Possibly a fantastic tool for Notes 8 education
Last night I stumbled over an amazing article on the developerWorks site and it's just fantastic. Not that the articles normally aren't good but this article introduce a Lotus Expeditor tool that could prove invaluable for many Notes 8 shops for use in Notes 8 training or for use in Notes 8 plug-in development. Although the tool was written for Lotus Expeditor it installs just fine under Notes 8.0.1 without any problems at all.
The tool is called the Personal Wizard plug-in and is, from what I can see, developed by Vittorio Castelli from IBM. The tool allows you to record user interface interactions in the Lotus Expeditor/Notes 8 client and play the interactions back. Either by you or by another person you send the procedure. You can also save/load procedures to/from the filesystem.
In this way the tool can be used to automate test procedures and as a way to create end-user education. The tool allows you to step through a procedure (useful for education) or run it as a macro which is useful for development/testing. The tool is a little rough around the edges but it is definitely worth a look.
How to get started with Java
I regularly receive e-mails from Notes/Domino developers asking how to get started with Java. In general people are intimidated by the language itself and turned away by the absence of good resources for novice Java programmers so they ask my advise on how to get started. Normally the focus is to use Java for web development (J2EE) and Notes 8 development.
Although evidence to contrary Java is actually quite a simple language at its core and it's mainly about syntax and a few (dozen) rules. I recommend starting with the language itself and focusing on that before diving into Java for Notes, J2EE and Notes 8 development.
Although not the easiest of routes I suggest the following:
- Start with a good Java book and learn the language itself without focusing on Notes/Domino. I can recommend the Thinking In Java book. Skip stuff on threading, GUI development and other advanced topics. Make sure to read up on the java.io framework (e.g. how to read/write to/from files) as that concept is used a lot. All in all - read chapter 1 through 12.
- Be sure you read the book and did the hands-on labs... :-)
- Start doing some simple Notes agents in Java instead of LotusScript. Maybe even convert a few existing agents into Java. Here my posts called "Java explained" might help.
- Do step 3 again and again until you're confident with the language.
- Start looking into more complex areas such as J2EE development and Notes 8 development.
If you have questions feel free to ask them here.