Workplace Designer

Last week, Ed linked to an eWeek article that mentions Workplace Designer. Some others have, but I haven't seen this tool yet. I do hope to soon, and I imagine that we'll all get a preview at Lotusphere. The reporter who wrote the article Ed cited actually contacted me for my comments about Workplace Designer, and all I could give him was my expectations. He didn't use the quote. I'm not sure if I missed his deadline, or I just wasn't relevant enough, but this is my blog and I get to decide what's relevant enough here :-) So here's what I said:

Many people will undoubtedly judge Workplace Designer against the Domino Designer tool, which is so successful as a RAD tool because it automatically provides all the linkages between data storage and presentation as well as simple but flexible control over security features, allowing application developers to concentrate on collaborative features and workflow. IBM certainly can't be expected to put all the power accumulated in about 15 years of development of Domino Designer into a first release of Workplace Designer, but if Workplace Designer does provide developers with linkages of data, presentation and security through high-level abstractions that are compatible with the standards-based framework of Workplace, that will tell me that standards-based collaboration from IBM is going to be a winner in the long run.

When I finally do get a chance to see it, unencumbered by NDA, I'll come back to this post and tell you whether it does in fact meet my expectations.