How DXA is different than having a Dynamic Component Template which serves the response in JSON?

Question

I have found many benefits of having DXA like lesser dependency on core SDL Tridion knowledge, faster Publishing etc. But technically, I want to know:

1. Without having DXA I can achieve the same architecture where my Component Template serves the content in JSON, then why do I need DXA?
2. What exactly will I get in DXA, will the Content Delivery APIs be replaced with some more optimized API, as today too with SDL 2013 SP1, we are using Spring MVC on the front end?
3. Won’t DXA bring more performance issues as every small content will then be coming from Broker DB?

Thanks in advance

Answer 1

DXA is so much more than just outputting content to JSONs. There is a lot of material about DXA and its features, but some of the most interesting/valuable are :

• it's SDL supported
• the framework has a powerful model binding mechanism that allows you to have strongly typed models in your views
• it has a variety of Modules that enable you very easy integration with other SDL modules like SmartTarget(Experience Optimization), MediaManager, etc. and more, like out of the box support for Experience Manager, community built ones, for example for forms (by Stan) etc... Dxa modules include both Tridion items as well as html helpers and other code needed in the web application
• it comes with an example website so it's easy to learn

The Content Delivery API is still there, you can use still the CD API features, for example, in custom controllers. There was a change however in how you "access" the API, RESTful - using the CIL-s VS in-process (now deprecated), but this is not related to DXA, this change was introduced in Web 8.

You'd be surprised how often this concern arises in discussion, but the truth is that it shouldn't. There are several caching layers to ensure that the performance is not affected poorly. Storage layer, Microservices layer, Model Service (in DXA 2.0), DXA website itself, etc.

Naturally, the performance will depend on the nature of your content and website, but it shouldn't be a problem.

Answer 2

I agree with most of the answer given, but let me shed my views on this too:

1. Without having DXA, you can achieve the same architecture where your Component Template serves JSON, so why would you need DXA? Well the truth is, you don't NEED DXA, but you might want it, because it is a community best practice. As Nuno already mentioned, you share a common code base with the rest and can get help from the entire community because they know at least some details about your implementation.

2. What exactly will you get in DXA? Well that depends on how you see it, the CD APIs are not so much replaced, but wrapped around to provide you a more common API for web developers without needing specific Tridion knowledge, exactly as you already stated yourself. But note, DXA is not something magical or special, of course you can do something similar by using MVC, it is in essence just another MVC implementation, see answer #1 again for why you would want DXA.

3. DXA will never perform as fast as a static site where plain HTML pages are served from disk. But such an implementation has other drawbacks, like you need to republish the entire website for every little change etc. Dynamic web applications require a good caching strategy to perform, and DXA delivers that (allowing you to further improve when needed).

Answer 3

Answers to Q1:

Yes. The SDL Tridion is an enterprise CMS which can be implemented to support almost any publishing model and web application architecture, the DXA reference implementation is just one example of how SDL Tridion can be implemented.

Answers to Q2:

DXA is developed/supported by SDL. Its goal is to speed up implementations by standardizing solutions and showing best-practices. DXA is an Open Source project which utilizes either .NET MVC or Spring MVC to provide dynamic content delivery on the Content Delivery Presentations.

To know more about DXA features and Benefits:

SDL DXA Community Site

SDL Tridion Sites DXA Datasheets

Answers to Q3:

SDL released DXA 2.0, which introduced new architecture and model service to achieve the highest performance possible.

To know more about DXA 2.0 release

Answer 4

Great answers so far, I would like to add one: the fact that you'd be sharing your code base with a few hundred other sites.

• If there's a massive security flaw that pops up tomorrow affecting every implementation of random-java-class-that-everyone-uses you're more likely to get a faster fix in DXA than doing it yourself.
• Maybe you want to integrate with some Campaign Management solution, and find out that someone already built a starting point for DXA
• Or maybe you need forms?

Having a shared code base has a lot of "hidden benefits", and if we, as a community, contribute back the great stuff we build and can give back, then we all get better at a fraction of the cost of building it ourselves.

Answer 5

One more additional point:

For development agencies it would be easy to do knowledge transfer from one employee to another employee as the code base is not a specific implementation but a best industry standard with a large community associated with it and so the development agencies will be more in position to remove the dependency from one single developer or a team.

For customers, the same thing applies, they are also not dependent or have to spent a fortune for knowledge transfer while changing their development partners.

Answer 6

I'll add a few points and challenge the "best practice" point, as I prefer good patterns and practices over the idea there's a best practice.

Consider DXA for:

• Built-in modules and examples
• Ability to demo existing and future features in a working setup
• MVC approach now with client-side frameworks around the corner (and whatever else is next after that)

Plus input, guidance, and feedback from top Tridion Stack Exchange contributors (Nuno, Bart, Rick, Will, etc.).

I don't think it's about industry best practices--things like MVC or Bootstrap were chosen because they're familiar enough. But rather DXA includes a few decades worth of Tridion implementation and development experience and will keep up with product developments.