I've been reading the new IBM Lotus Domino: Classic Web Application Development Techniques book and must say, just the first few chapters are WORTH the price of the book. If you own a car, you probably pay attention to how it's running and do regular maintenance. Many of us take stock of our eating and other lifestyle habits and make adjustments from time to time. But how many of us do the same kind of critical examination of our application development habits? I've been in IT for 25 years and I must admit that the first few chapters of this book have me taking a fresh look at how I work.

While the first chapters are geared to someone new to Domino web devlopment - offering suggestions about using available resources to glean ideas from public web sites and from Domino Help - the recommendations around organizing one's own environment and planning work, organizing a project, laying the proper foundation for development of a new site or enhancement of a new site, etc, are what REALLY caught my eye (and mind!). Much of what's mentioned in the book are things most of us hopefully do. For me, however, having so many ideas that SHOULD be common sense spelled out in this well-organized format is a valuable aid to use in an inspection of how I am going about my app dev business. And of course, this is fantastic material to anyone new to Domino web development.

By the time author Richard Ellis eases into the guts of Domino web development partway into Chapter 3, he has covered (in a very readable and usable manner) planning the design (before coding!), standards for naming / version control / ACLs, organizing testing and deployment, and ...oh yeah ...reporting all the cool things you accomplish so your boss has an idea of what you've been doing with your time. Seriously (SERIOUSLY) just this last item would quite possibly bring more real return on investment if one were to implement the suggestion. How often does performance review time roll around and we struggle to communicate just what we've really accomplished? If one is careful to regularly document the fruits of one's labor (and Ellis provides a very sensible and simple and usable format), then management continually knows the value one brings to the organization. And that is what is needed to be deemed worthly of raises, bonuses, renewed contracts -- the financial reward for quality efforts.

As I move into the middle chapters of the book, I'm eager to see what Ellis has provided in guidance for the rather odd (and powerful) duck that is Domino web development. Stay tuned....