Building applications with Adobe LiveCycle

Last Thursday I was at the post-event training for Adobe Max. I followed a class on LiveCycle. According to Adobe LiveCycle is:"an integrated J2EE server solution that blends electronic forms, process management, document security, and document generation". We used the LiveCycle Workbench to design a process. The workbench is an eclipse based tool. The processes are designed in a graphical manner by dragging and dropping services in a process diagram. These services can be from optional Adobe components or services that are custom built. Usualy these custom components would expose your existing functionality in a SOA way. Once the services are available, the application can be created fast and relatively easily. Changing the behaviour of the application can be done with just a few drags. I think building applications this way may lead to a split into what I would call business-programmers and service-programmers. The first having a focus on the business processes that are to be automated. These may wel be the business process designers since it's relatively easy to build your application by dragging services in a process diagram. The service programmers are then the more 'hardcore' programmers focussed on the delivering the services required for those processes. I can imagine this being welcomed from a business perspective. It's about taking back controll. let's face it. Developers do not always have a good reputation when it comes to producing what the business actualy needs. These problems are most often due to poor communication. The challenge will then become for the business-programmers to specify clearly what services are exactly needed and for the service-programmers to communicate what the implications and possibilities are. I think that using LiveCycle can help you change the way the business work more rapidly. I also think it will make it easier to get the big picture of an application (process diagrams are easily read). But will it help make better applications? That will probably still depend more on communication skills than skills in programming and process design