Optimizing your development processes with TridionHow DD4T can help you deliver web functionality faster

Tridion as a development platform

• Tridion is primarily a CMS

• As a development platform, it falls short:• Inflexible

• Long time to market

• Hard to test

• Hard to maintain

• Hard to find resources

Web Application

Classic Tridion Development

Developer

CMS

Templates

Event system

Back end integrations

Other stuff

DeveloperDeveloperDeveloperDeveloper DeveloperDeveloper Developer

User controls

Master pages

Other stuff

Integrations

Strong dependencies

between templates and

the web application

Classic Tridion Development

Most development work takes place in Tridion with a significant amount in the web application as well:

• No clean separation of concerns

• Tridion expertise is scarce and expensive

Web Application

DD4T Development

CMS

Templates

Event system

Back end integrations

Other stuff

DeveloperDeveloper DeveloperDeveloper Developer

Models Controllers

ViewsIntegrations

DeveloperDeveloper

Strict separation of

concerns: Web Application vs.

CMS

DD4T Development

• Tridion is used solely as a CMS

• Most development work takes place in the IDE• Standard approach in modern web programming

• Tridion skills only required to customize the CMS processes

• Clean separation of concerns

• .NET expertise is cheaper and more common

MVC versus Web Forms

• Although the debate is still raging out there, we personally believe that:• ASP.NET MVC is a cleaner architecture

• It is newer and makes better use of recent innovations

• It has better separation of concerns

• And it’s better suited for multi-channel, multi-language publishing

• Hence we are convinced ASP.NET MVC is the better match with Tridion!

Waterfall vs. Agile

• A classic Tridion implementation requires careful planning:• Depencendies between Content Manager and Content

Delivery

• Tied directly into Tridion’s BluePrinting model

• Every change leads to massive republishing

• A dynamic implementation lends itself better for an agile approach

• This contributes significantly to a shorter time to market

Typical DD4T architecture

Social AnalyticsE-

commerceDAMCMS

Serv

ice

s

Web Site

Ch

ann

els

Mobile Apps Mobile Site Social Media

Dat

a

Product Y

Bac

k-

end Tridion Product X Product Z

DD4T supports a modern, multi-tier

architecture.Great for

integrations!

What they will like about it

IT director

Fits in with Agile

Scalability

Content editors

Faster publishing

All Tridion options open

(Marketing) Manager

Time to market

Total cost of ownership

Project manager

Less specialized skills

Time to market

Test manager

Quality of work

Automated testing

Architect

Best of breed tools

Standard implementation

DD4T Mission

Open source framework

Enable web application development using Tridion

only as a CMS

Link to the dominant MVC architecture

Currently: ASP.NET MVC 3, ASP.NET MVC 4 and ASP.NET MVC 5

Built on top of Tridion’s public APIs

Currently: Tridion 2009 – 2013

Future releases of Tridion will be supported

DD4T 2.0 announced for

Q1 2015

DD4T in the market

Over 30 known customers

More than 50% of new implementations choose DD4T

Supported by an active community

SDL is supportive of DD4T

New developments are DD4T-aware

Practical support

Trivident and DD4T

We have in-depth knowledge of the

framework

We are active in the DD4T community

We contribute extensively to the development

of DD4T

We offer DD4T support to our customers

Hea

d t

o h

ead

Classic Dynamic

ASP.NET Web Forms ASP.NET MVC

Waterfall approach Agile approach

Manual testing only Automated testing possible

Focus on Tridion development skills Focus on .NET development skills

Overlap of concerns (e.g. HTML generation) Separation of concerns

Longer time to market Shorter time to market

Deployment from Tridion through publishing Standard web application deployment

Rollback of changes is often hard to realize Rollback with a click of a button

Mass republishing required for almost every change Changes do not usually require mass republishing

Developers work on a shared ‘dev server’ Developers work in their own sandbox environment

Need help?

• Trivident offer a range of services to help you implement DD4T:• Implementation scans

• Workshops

• Developer training

• Complete implementations