Bob's Blog

VB 6, Mashups, Comp Apps, and more

meta-creation_date: 01/24/2007 01:33:23 Today was a lab day for me at Lotusphere and as always I love talking to customers, hearing their demands and attempting to give them some information that will help them out technically. I was actually shocked to hear how many ISV's and business partners want to leverage Lotus Expeditor to surface VB 6 applications. Apparently there is much concern about the move of MS to stop supporting VB6 and the applications need to be heavily modified to go to a .NET architecture. The other main topic was surfacing anything and having the components "speak" with each other over the Property Broker. I am really glad I got the opportunity to port the broker from portal to the client - it appears to be taking off like very well and people are really understanding it and its value.

I did however get to spend a couple of hours with the family and we did another trip to Universal Studios - this time taking on the Mummy! This is a great ride and if you get to Universal make sure you hit it.

I just finished the Composite Applications and SOA birds of a feather - yes it is only 8:30am and yes it started at 7am and barely no one was coherent. I certainly did not like closing Jellyrolls and getting 4 1/2 hours of sleep but hey - if you fly with the owls you need to sore with the eagles!

Tags: Lotus Expeditor Composite Applications Lotusphere2007

Tuesday and Lotusphere

meta-creation_date: 01/23/2007 02:02:32 I will be in the meet the developers lab starting at 9am but I thought I would catch the start of "ID307 IBM Lotus Expeditor Looks to the Future (R1)" and I am extremely impressed with the turn out. It is almost like there is a small group of attendees that are starting to understand what Expeditor is and what it means for the future of Notes and Sametime. At the Open Source BOF last night we got a lot of "clarification" questions from the group. People are starting to understand both the flexibility of Expeditor and the preservation of their existing Notes applications. We got a lot of questions on composite applications and how Eclipse based components fit into the picture.

Come to the lab and see some demos and code on the Expeditor samples. I will be in the lab until 12:30 today.

Tags: Lotus Expeditor Composite Applications Lotusphere2007

Expeditor is taking off

meta-creation_date: 01/22/2007 15:45:41 With a lot of sessions today on Lotus Expeditor, Composite Applications ,and Property Broker the word is definitely out on this programming model and platform. I gave my talk today and it appeared to be well received by the Lotus Notes community. This is a pretty large Lotusphere with 7K plus attendees the halls and functions are pretty swamped with people. There is a lot of great interest in Property broker, declarative wiring, mash-ups and composite applications in general. Some excellent feedback and desires have been around moving things like legacy VB 6 applications to Lotus Expeditor. On more than one occasion in the first day in the labs this was brought up. I am glad we can give VB developers a path to the future that appears to be more appealing to them than a re-write to .NET.

Tags: programming Lotus Expeditor Composite Applications Lotusphere2007

Composite Application Draft RedPaper

meta-creation_date: 01/18/2007 09:28:24 This is an IBM Redpaper (currently a draft) that I contributed to last year. It shows really great examples of how to create composite applications using the Lotus Expeditor 6.1 client.

Building Composite Applications in Lotus Expeditor V6.1

Abstract
This redpaper covers composite applications for desktop solutions that require multiple types of applications to run in a Lotus Expeditor V6.1 collaboration environment by providing inter-communication between components. SOA composite applications deliver high levels of business services and this redpaper covers the architecture, available tools, component considerations, assembling, deploying and wiring components in Lotus Expeditor V6.1 composite applications. Lotus Expeditor is a client platform for end-to-end smart client application solutions. Expeditor provides services to install and manage these applications and to allow end-users to easily launch and switch among these applications. Expeditor leverages Eclipse technology to provide a client solution that runs on multiple operating systems. The benefits of composite applications include reducing the total cost of ownership for client solutions through reusability of existing components and the sharing of these components across applications, migrating existing applications to run on the client platform until such time as a business deems it necessary to fully exploit the client platform, controlling access to applications based on roles assigned to end-users and improving the end-user experience by allowing composite applications components to easily communicate between them. This redpaper is targeted to architects, developers and administrators who need to understand the implemented architecture to develop, assemble and deploy composite applications in Lotus Expeditor V6.1.

Insidious Tight Coupling

meta-creation_date: 01/17/2007 02:26:09 This months Dr Dobbs has an article written by Bill Lewis (Insidious Tight Coupling) where he explains the good programming practice of interface programming. This should not be news to any developer with more than 6 months experience - or even graduated with a CS degree. What I am hear to preach is there should be a further abstraction when dealing with cooperative components the user interacts with. This abstraction I am referring to is the same one developed for Portal 5+, Lotus Expeditor 6.1 and the up and coming Lotus Notes 8. The concept is simple, make your GUI components act like a well defined interface using WSDL. This means if another component - or code for that matter - wants to interact with your component they only know about the interfaces exposed in the WSDL.

Why does this matter?
It matters because now we have given non-programmers a way to declaratively connect these components. They can use a wiring tool - like the one in Portal or the up and coming Composite Application Editor - to create these applications and get these components talking to each other. So we have not only implemented a good overall discipline but are giving that discipline to administrators and end users.

Take this basic scenario:
We have a date picker control that we know published a Date object when a day is selected. We can then wire that component to any other component that receives a Date object - like a weather report portlet, or a blog site. This now allows a normal person - not a God like developer - to take these components and create new contexts (applications). Think of this as a way for someone to create an interactive Portal where the components can drive each other for specific results.

Tags: programming Lotus Expeditor Composite Applications interface component development

New Outlook Won't Use IE To Render HTML

meta-creation_date: 01/16/2007 04:43:20 I don't know if this is true or not but if it is I find it pretty amazing MS would give Outlook this limitation. I might have to run this by Ed.

Jazz is not just a type of music

meta-creation_date: 01/16/2007 01:37:17 After reading the article "Knowledge-Centric Application Lifecycle Management" by Dr. Tieren Zhou I realized I am not so much in the know about collaborative development initiatives in the industry. IBM's Rational has a project called Jazz - which is an Eclipse based extension for providing collaboration integration with the IDE. You can search developer works for Jazz and find all sorts of hits. The article also mentions Visual Studio 2005 and its team capabilities. Of course I installed the XNA development kit - which is the express version and I really like it. The article is interesting because while these enhancements to the IDE's are coming - or are out now - many IBM'ers have been doing this type of thing for years using Sametime and VNC. I do like the integration - I just don't know if I want to know or care who is working on what piece of code any time of the day...

Tags: IBM collaboration Rational Visual Studio Jazz

Collaborative Development Environments

meta-creation_date: 01/15/2007 02:59:35 If you are into collaboration and/or team development methodologies then this months magazine is for you. It is filled with some very good articles.

Grady Booch has a short article (page 10) in Dr Dobb's this month where he continues his evangelism in the collaborative development environments. While I do not think the environment he suggests exists today, it is getting very close. Eclipse is so open and having Lotus (and IBM for that matter) put most of their eggs on Eclipse you will see plugins that can and will capture collaboration at its best and be compatible with tools like basic Eclipse, Rational Software Architect and Rational Application Developer. Of course some of the new tools coming out - like Composite Application Editor, Component Designer, etc will all be easily integrated into Lotus Notes 8.

The next articles that look very appealing - which I have already begun to read - are the ones in the section dedicated to Global Collaborative Development. It has five short articles with some excellent material. I will be commenting on them little later.

Tags: IBM collaboration

XNA dev kit is pretty cool

meta-creation_date: 01/11/2007 12:59:44 I have been playing with XNA for a bit and I am very impressed with the SDK, IDE and ease of use. The best thing I like is the starter kit game that is included with the product. I have always liked MS development tools and the XNA C# based kit follows the high level of standard MS puts into their tooling.

Here is a screen shot of the different projects available - out of the box:

The great thing is, when you create the SpaceWar starter kit you can use this as a learning application by looking at the source and of course debugging it - excellent for beginners. I have already started playing around with my own objects - created in TrueSpace 6 - with the SDK. I honestly can not believe how easy it is.

Here is a screen shot of the sample game: (click the picture to see it larger)

Tags: Microsoft XNA C#

MS Loves Linux - yeah right

meta-creation_date: 01/11/2007 09:20:05 In the latest Dr Dobb's there is an article that just makes you want to puke. It talks about how Microsoft has struck a deal with Novell where their clients (the ones who run SUSE Linux) will not sued by Microsoft for violation licensing fees. What is funny is Microsoft is actually giving money to Novell so are we to assume MS is the one infringing on Novell's IP? Anyway, interesting read and you will probably be more confused after you read it.

Tags: Microsoft Linux Novell IP

Introduction to OSGI

meta-creation_date: 01/10/2007 14:57:03 Chris turned me on to a posting that is a pretty good introduction to OSGI and Eclipse bundles. Check it out here.

Tags: eclipse osgi

XNA is launched

meta-creation_date: 01/06/2007 15:41:36 For all of the game creator enthusiasts out there XNA is now launched. I am not sure of the exact date it launched but it is also mentioned in this months gamedeveloper on page 5.

From the XNA Faq:

XNA Game Studio Express is a new game development solution targeted primarily at students, hobbyists, and independent game developers. XNA Game Studio Express is based on Visual C# Express 2005 and lets developers create games for both Windows and Xbox 360. XNA Game Studio Express contains the following:

The XNA Framework, a set of managed code development libraries that make it possible for game developers to be more productive when creating games for Windows and the Xbox 360.
The XNA Framework Content Pipeline, a set of tools that allow developers to more easily incorporate 3D content into their games
XNA Game Studio Express also contains a full set of documentation, how-tos, and starter kits that demonstrate how best to use the content pipeline and XNA Framework.
XNA Game Studio Express runs side-by-side with other versions of Visual Studio without interference
XNA Game Studio Express has now been released, and can be found here. It supports both Windows and Xbox 360 game development.

Wheres i-Technology Headed in 2007?

meta-creation_date: 12/18/2006 03:15:31 Some key predictions I found interesting from the article.

JASON BELL - "A slowdown in the AJAX hype"

DAVID HEINEMEIER HANSSON - "ATOM will become the assumed default syndication format"

GARY CORNELL -
    "IE 7 will have a fast adoption curve and so Firefox will cease gaining market share. "
    "The open-sourcing of Java will have no effect whatsoever on Java's slow decline in favor of dynamic languages (Ruby, Python) and C#."
    "Apple will no longer gain market share for its desktops and will stabilize at its current meaningless level."

DAVID S. LINTHICUM - "The success of AJAX drives traditional software back to the drawing boards. "
LUCA PASSANI - "JAVA ME will not gain much more ground."

MARK HINKLE -
    "Red Hat Will Become an Acquisition Target"
    "Microsoft's launch of Vista will start to prompt hardware refreshes which can be nothing but good for Apple."

COACH WEI
    "IT Enabled Services is going to fly high in 2007"
    "Growing adoption of Web 2.0 technologies within the enterprise"

JOHN EVDEMON
    "The WS-BPEL 2.0 specification will finally be approved as an OASIS standard."
    "We stop talking about SOA and "just do it."

BRANDON HARPER
    "Server virtualization is just getting started, and will really make itself known in the coming year."

Reference Link.

Tags: software programming coding code java predictions

Article on Property Broker in Expeditor

meta-creation_date: 12/19/2006 05:46:59 An article I wrote for Expeditor 6.1 just posted to Developer Works.

Get an introduction to the IBM Lotus Expeditor Property Broker and learn how you can create a component that contributes to the declarative communication offered by the broker. We show you how to wire components declaratively using extension points, the IBM WebSphere Portal Wiring Tool, and the Property Broker APIs.

Creating collaborative components for IBM Lotus Expeditor Property Broker

Tags: lotus IBM expeditor RAD

Practice makes perfect

meta-creation_date: 12/13/2006 14:24:01 It is amazing how the blogging world gets the industries finest to respond and react. This CS student wrote asking how one starts out in programming. Grady responded and so did many others. It made me think how I started and it is pretty much the same as the advice given - code, write more code, and read a lot of other peoples code. I remember when I was working in the military and even at the Bank; I use to live a dual life. I mostly did IBM technologies by day and Microsoft technologies by night. What was interesting was how many times I was able to do something because I knew both. In the military I wrote Ada and Delphi all during my real job and when I went home I practiced writing Windows applications in C and C++, then eventually VB. Worlds started colliding when I worked at the Bank and started doing heavy Lotus Notes and Domino programming in Lotus Script, HTML, JavaScript and Java. I was tasked to write many server side tasks on the Notes and Domino servers and my choice was C++ for speed. Until then I really did not do much "professional" work in C/C++. I was introduced to some cool cross platform development for the Domino platform - which ultimately got me a great job at Iris.

Unfortunately I do not have the time to be in both camps any more and most of my MS Windows based knowledge is a good 5-7 years old. My life lately has been mostly Java, Eclipse and portal technologies and there does not seem to be time for much of anything else - except the never ending design reviews. The good news is, as we all get more knowledgeable and "mature" in our careers we become less dependent on the languages we know and more intrigued in things like software design and architecture.

I am currently trying to enhance my writing and communication skills - something that was never really tasked throughout my career. So my advice to the young developer is just skip development all together and go take some writing classes and off shore the development! (just kidding) But ironically enough I want to write about coding, best practices, testing and architecture. So the only way to stay sharp is to keep reading, writing code, and learning the latest and greatest!

My advice is to read a lot of books on software development. Become an "Expert" in an area, language, or platform. Do the things you "love" to do and success will follow. Do things that are in high demand and money gets thrown at you!

Tags: software programming coding code

Expeditor Education

meta-creation_date: 12/12/2006 11:06:36 I just posted this same thing on the IBM Composite Application blog here. I am still struggling with blogging in two places. I want the information to get out but I do not want to have one blog "win" over the other.

The IBM Education Assistant site now has the Lotus Expeditor 6.1 on-line tutorials posted. The Composite Application tutorial can be viewed here, however there are tons of freely available online presentations and demos for all areas of the Lotus Expeditor. This medium is a great way to get educated quickly on the features available in Expeditor.

Some other presentations relative to Composite Applications:

And a heck of a lot more!

Tags: lotus IBM expeditor RAD

Good info on Asserts

meta-creation_date: 12/08/2006 02:41:42 I like R.J.'s explanation of how to properly use asserts in Java code. He provides some good code samples and rationale around why and how. Unfortunately I think too much Java code is plagued with NullPointerException's and adhering to these coding conventions around parameter checking is a good thing. In large C/C++ projects like Notes/Domino we use asserts all through out the code with a lot of extra information in the debug builds. It would be nice if Java supported this teer level of available information between production and debug builds. I know our automation tools could actually run Lotus Notes in a mode where the debugger could immediately be launched on any asserts. This is an invaluable tool for developers and testers.

Tags: coding asserts java programming eclipse

DCut dates and a whole lot more

meta-creation_date: 12/07/2006 02:04:40
Haven't been blogging a lot lately because it seems like we are right back in the hectic churn again. I really am amazed how focused and driven our team is to have a solid quality product. We are pushing to get a lot of fixes and some new functionality into Expeditor 6.1.1 in a very short release cycle. Composite applications is getting a lot of good stuff introduced into this release, more to come on that.

Composite Applications blog
Unmoderated Expeditor Forum