Month: November 2007

Amazed I tell you!


At a customer site today they were opening new Lenovo T60 laptops and what’s included in the pack? An order form for Lotus SmartSuite Millenium Edition and Lotus Notes. And not just Lotus Notes but Lotus Notes R5!!

It’s amazing value – you both get the Lotus Notes R5 CD *AND* the Users Guide. On CD!! 🙂

We were all laughing out loud… I hope someone at IBM will get this rectified and get a coupon for Notes 8 in there in stead.

Apache Directory Studio

I’m currently on a Lotus Connections project and needed a LDAP browser to test authentication and searching. Previously I have been using a Java LDAP browser with a UI that really was lacking. Today I discovered Apache Directory Studio which is built on the Eclipse platform. The application is free and a really good LDAP browser. It also contains a LDIF editor.

The application is a full fletched LDAP browser and is made up of a couple of Eclipse features. You can download the application as a standalone RCP (rich client platform) application, as features for your existing Eclipse IDE but should actually just as well be able to use the LDAP browser directly from Notes 8 Standard. The LDAP browser ships with a perspective so it should be doable.

If it ran inside of Notes 8 it would be a killer admin. tool and easily distributable inside your organization.

I tried to install the perspective in Notes 8 but it isn’t possible since the features depend on the org.eclipse.search feature which isn’t shipped with Notes 8. org.eclipse.search is however supplied with the standard Eclipse 3.2.1 which is the same version as Expeditor 6.1.1 builds upon so it should be possible to download the Directory Studio source code and repackage the perspective to do a perspective which is installable in Notes 8.

For now however I have to run the application in Eclipse or as standalone.

Is the lack of Java adoption *still* the Achilles’ heel of IBM?


In March of 2006 I wrote a lengthy post (see below for links) on how I considered the lack of Java adoption by Notes/Domino developers the Achilles’ heel of IBM. The post was picked up by Ed Brill and made quite a stir in the blogosphere.

Sitting here developing a Notes 8 plug-in in SWT (the Java widget toolkit of Eclipse/Expeditor/Notes 8) I got to thinking if the state of affairs has changed and if yes, how it has changed. As a strong Java proponent I’m afraid I don’t like the answer… My perception is that the percentage of Notes/Domino developers having adopted Java hasn’t changed since then. We’re exactly in the same place we were in March of 2006.

Why haven’t IBM done anything? Why wasn’t Java everywhere at Lotusphere 2007? Will it be a major focus area at Lotusphere 2008?


Not to sound too sour and/or disappointed but I fear there is somewhat of a connection between none of the 4 sessions on Java development I submitted for Lotusphere 2008 was accepted and the state of affairs. It could of cause also be that the sessions just wasn’t interesting enough.

Very few of the Lotusphere attendees will be looking for sessions on Java I’m afraid. A stark contrast to what the platform demands.

I understand that there is a learning curve to the language but we need to seriously address this lack of adoption. If we don’t we, as business partners, will not be able to fulfill customer demand for development resources. The platform as a whole will be the one that suffers. Of cause Java is *the* standard enterprise language so there’s an abundance of Java developers out there, but developers need a solid understanding of Notes/Domino as well as Java to be productive and bring value to customers.

My understanding of the current state of affairs is this:

  • Most of the Notes/Domino developers are older – very few straight out of school jump onboard. It’s all about learning an old dog new tricks…
  • Very few get into Notes/Domino development unless they work for a company running Notes. Could it be that the platform still have a monolithic feel to it even though it is anything but?
  • Very few existing Notes/Domino developers have started adopting Java due to lack of pressure from IBM. Certainly the Java API and IDE not evolving haven’t helped.
  • Many who have adopted Java in Notes/Domino use it as a procedural language as a LotusScript language substitute with threading or network connectivity. While this is a start there is a major leap in the level of abstraction needed for composite application development. If we had gotten started earlier we might be further ahead now.
  • Very few, if not none, of the guys and girls leaving school know that the Notes client of today is built on the same platform they have been using to learn the Java language (yes – that would be Eclipse).
  • Very few, if not none, of the guys and girls leaving school know that Lotus is all about the social and building software to support collaboration.

Please tell me I’m wrong!

Links:

Sametime widget – would you like to have it?

I was looking through idea jam the other day and saw an idea in the Sametime category and a comment to the idea from Carl Tyler. The idea was to provide an easier way to let users upload their own picture to the Sametime directory (see Make it easy to add Images of People). I thought that it wouldn’t be too difficult so I started coding and I have the Sametime client part ready. I envision a menu item that launch the below dialog box which allows the user to select a picture from the hard drive, have it automatically resized, previewed and then uploaded to the server.

Using a servlet, I also plan to supply, on the Sametime server the picture is inserted into the Domino Directory or the database you use as source for your blackbox. A LDAP implementation should be easily possible as well. This would allow you to have users change their own picture and let you easily get nice business card data for your colleagues.

Before finishing the project I would like to hear if this was something you would consider using.