To D2 or to xCP, that is the Question

Now the Momentum Developer Conference is over, it's time to look back and see what we've learned.
I chose to follow the D2 track this time and since I've already done a project with xCP2, that gives me the opportunity to compare the two products.

The question many people are asking is which product to use for what. It seems to me that the long term answer to that may be very different from the short term, since both products are converging and are bound to be merged in some way in a couple of years. I have some thoughts on that, but I'll save that for a later post.

So, when you want to build a Documentum application today, what product do you use? D2 or xCP?
Given what I've learned this week, I would say the choice depends mostly on the core functionality that you need. We all know since last year that xCP 2 has a very powerfull design tool that will let you build almost any application UI and gives you many options to integrate that with your current, or external applications. Now that I've seen what D2 4.1 can do, I realize that the same goes for D2. It also offers a composable UI that can be extended with custom functionality and integrated with other applications.

So the main differentiator between D2 and xCP is not the UI, but the underlaying OOTB functionality.
The functionality that D2 offers is most geared toward Document Centric Applications (or old-school ECM if you will). It has lots of features in that area, such as Auto-naming, Auto-linking, Documentum lifecycles, Virtual documents, etc.
xCP on the other hand has been created with Case Management Applications in mind. It has features such as Business objects, Stateless processes and Discovered metadata.

So there it is. My simplification of the current situation: If your application is mainly about documents, you should consider D2, if it has a case or data object focus, consider xCP2. That will give you the most usefull OOTB functionality.
Having said that, there are other things to take into account when selecting a product, such as the OS and database platforms you are using and other technical and organization details, so take my view as a pointer, but not as the whole truth and the only truth.

What you think? Feel free to let me know.