Monthly Archives: February 2008

Using Property Broker Monitor to emulate your actions

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Mikkel wrote about this functionality in the debug tool a bit back. You can also see a really good article written by Craig and Jo on DevWorks with a similar function and unit testing your composites. I love the new Camtasia tool because a picture says a 1,000 words and an animated GIF even says more.

Here I show how I can drive two “set” actions right from the broker monitor Emulation tab. The emulation tab shows all of the active actions for the current perspective and then shows the input property type information exposed for calling.

You can get the tools from the sandbox. We are also updating the tools for the XPD 6.1.2 and Notes 8.0.1 release.

Click animation to make larger

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Very cool calendar UI

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Ok, I am not sure when this got into Notes but I actually just noticed it about 2 weeks ago. I was scrolling through my calendar and I noticed the calendar entries keep the base text still as the time scrolls up. Once the meeting is out of “scope” the text begins to close down or disappear. Way cool!

(ok, now everyone can tell me its been there since 5.0)

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Allowing assemblers to define scripts from within the Composite Application Editor

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I have now heard there are several companies incorporating some kind of scripting capabilities inside of Lotus Notes and Lotus Expeditor. I have even seen demos where some customers are doing this now with Expeditor.

Does it make sense to have a full blown scripting engine at the finger tips of assemblers?

Some of the ideas floating around are:

– scripts for transformations between wires
– new buttons in the global toolbar to do “whatever”
– scripts to automate certain things like filling out forms, etc

Groovy is being talked about pretty heavily for this. I would like to hear if there is a requirement building out there. Would you like to see this in the core product?

If you think it should be, make sure you vote over at IdeaJam. So far its not looking too good.


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Back from Vegas – the mancation is over

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What can I say, Vegas was awesome. Almost 3 rounds of golf, some great gambling – didn't lose my shirt, and a lot of drinks and laughs. I know what's done in Vegas stays in Vegas but I did want to recommend a few things I thought were great:

- The Moon Club at the Palms – definitely rent a table. The $400 rate is well worth it. You get a bottle, all the mixers, your own bartender, and a set of security guards watching your table. The best part is when people stand in front of your view of the dance floor and catwalk and are removed by your security! Ok, that's not “the” best part but you know what I mean.

- The oxygen booths with fragrance is not worth it.

- The Bellagio seems to be the classiest hotel with the new Wynn coming in a close second. They also seem to have the most hookers hanging out in the casino – not that I noticed or anything.

- Gonzalez Y Gonzalez in New York, NY was great. $20 and you get some great Mexican food at a low cost.

- Golf could have been a little warmer but over all it was pretty nice. If you rent a Teammate don't expect any authority on PGA rules – they are not worth it.

You can email me directly if you want the skinny on any clubs, courses, or places to see.

A couple of trends I noticed at Lotusphere this year

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There were two main trends I heard and saw down at Lotusphere this year. These are of course not all encompassing or anything, just the two I felt I heard and saw the most.

The first was, I am amazed how many business partners and customers are actually doing some pretty good Eclipse development. It seems the whole concept is definitely catching on. One demo where I saw an amazing integration of Notes and Symphony I actually said “wow, why can't we do that”. I had more people ask me about component models, Eclipse views and integrating Eclipse views with Notes DB's this year than last year – that means this stuff is really starting to stick.

The second observation was around using Notes and/or Expeditor as a composite platform. Meaning – a runtime where existing applications can be assembled and wired together. What amazed me was the breadth of technologies actually being looked at. Companies are attempting to integrate Portal applications, Notes applications, 3270 applications, and even Visual Basic and .NET integration. Last year it was “wow, that's kind of neat” and this year the questions were more around – “what's the best way to integrate ….”.

As usual, I am always impressed with the Lotus community and their ability to take what we present to new levels and demand even more. We received a lot of great feedback and some new and exciting requirements for Notes 8.5 and Expeditor 6.2.

Keep them coming!

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