My unsolicited opinion: I just ran across Cocoon because I am an xml.apache.org contributor (did some work last summer on Axis). Cocoon has very little visibility outside of Apache.
I think that Cocoon is designed and built mostly by programmers, and hasn't been marketed well (or indeed at all!). It doesn't really fit into any specific product niche -- it falls right in between the Java infrastructure world (dominated by EJBs) and the XML infrastructure world (dominated by XSL). What is its direct competition? A variety of other content management systems, foremost of which is probably Zope (an open-source Python CMS with a good web UI but no XSL underpinnings). This is an evolving sector. If you look on Google for "content management system" or "Java XSLT" you will probably turn up rather more hits.... IMHO the main difficulty with Cocoon right now is how hard it is to learn. I am spending most of this week just coming to grips with the basics. It is *not* easy to dive right into the system and understand (say) exactly how the esql sample page gets converted into html (i.e. what exactly are all the steps of the pipeline, and where are they defined in the various sitemaps / logicsheets / stylesheets). Nor is it easy to know where to start when creating a new site, with a new CSS foundation and all new templates. I would love (and may work on developing) a "starter web application" under Cocoon, with its own local sitemap and its own templates... sort of a "hello world webapp" totally contained in one directory. Right now Cocoon is really best suited for programmers with lots of time to learn a new (albeit powerful) tool. In order to get wider adoption, Cocoon will need *even more* attention paid to making it easy for newbies to start working with it -- not only more tutorials along the lines of CTwiG, but also more (and more functional!) sample applications, and probably even more web-based management tools (since doing *all* Cocoon administration by editing XML files is not exactly easy -- try out Zope for an example of a different, simpler, approach). I do still like Cocoon, in theory, but the learning curve is daunting and it's still not clear I will be able to spend enough time on it to start getting good results. Cheers, Rob At 06:28 PM 3/28/2002 -0800, Steven Punte wrote: >Dear Cocoon User Group: > > First of all, I LOVE the Cocoon framework, > I'm a total believer, and expecially love > how Cocoon2 is turning out! > > Cocoon seems just awesomely powerfully, years > ahead of the classical architectures proposed > by Sun (i.e. JSP to ServletBeans to EJBs...). > > But how come there is NO (i.e. ABSOLUTELY NO) > demand for Cocoon expertise in the US market? > Type in key word "java" and retrieve 3500 hits > on www.dice.com. Type in key word "cocoon" > and get ZERO! > > Is it all just a dream? > > Steve > >PS: > No need to reply if "your" commerical project > is using it: congradulation. But the bigger > picture is my question. > > > > >__________________________________________________ >Do You Yahoo!? >Yahoo! Movies - coverage of the 74th Academy Awards® >http://movies.yahoo.com/ > >--------------------------------------------------------------------- >Please check that your question has not already been answered in the >FAQ before posting. <http://xml.apache.org/cocoon/faqs.html> > >To unsubscribe, e-mail: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >For additional commands, e-mail: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> --------------------------------------------------------------------- Please check that your question has not already been answered in the FAQ before posting. <http://xml.apache.org/cocoon/faqs.html> To unsubscribe, e-mail: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For additional commands, e-mail: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
