Author: lekkim

Positive, competent, out-spoken, frank and customer focused architect and developer with a strong foundation in web, cloud and product development. I'm a strong advocate for API first and cloud based solutions and development. I have a knack for being able to communicate and present technically complicated matters in conference, customer and training settings. I've previously acted as team member and leader in a product organisation.

Amazon web services – now with Windows

In the October newsletter from the Amazon Web Services (AWS) team they announce that you will soon be able to run Microsoft Windows on the EC2 service.

“Starting later this Fall, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) will offer you the ability to run Microsoft Windows Server or Microsoft SQL Server. Today, you can choose from a variety of Unix-based operating systems, and soon you will be able to configure your instances to run the Windows Server operating system. In addition, you will be able to use SQL Server as another option within Amazon EC2 for running relational databases.”

How freakin’ cool would it be to able to run Domino in a hosted mode on AWS?

You speak SPNEGO? If not get out your dictionary at once since lower TCO is in sight if you do…

So the new abbreviation you have to learn is SPNEGO. SPNEGO is a stadardized protocol for single-sign-on (SSO) between diverse systems. The purpose of the protocol is to provide SSO between the operating system and the services you use whether they be on the web or client applications. Basically it means that the credentials of your Windows logon is automatically used and you are logged transparently into any services that are SPNEGO aware (of cause there are provisions for mapping credentials between systems as well).

So what does this mean for you as a Lotus professional?

An easier life is what it will eventually mean. For now SPNEGO can be configured with Lotus Connections since it runs on Websphere Application Server. In fact there was an article on this just recently on developerWorks (SPNEGO TAI: Using single sign-on from Windows to WebSphere Application Server). In the near future you will start laughing as it will be the SSO protocol for Notes 8.5 and maybe even for the Domino HTTP server as well.

This will mean better ease-of-use for users and it will mean a dramatically lowered TCO for Lotus technology as all Lotus products will be able to use industry standard SSO technologies probably even without additional costly SSO software.

How do you like them apples? 🙂

LotusScript.doc – an update…

Please donate

Based on prior and recent recommendations I have set up a Paypal account to accept donations to finance the development of the free version of LotusScript.doc version 2. All donations will be very much appreciated and help me justify the time I put into this.

As of today the (new) XML output format of LotusScript.doc is done and I’m starting on the HTML output format on Saturday. Maybe Friday night.

Lotusphere 2009: Abstracts submitted

This morning, very very early morning, I finally submitted my abstracts for Lotusphere 2009. Two sessions on plugin development and one on developing custom blackboxes for the Sametime business card system. In both plugin sessions I will demonstrate and tell what I have learned developing plugins for the Notes 8 client – both from TwitNotes and my commercial plugins for my company. The Sametime session will be an extension on the similar sessions I have held at a number of Danish user groups. It goes without saying that all three sessions should be accepted… 🙂

If I could have it my way both plugin sessions should of cause be accepted and run like 101 and 201 style classes with the former being an introductory session and the latter a more in-depth session. An alternative would have been to go for a JumpStart but that seems to be more “This is how you do Java” or “This is what DWA is all about” type sessions. If you think I’m wrong please let me know and I’ll write up another abstract – I’m in no way shy!

I’m crossing all I got…

LotusScript.doc – an update…

Please donate

Based on prior and recent recommendations I have set up a Paypal account to accept donations to finance the development of the free version of LotusScript.doc version 2. All donations will be very much appreciated and help me justify the time I put into this.

As promised earlier in the week I have been spending the weekend behind the keyboard working on LotusScript.doc version 2. While the weekend started with a lot of grief and unraveling Subversion merge conflicts I am now quite a lot further. The reason the my grief was that I started working on the LotusScript.doc codebase in my Eclipse 3.2 workspace whereas the latest code was in my Eclipse 3.3 workspace. So after resolving conflicts after an update, I moved the code into Eclipse 3.3 where I’m working now. The plan was to go to Eclipse 3.4 but that has to wait.

God thing I’m using Subversion for my code!

As of now (Sunday night) I’m happy to say that the major parsing is done and the engine looks very sound. I have to spend a little more time on tags (e.g. @param, @return) that span multiple lines in comments. The good news is that inline tags is done (e.g. {@link db.form PersonForm}). I also have the XML output almost done and I have started on the HTML output using Jakarta Velocity templates to allow you to change these if need be.

If you’re interested you can see the XML output I just generated here (around 1 MB).

Performance using Java is in stark contrast to parsing LotusScript. A full parse of the LotusScript.doc v.1 documentation center database (incl. the entire LotusScript.doc v.1 codebase in LotusScript) takes around 3 seconds on my laptop running the code from Eclipse. I can’t remember how long it took to parse the database with LotusScript.doc v.1 but I seem to remember it was much longer. Very nice… 🙂

A call to action for all non-US developers!

In my post titled “XPD – where do you live?” from the other day I discussed some problems with i18n (internationalisation) of applications developed in Java for the Notes 8+ platform using the built-in classes (java.util.Locale). Since that post I have been in dialog with IBM via the Domino NEXT Design Partner program.

It has been confirmed that this is indeed a problem and probably in the core Notes client. The problem probably stems from Lotus Expeditor.

Unfortunately not much light has been shed on the subject except IBM asking me to run a Danish Notes client which is among the worst thing I could imagine doing. I run software in English – period! I do however expect the software I run to be able to detect my computer locale as set in the operating system. As an aside it is actually quite common for non-English speaking Europeans to run English software despite the fact that a native-language edition is available.

As part of this process I have been thinking about the API’s that we need to have available for i18n. It is quite clear that we need

  • the possibility to obtain the language (as a java.util.Locale) of the client itself (that is the language of the menus etc.)
  • a way to obtain the java.util.Locale the OS is configured for
  • an official API for accessing the regional settings as configured in the Preferences for the calendar display in Mail

If we had these we should be able to create the kinds of localized products and plugins customers expect and demand.

What is your take? Can you see more API’s we need while we’re at it?

Support for Notes/Domino 6,5 extended to April 2010

“Selected IBM Lotus products and Program Services will be extended. The following product releases licensed under the IBM International Program License Agreement will be extended to April 22, 2010. The previously announced product withdrawal date was April 23, 2009.”

Software withdrawal and support extension: Selected IBM Lotus Notes, Domino, and Enterprise Integrator products