However, with application development we as developers often need to get a meaningful result back from the server before continuing with the processing. Application development is highly synchronous. For example, if you delete a Notes document using an XmlHttpRequest, then you probably need to know that the document was actually deleted before you can let the user continue interacting with the interface. So, aside from not doing the whole page refresh thing, there is the consideration of synchronous vs asynchronous within the context of the page itself, or even outside of the context of the browser as in the case of a .NET application.

David: You're able to consume RSS feeds. What are you doing with these feeds? Did you code that in Domino?

Marek: We have leveraged RSS as a technology in different ways in our solutions. RSS is often associated with the publicly-available, anonymous retrieval of news feeds from online news outlets or Web sites by individuals, leveraging an aggregator or RSS reader. But it is so much more than that.

To us, RSS is like the instant messaging of content. In DocLogic, we leverage RSS in several ways to deliver not only content, but functionality. In terms of content, teams can leverage DocLogic to aggregate RSS information from several sources as content. We have a template in DocLogic so that users can set up their own content research.

However, we also make it functional where users can also set up things we call Watchlists. Watchlists allow users to gather documents and folders together as a group and watch them for changes. Additionally, users can share their watchlists and subscribe to other watchlists from other people in an organization. This basically makes everyone a consumer and publisher of corporate information shared in teams.

Additionally, we serve up other functional aspects like workflow and favorites as RSS. Further, DocLogic has a system tray component called DocLogic Explorer. DocLogic Explorer does several things to integrate the desktop with DocLogic and one of its jobs is to watch for items of interest to the user like workflow, watchlists, todo, favorites and so on.

So by leveraging RSS, we employ something we term as "Active Management" in the DocLogic application. Without being in the browser application nor in email, users are alerted and stay aware of actions and content that is specific to them and to their job. And yes, it's all coded in Domino which also allows other corporate systems to leverage the information. So for example, if a company has a portal, that portal can call on the RSS feeds in DocLogic on the Domino server to serve up user workflow items.

Being able to send and consume feeds from the same platform is critical because it provides a common presentment location to aggregate all the relevant information for a user, whether that information comes from inside or outside the organization.

To highlight how valuable this can be, imagine yourself as a VP of marketing. By consuming feeds, you now have the ability to monitor your brand through a blog aggregator and the internal status of your marketing, all from one spot. It's presenting the information that is relevant to you in one spot that does not include clogging your email and can alert you to changes you need to pay attention to.