I was very humbled when I was asked to be a technical reviewer for the new book Mastering XPages: A Step-by-Step Guide to XPages Application Development and the XSP Language by IBM Press.  I refer to the authors as the "Lotus Dream Team" because who better to publish a book on XPages but the folks who have led the development effort: Martin Donnelly, Mark Wallace, Tony McGuckin, and Jim Quill.  The depth of knowledge here is deep folks.

As a technical reviewer my role was to read each chapter and test each example, make sure everything worked as expected, and then provide my feedback.  I can't say enough of how I enjoyed the book.  It is not your typical approach for learning development in a new language.  The author's approach is to have the reader learn how to do everything in the source panel first as opposed to the graphical interface.  The concept is that the reader will learn XPages from the bottom up and in depth.  This will lay the foundation to understand the fundamentals of the language, and provide you with the skills to read XSP markup and understand how everything works together at runtime.

Well, I have to tell you, I thought I knew XPages very well prior to reading this book.  Not so!  It really took my skills to the next level.  I feel much more comfortable reading the XSP source and identifying an issue quickly.  It's second nature now.

The other thing I enjoyed about this book, is the Author's insight into the development of this product.  In various chapters they point out and explain the behind the scenes knowledge and the history of the technology..... why certain decisions were made, why things work the way they do.  For example, XPages in the Notes client and the technology and challenges behind that.  That type of information can only be delivered from this team of Authors, and it made the book that much more enjoyable.

Here's a list of the table of contents:

Part I Getting Started With XPages
-Chapter 1 A Little XPages History
-Chapter 2 Getting Everything You Need
-Chapter 3 Building Your First XPages Application

Part II XPages Development: First Principles
-Chapter 4 Anatomy of an XPage
-Chapter 5 XPages and JavaServer Faces
-Chapter 6 Building XPages Business Logic

Part III Data Binding
-Chapter 7 Working with Domino Documents
-Chapter 8 Working with Domino Views
-Chapter 9 Beyond the View Basics

Part IV Programmability
-Chapter 10 Custom Controls
-Chapter 11 Advanced Scripting
-Chapter 12 XPages Extensibility
-Chapter 13 XPages in the Notes Client

Part V Application User Experience
-Chapter 14 XPages Theming
-Chapter 15 Internationalization

Part VI Performance, Scalabilty & Security
-Chapter 16 Application Performance & Scalability
-Chapter 17 Security

Part VII Appendixes
-Appendix 1 XSP Tags Quick Reference
-Appendix 2 XSP Style Sheet Reference
-Appendix 3 Useful XPages Sites on the Net

I definitely recommend this book for Beginners, Intermediates, and Advanced XPage developers....there's something in there for everyone. The book can be ordered from IBM Press or Amazon.com.  

The target date was around the Lotusphere timetable. I know everyone is working overtime to make it happen.

-John

Technorati: Domino 8.5 - XPages XPages

1. Roy Rumaner11/11/2010 11:32:50 AM

Amazon is now estimating the release date to be the end of February. Wish it could be released sooner so I could get a copy in time to build my next site

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2. Paul Hannan11/11/2010 01:28:44 PM

The book will be released in time for Lotusphere 2011 in the US and late February in the rest of the world.

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3. Jason Hook11/11/2010 01:38:13 PM

If only they could follow pragmatic programmers lead and release "beta" copies of the book.....

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4. Tim Paque11/12/2010 10:22:40 AM

I ordered the book a couple days ago not realizing I was pre-ordering. Was bummed to realize I have to wait.

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5. Martin Donnelly11/13/2010 01:05:14 AM

re "beta" copies of the book, there is a "Rough Cuts" service that makes books available pre-release, so that you can access the material early, post feedback etc. We are planning to get involved with this, so hopefully that will help meet your request?

More info available here:
{ Link }

Thanks -M

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6. Martin Donnelly11/13/2010 01:09:14 AM

Thanks for the kind words John - your reviews were really positive and helpful! 8-) -M

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7. Steve Kobb11/29/2010 11:14:22 AM
Homepage: http://www.pachouston.com

@5: Martin, I encourage you to make your material available on Rough Cuts at the earliest possible date.

Don't make us wait until the end of January for this information: We need it now!

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