Forum OpenACS Q&A: Response to Learning Management System

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Posted by Jun Yamog on
Hi Jack,

Being able to develop in CCM and OpenACS I could give some options about it. Both in real client projects.

Here are the facts that I have

  • CCM is more rigid and less flexible. Hence the code is more standard and way of doing things is more or less the same. But being rigid makes it very poor of fast development time that we have taken for granted in tcl. For example a tcl development time will take 2-3 days... ccm will take you around 1 week or more.
  • CCM does give you the advantage of packaging your package and install it into a basic CCM. There are already rpm scripts (internal CCM ver) to turn your code in rpm packages.
  • CCM is oracle only as of now. There is postgres work but its not there yet.
  • CCM does enjoy of a marketing hype of Java and multiple vendors.

I think it is best for your company to use OpenACS and try out CCM. The long term plan and type of projects of your company should decide what to use. But I don't really see the point of using one over the other. Previously prior to exposure to CCM coding I thought OpenACS and CCM are the same. They have overlapping features but right now for me both are ok platform and you may just decide on a per project basis.

If the java party is banking on all hype then why don't you just download both OpenACS and CCM. Set a small specific requirement and see how it goes. CCM will not accelerate your time to market but it will give some benefits for your company. Like more tools for your developers... IDE, debugger, unit tests. Better packaging. Since its also layered a developer can just know a specific layer. CCM is good if you have a lot of developers. But its bad if only a few will have to touch all the layers while developing. CCM will also require your to invest it time and tools.

A debugger is needed in CCM. Its is unlikely you will be productive with log4j, recode, recompile, redeploy, restart. In OpenACS you can get away without a debugger. You can just watch file, ns_log, recode, refresh browser.

Clearly there is no real advantage over the other. If you can use both then good. If it must be one then OpenACS is still my choice, but CCM is worth a look.