Tag Archives: Lotus Notes

Free course on using Lotus Domino Designer 8.5

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TLCC is offering a free course/tutorial on using Lotus Domino Designer 8.5. The course requires that you have Domino Designer 8.5.1 installed as the course is delivered using the Lotus Notes 8.5 client – very cool!.

The course covers:

  • What is Notes and Domino software?
  • The role of the Notes client and Domino server
  • Domino Application Architecture
  • Using Domino Designer software
  • Creating a Domino Application
  • Creating Forms and adding fields
  • Designing Views
  • Creating XPages for your application
  • Programming options in Domino Designer applications
  • Deploying a Domino application

So if you are looking for courses and tutorials on Domino Designer 8.5 then have a look at this one.

New Redbook: Building Domino Web Applications using Domino 8.5.1

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As stated on the XPages Blog, a new Redbook has been published on the Lotus Notes and Domino Application Development wiki on building Domino web applications using Domino Designer 8.5.1: Building Domino Web Applications using Domino 8.5.1.

The objective of the Redbook is to “provide guidance on Best Practices for Domino Web Development, with emphasis on the new XPages design element. We introduce the key new features of XPages and discuss how and why these are meaningful within the context of Domino Web Development.“

The Redbook serves as a great tutorial on how to use the latest Domino Designer 8.5.1 features. You can read the Redbook directly on the wiki or download it as a PDF. Enjoy.

Getting Things Done (GTD)

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I have recently read David Allens Getting Things Done with great interest and immediately saw the benefits from following the GTD method. A top priority for me was to find a suitable GTD tool that works across Windows, Mac and iPhone in order to be able to collect and capture my ideas and actions no matter where I am. I looked at the following tools:

Let me share my thoughts on these before I tell you what system I have started to use.

Text file with synchronization using tools like Dropbox:
This tool option involves updating a simple text file and then storing the file using Dropbox. In this way I can access the text file across my computers and my iPhone. But a text file does not make it easy to follow the GTD system since it is difficult to do the weekly review and restructure actions and projects.

GTD for Lotus Notes:
There are several GTD systems for Lotus Notes. I know of the eProductivity suite by Eric Mack (but have not tried it) and the GTD standalone template by fellow IBMer Brett Philp. I have tried the GTD template by Brett Philp (downloaded from an internal IBM site – I’m not able to find it on the internet no more) and it is a very useful Lotus Notes application for GTD. However, in order to satisfy my need of cross system support I would need a Domino server that I can access from both work and home – across several computers, and I do not have access to such a Domino server. Furthermore, the application does not offer iPhone support.

Remember The Milk:
Remember The Milk is an online task management system that offers web access across systems and iPhone support. So it looks like a very promising tool for GTD. The free version offers an iPhone web interface. Access to the tool from a native iPhone app is only possible as a paid user. Using Remember The Milk for GTD requires that you use the tool in a not so logical way, as far as I can see from the blog post on “Advanced GTD with Remember The Milk“.

Toodledo:
Toodledo is similar to Remember The Milk in being an online task management system that offers web access across systems and also iPhone support in form of a free native iPhone app. From the Toodledo GTD discussion forum and from the Toodledo GTD overview page it is clear that Toodledo was created with GTD in mind.

Conclusion:
As you might have guessed from my walkthrough above, I have started to use Toodledo as my GTD tool for my implementation of Getting Things Done.  I use the web interface when at one of my laptops – and use the iPhone app when on the road. I use a setup in Toodledo inspired by Toodledo user Proximo which he has shared in the Toodledo GTD forum. This setup makes it easy for me to mark actions as next actions (by giving a task a star) and makes it easy to get an overview of my work and home next actions (by using saved searches).

Besides using Toodledo I have achieved inbox zero (at work and at home) and keep track of mail actions in Toodledo and by moving mails to either actions, waiting for, and someday/maybe folders.

What GTD system do you use?

Lotus Notes 8.5 and Lotus Domino 8.5 are now available

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Lotus Notes 8.5, Lotus Domino 8.5 and Lotus Enterprise Integrator 8.5 are now available for download on Passport Advantage.

Update January 7: Ed Brill has more on the 8.5 announcement – including the following presentation that introduced the 8.5 release:

Introducing IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: ibm lotus)

Update January 17: It is now possible to download a 60 days trial version of Lotus Notes 8.5 on ibm.com.

Follow a live Domino build project

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Domino Guru Chris Toohey is currently busy with a project build with a deadline tomorrow (December 31st). Despite the tight deadline Chris is “live” blogging the build process for others to learn more about Domino development. I can highly recommend that you follow the project.

So far Chris has written an introduction to the project, his thoughts on the design for the build, and has decided on the technology to use for both the Lotus Notes client front-end and the web browser front-end.

From his tweets on twitter I can see that he is right now busy with some actual coding. So stay tuned for his next updates on the project.

Update December 31: Chris has posted a screencast showing the first coding steps.

Update January 3: Chris has posted episode 2 of the coding screen casts.

Runing Lotus Domino on a mainframe

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Sean Burgess suggested that I blogged about running Lotus Domino on z/OS for a development server so here goes:

I am acting as an IT architect for a system called ePOS which acts as a frontend to a payment solution called IBM Payment Systems. This frontend solution is running on Lotus Domino R8 for z/OS – and was upgraded on August 26 from R7 in order to better consume web services on a backend system. The mainframes in question are two IBM z990 (eServer zSeries 990) running z/OS 1.9.

The system setup for the Domino solution is as follows:

  • development server: single Domino server on a single z/OS LPAR
  • combined test and pre-production server: two Domino servers in a cluster on two seperate z/OS LPARs
  • production server: two Domino servers in a cluster on two seperate z/OS LPARs

Please notice that the two mainframes are responsible for all of the 5 LPARs mentioned above.

Teamstudio CIAO! is used for configuration management of the databases on the development server.

The development server is accessible from the intranet only while the test and production servers are accessible from both intranet and internet. The common IBM LDAP (IBM Bluepages) is used for authentication for the intranet systems while a seperate LDAP server is used for the authentication of internet users. The ePOS application accesses backend systems using Java APIs and web services.

I have previously blogged about architectural patterns and Lotus Domino and in this case the architectural pattern used to access Domino from the internet is the “caching proxy and Domino” pattern combined with the high availability caching proxy pattern. This means that the Domino server cluster is located on the intranet while a redundant reverse proxy server (Tivoli Access Manager WebSEAL) is located in the DMZ.

As mentioned I have the role of being the IT architect for the solution running on these servers. I am not responsible for the actual installation of Domino on z/OS but besides doing architecture work I am also involved in the administration of the Domino servers.

Update August 26: The development server has been upgraded from Domino 7.0.2 to Domino 8.0.2.

DXL: Domino XML

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I recently listened to the first episode of the YellowCast podcast and was reminded how powerful DXL is. I created this blog post to store my notes from listening to this podcast and to provide others with links to all the useful info that the YellowCast hosts Chris Toohey and Tim Tripcony shared during the podcast.

DXL is XML for Lotus Notes and Domino and is the XML representation of Notes/Domino data and design. DXL uses a Notes/Domino specific DTD located in the xmlschemas directory of the Notes client. Although powerful DXL is not entirely complete yet and has issues with roundtrip fidelity (export followed by import can lead to missing design elements).

So what can we do with DXL according to Chris and Tim:

  • You can actually write code for writing code! Chris gives an example of an agent that exports itself, rewrites the exported XML and then imports itself and thereby modifying it’s own code. It is not easy to imagine the usefulness of this but it sure shows how powerful DXL is.
  • You can add code from outside of your application in order to add new features. For example you can install OpenLog to an existing database using DXL. So you could skip error handling while developing and then install ipenlog before user acceptance test.
  • You can download image resources via DXL.
  • You can work with documents in a corrupted database by exporting the documents using DXL.
  • You can export design elements and process the XML outside of Lotus Notes in order to do e.g. search and replace across design elements (similar to what you can do with Teamstudio Configurator).

To get started with editing the exported XML you need a XML editor – and the hosts recommend Eclipse, Aptana, or the free Microsoft Visual Studio Express.

To get started with your first “Hello World” example in DXL create a simple agent in Domino Designer and view the agent as exported DXL using Tools – DXL Utilities – Viewer. Then try to do a real export, modify the exported XML and then try a real import of the XML. Check the Domino Designer Help for the NotesXMLProcessor Lotusscript class and its derived classes for information on how to do this.

Using the NotesXSLTransformer Lotusscript class you can use XSLT to convert the DXL into anything as the hosts phrase it.

Chris and Tim also mentions a lot of examples of using DXL that are available out there on the Internet:

Check out the show notes of YellowCast episode 1 for more links.

I’m the GONAD Worshipful Grand Dragon for Denmark

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I have just been accepted as an official GONAD (Geeky Order of Notes Admins and Developers) member by Steve McDonagh – more precisely with a degree of Worshipful Grand Dragon for Denmark. I am so proud! 🙂

If you are interested in GONAD and in applying for membership you can read more here: