Lotusphere 2007: The power of DXL (AD503)


Apart from being told that the DXL implementation in Notes/Domino 8 will be able to surface the source code and WSDL from web services the session was below my expectations.

The fact that the source code of web services will be surfaced will make LotusScript.doc able to pick it up which is nice since I’ve had problems with this in the past (Domino 7 web services woes). I talked to the developers about this last year and it appears I’ve been heard. Thank you for that!

Lotusphere 2007: Lotusphere Online runs Notes 8 and Lotus Connections


I got pleasently surprised as I logged into Lotusphere Online on-site for the first time yesterday. Last year the site used DWA but this year we’re running Notes 8 beta 1. Nice!! It’s cool to be able to play around with it on your own pace. I didn’t play with it too much but I already dig the new thumbnail functionality.

Apart from Notes 8 there’s also a running instance of the newly announced Lotus Connections. Very nice!! Seems like Lotus is really listening and giving us Lotus geeks access to the real stuff. Me like it… 😉

I know I’m gonna get in trouble for saying this but who needs a Mac when you can run Notes 8 on SUSE Linux Desktop (SLED) with the “cube-desktop” functionality?

Lotusphere 2007: Run your Update Sites from Domino (ID211)


Just attended ID211 by Thomas Gumz from IBM on how you can use Domino as the source for your Update Site to provision features and plug-ins to Sametime 7.5, Expeditor and Notes 8. Lotus has built a really cool template, shipping with Notes 8, that allows you to run an Update Site out of a Notes database instead of using a file system based site. Very cool.

Thomas also mentioned that in Notes 8 you can provision features and plug-ins using NRPC instead of HTTP for remote sites. This will only work against Domino 8 servers since this is a new call that has been added to the NRPC protocol. The URL syntax will be something like nrpc://intranet.company.com/_<replica_id>/updatesite.nsf instead of the http:// equivalent.

Lotusphere 2007: Sametime 7.5 and Notes 8 sidebar compability


After INV107 I talked to Kevin Cavanaugh since I wanted to hear if the the extension point (com.ibm.collaboration.realtime.imhub.miniApps) we currently use for miniApps in Sametime 7.5 will be the same as we should use in Notes 8 sidebar applications.

It turns out that the extension point name will be changed with the Sametime 7.5.1 release. From thereon it will be frozen and the extension point name will be the same for Sametime 7.5.x miniApps and Notes 8 sidebar applications.

A small detail worth noticing…

Lotusphere 2007: Future plans for Notes and Domino


I just attended INV107 (IBM Lotus Notes and Domino: A Look Ahead) by Penny Scharfman and Kevin Cavanaugh to hear a little about the future of Notes and Domino. Apart from hearing about Notes and Domino 8 they also showed a roadmap for Notes and Domino towards version 9 or “Next” as it is currently called.

Public beta of Notes 8 will start at the end of February/start of March. The URL to watch is http://www.lotus.com/beta/nd8. Nothing is there yet but come March there will be.

Some of the stuff Lotus is looking at for Notes and Domino “Next” Lotus is:

  • Support for using an external LDAP directory instead of Domino Directory (names.nsf)
  • Allowing for the Notes id-file to be an optional extra that is not being required anymore
  • Major overhaul of shared templates