These people don't like Cocoon...

Or more precisely, there is something they don't like, and they're telling the world so that Cocoon can become better.

Don't forget to also have a look at (or contribute to) TheyLikeCocoon.

And make sure you understand the RulesOfTheGame before complaining too much!

Rules

If you add entries here, signing your name after your comments would be nice.

It would be nice to indicate which version of Cocoon you're talking of, as hopefully most problems will be fixed over time.

Of course editing other people's comments is technically possible. If you do this however, the Great Black Man From Deep Internet will come and get you. Commenting on other's comments is ok if clearly indicated, though, using italics for example.

Here we go!

• Although the basic stuff is stable, more advanced features (forms, flow, etc.) are still very much in a state of flux, or perceived as such, which makes Cocoon as a whole appear less mature than it is – V2.0.3 – BertrandDelacretaz
  
• Cocoon is complicated and it has a steep learning curve. Is it trying to do too much? – TonyCollen
  
• Cocoon's steep learning curve is partly due to the current state of its documentation. The docs are extensive, but are scattered across many different sources (wiki, official documentation, Javadocs, other websites) and are somewhat disorganized even inside these sources. – June 2003 – LarryLansing
  
• Cocoon 1 was relatively small, relatively simple. Cocoon 2 does perhaps try to do too much, and shows symptoms of the second system effect. – Jeff Turner
  
• The "Out of the Box" Cocoon has an extremely complex default configuration which demonstrates virtually every feature supported by the software (and some unsupported as well!), which makes it a bit overwhelming to just get a relatively simple site up using just a few features. Alternatively, you can download chello to get a basic "Hello World" Cocoon site up and running, but that doesn't really help the new user very much, other than providing a cleaned-up starting point. What I think would help would be a set of separate .war files, one similar to chello, another with a small XSP-based site, another with a JSP-based site, etc. – Kelly Denehy
  
• I agree with Kelly: Cocoon2 almost never ran for me. I always ended up with a non-working J2SKD/XML API/Web server. Yes, I read the 101 Install Guides. No, I'm not a dweep - I built http://efonds24.de/ on Cocoon 1.8 – Christian Kinsser
  
• There are three major ways of querying an SQL database (Actions, ESQL, and SQL Transforms), and at least six ways of dealing with forms (hand-made Actions + Logicsheets/Transforms, SimpleForm, XMLForm, JXForm, Woody, and Precept). There is some overlap between these components. Too many choices make the learning curve steeper. – June 2003 – LarryLansing
  
• The integration between Woody and databases is, or seems to be, more complex than necessary. In contrast to the "old" way of embedding esql queries and
  using a simple validator, quite a lot of different aspects and modules need to be considered to obtain the main advantage, which is a more thorough validation
  of the entered data. It would be nice to directly map SQL queries into a form, for example using some kind of transformer.
  In addition, the ojb example which uses Woody seems to use some classes (Employee and EmployeeDAO) which do not seem to exist in the samples
  directory although they would be crucial to using woody + ojb. – March 2004 – Leon Widdershoven
  
• The separation between component data and cocoon data is not strong. Though cocoon fabulously separates data from layout, settings for cocoon
  applications seem to be done in the generic cocoon.xconf files, at least according to the examples. This makes cocoon almost useless for, for instance,
  hosting applications since that would require a strong separation between system and customer. – March 2004 – Leon Widdershoven