Touching base on Maven and Cocoon

I blogged a while ago on a new technology (to me), Maven, and one I am familiar with... Cocoon, now here is a quick catch up on both topics.. combined. I am now using both Maven and Cocoon, in the form of Cocoon 2.2, which I am experimenting with for the first time. The modular approach for builds that maven represents appeals to me, and Cocoon is an old favourite in my development toolkit, yes it still gives me a warm glow inside, and truthfully I have not yet experienced anything as good in terms of architecting an elegant web platform.

I intend to rewrite my company website using this set of tools, and have another project to work on simultaneously, the former is purely a publishing project, something I have experience in, the latter is a database intensive operation, something I am not comfortable with in terms of Cocoon. I have still not seen any beginner (best practice) samples for developing DB powered webapps with Cocoon.. specifically Cocoon 2.2, the search goes on. If I do find any, I will be sure to post them as a follow up to this.

In terms of my experience so far, this Maven Cocoon 2 combination has a fair overhead, particularly if you are not familiar with the concept of build tools such as Apache Ant, and Cocoon by itself is a large and complex platform. The joy is in watching your efforts rewarded with powerful automation, and an incremental, concise approach, allowing the developer to use lego blocks, reusing code, and expanding the boundaries confining any architecture elements of the system.

A word of warning though, as of right now, the chances of a successful build of Cocoon 2.2, without being forced to tinker with the system are slim, it is a frustrating experience, which perhaps only makes your eventual success (hopefully), all the more pleasant.