)

Posted by Sylvain Wallez <sy...@anyware-tech.com>.
Stefano Mazzocchi wrote:

<snip>

> [oh, look, they support Java Server Faces.... (sound of Stefano puking)] 


ROTFL !!!!

;-D

-- 
Sylvain Wallez                                  Anyware Technologies
http://www.apache.org/~sylvain           http://www.anyware-tech.com
{ XML, Java, Cocoon, OpenSource }*{ Training, Consulting, Projects }
Orixo, the opensource XML business alliance  -  http://www.orixo.com



RE: OXF rebuttal (was: Re: Interesting comparison)

Posted by Antonio Gallardo <ag...@agsoftware.dnsalias.com>.
Reinhard Poetz dijo:
> Ok, this is conventional marketing but IMO necessary.
> I tried to outline such a document:
> http://wiki.cocoondev.org/Wiki.jsp?page=CocoonFeatures
> (I know after reading it you are not a Cocoon expert but a beginning
> ...)

Good one! As usual the worst is the beginning, thanks for be the one that
done that! I know many of us will build upon this first block builded by
you.

Best Regards,

Antonio Gallardo.




Re: OXF rebuttal (was: Re: Interesting comparison)

Posted by Pier Fumagalli <pi...@betaversion.org>.
On 17/9/03 11:43, "Stefano Mazzocchi" <st...@apache.org> wrote:

> They do a much better marketing service for us if they keep up that
> lame page ;-)

+1. ANY advertisement is good advertisement! :-)

Plus, it proves they're scared shitless of what Cocoon can offer...

> [oh, look, they support Java Server Faces.... (sound of Stefano puking)]

Isn't the last word in "Java Server Faces" spelled with two "E"s ? :-)

    Pier


Re: OXF rebuttal (was: Re: Interesting comparison)

Posted by Steven Noels <st...@outerthought.org>.
Bertrand Delacretaz wrote:

> If they care about being honest, they can use the info he provided, if 
> not I agree that we can just forget about it.

Exactly. Who were we talking about?

</Steven>
-- 
Steven Noels                            http://outerthought.org/
Outerthought - Open Source Java & XML            An Orixo Member
Read my weblog at            http://blogs.cocoondev.org/stevenn/
stevenn at outerthought.org                stevenn at apache.org


Re: OXF rebuttal (was: Re: Interesting comparison)

Posted by Bertrand Delacretaz <bd...@codeconsult.ch>.
Le Mercredi, 17 sep 2003, à 12:43 Europe/Zurich, Stefano Mazzocchi a 
écrit :
>
> ...Entering a marketing pissing contest would just show that we think 
> we need to rebut their comments...

I agree about not entering a contest, but I still think Gianugo is 
right in giving his opinion on what they wrote.

If they care about being honest, they can use the info he provided, if 
not I agree that we can just forget about it.

-Bertrand

RE: OXF rebuttal (was: Re: Interesting comparison)

Posted by Reinhard Poetz <re...@apache.org>.
From: Sylvain Wallez

> Reinhard Poetz wrote:
> 
> > Ok, this is conventional marketing but IMO necessary.
> >
> >I tried to outline such a document: 
> >http://wiki.cocoondev.org/Wiki.jsp?page=CocoonFeatures
> >(I know after reading it you are not a Cocoon expert but a 
> >beginning...)
> >
> >What do you think?
> >  
> >
> 
> Excellent job, Reinhard ! Simple enough to be understood by 
> semi-techies 
> and exhaustive enough to show the wide range of technologies Cocoon 
> integrates. We have to add also a few usage scenarios for the 
> picture to 
> be complete.

good idea, just added the headline and some scenarios. Please add more!

> 
> Just a remark about form handling : I think we should not 
> emphasize on 
> XForms support, since XMLForm/JXForm is very far from XForms 
> compliance 

yes you are right, I rewrote this section. Is it better now?

> and its development has stopped in favor of Woody.


Reinhard


Re: OXF rebuttal (was: Re: Interesting comparison)

Posted by Sylvain Wallez <sy...@anyware-tech.com>.
Reinhard Poetz wrote:

> Ok, this is conventional marketing but IMO necessary.
>
>I tried to outline such a document:
>http://wiki.cocoondev.org/Wiki.jsp?page=CocoonFeatures
>(I know after reading it you are not a Cocoon expert but a beginning...)
>
>What do you think?
>  
>

Excellent job, Reinhard ! Simple enough to be understood by semi-techies 
and exhaustive enough to show the wide range of technologies Cocoon 
integrates. We have to add also a few usage scenarios for the picture to 
be complete.

Just a remark about form handling : I think we should not emphasize on 
XForms support, since XMLForm/JXForm is very far from XForms compliance 
and its development has stopped in favor of Woody.

Sylvain

-- 
Sylvain Wallez                                  Anyware Technologies
http://www.apache.org/~sylvain           http://www.anyware-tech.com
{ XML, Java, Cocoon, OpenSource }*{ Training, Consulting, Projects }
Orixo, the opensource XML business alliance  -  http://www.orixo.com



RE: OXF rebuttal (was: Re: Interesting comparison)

Posted by Reinhard Poetz <re...@apache.org>.
From: Stefano Mazzocchi

> Entering a marketing pissing contest would just show that we think we 
> need to rebut their comments.
> 
> I personally think we don't.
> 
> They can throw all the FUD they want on us, but, doing so, they will 
> just show their customers that such a free and open source solution 
> exists (and maybe they didn't know).

Exactly

> 
> bad publicity is still publicity. And lies fire back.
> 
> They do a much better marketing service for us if they keep up that 
> lame page ;-)
> 
> again, non-linear marketing at work.

IMHO you are completly right with your opinion not to enter into a
direct marketing battle with Orbeon. The thing that I learned is that we
don't give the user the information what Cocoon can do for him in a form
that he gets an overview within a few minutes. 

Ok, this is conventional marketing but IMO necessary. 
I tried to outline such a document:
http://wiki.cocoondev.org/Wiki.jsp?page=CocoonFeatures
(I know after reading it you are not a Cocoon expert but a beginning
...)

What do you think?


> [oh, look, they support Java Server Faces.... (sound of 
> Stefano puking)]

;)

Reinhard


Re: OXF rebuttal (was: Re: Interesting comparison)

Posted by Stefano Mazzocchi <st...@apache.org>.
On Wednesday, Sep 17, 2003, at 12:17 Europe/Rome, Gianugo Rabellino 
wrote:

[snipped rebuttal]

> Cocoon strong points
> ====================
> OXF doesn't mention a few Cocoon strong points.

> I would like to see at a very least:
>
> - Views;
> - Pluggable URL-like extensions (the Source interface);
> - WebDAV support, as client (stable), server (partial) and proxy 
> (development);
> - XML:DB support;
> - SAP R/3 connectivity;
> - Scheduler components;
> - Velocity support;
> - Python (Jython) and generic BSF support;
> - PHP support;

this hasn't worked for a while [besides, nobody cares]

> - Lucene integration;
> - Text to XML conversion using generated grammars (chaperon);
>
> That's it for now, but I've sure left out something. I hope that 
> Orbeon is willing to talk about their feature matrix in order to give 
> a reasonable, fair and useful comparison tool to their potential 
> customers.

Entering a marketing pissing contest would just show that we think we 
need to rebut their comments.

I personally think we don't.

They can throw all the FUD they want on us, but, doing so, they will 
just show their customers that such a free and open source solution 
exists (and maybe they didn't know).

bad publicity is still publicity. And lies fire back.

They do a much better marketing service for us if they keep up that 
lame page ;-)

again, non-linear marketing at work.

[oh, look, they support Java Server Faces.... (sound of Stefano puking)]

--
Stefano.