Required skillset to learn CQ5

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I just fell over the blog post by Robert Sumner where he describes what the required skillsets are to become a “WEM/WCM architect”, “J2EE integration specialist” and “CQ5 developer” for CQ5.

He states, that before you become an architect, you should have experience in the integration specialist role. Agreed to that. But then for the integration specialist role Robert says:

“J2EE – it’s all about JAVA here….experience with SSO, SEO, integration, databases, web services, and Caching is essential to implementing and delivering a robust WEMs tool.  These folks can learn the CQ5 technology in a day, because Adobe CQ5 is based on standards.”

In my opinion, this is simply wrong. You cannot learn CQ5 in a day, just because it is based on standards. It’s nice, that something is built on standards. But still: You need to learn to work with these standards, learn the APIs and the way they are supposed to be used. You need to learn the Do’s and Don’ts and the best practices. And even if CQ5 is built on standards: There are a lot of proprietary APIs on top of the standards you should at least be aware of.

So my answer to the question “What’s the required skill set” is: “Know HTTP! Know the impact of latency and the importance and ways of caching. Know some web frameworks and start to think in pages and request/response instead of transactions.” And if you know Java: even better!

Published by Jörg

Jörg works since more than 12 years with CQ5/AEM, first as an architect in Adobe's consulting organisation, later as a Site Reliability Engineer in the AEM as a Cloud Service business. He has a focus on operation, stability and performance of AEM, and likes to share his knowledge to the broader community.

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3 thoughts on “Required skillset to learn CQ5”

  1. You’re right. I should have written that a J2EE specialist can learn the architectural framework of CQ5 in a day. After re-reading with that literal lens, the language suggest that learning implies becoming proficient at the stack. So, I’ll recant and replace with verbiage that is more accurate. Thanks for the read!

    1. Robert, thanks for your immediate reaction.

      But I would even deny, that a J2EE specialist can “learn” it within a day. From my point of view “learning” implies a certain level of “can apply the knowledge to a problem and solve it on its own”.

      If we contine this, we will certainly end up with a discussion about the term “learn” 🙂

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