Beyond The Yellow Bubble

Also given that all but the most simple of traditional Domino applications makes heavy use of sub-forms, I would also like to have a tool available that mimicks this design element functionally in XPages and imports existing sub-form data into the XPages equivalent.

Failing that, a tool that can read the design synopsis of a Domino database and scopes and document those design elements that that can be kept as is, and those design elements will most benefit from redevelopment.

There are currently tools available that help developers to migrate from Domino to other platforms (including .Net, SharePoint & WebSphere), so why can't Lotus provide similar migration tools to assist Domino developers to migrate existing Domino applications to more fully exploit XPages and replace the many hacks and workarounds developed over the years with XPages code?

Failing that, perhaps there is a niche for the .Domino Framework to perform some or all of that function. I get the impression that XPages is primarily used for greenfield Web development.

Ian Randall

" I would also like to have a tool available that mimicks this design element functionally in XPages"

It's called a Custom Control, and it's listed immediately below Xpages in the design navigator.

Peter, have you tried dragging/dropping a view or form from the Data source tab on to your Xpage? It should auto-generate a lot of design content for you. Not actions, unfortunately. But view columns and field forms should all show up automatically.

@Nathan, Yes the drag/drop of a view control onto an Xpage is pretty intuitive and even a novice like me could use this pretty easily. With Notes 6 I didn't even have shared columns and so I would often copy a column from one view into other views as a way of making an update to multiple views. If I now have an application and the user says could you add a new column to all the views I can create it once and paste it to all my existing views but I cannot paste this column into the views on my Xpages. I would have to find another way to do this.