Had to get rid of the SimplePHP software so I can stop being asked for comment feeds.

I just read this over at MBR blog.

I worked with Scott on Notes 6 and Notes 7, it is sad to see someone like Scott pass at such an early age. He put me in my place many times with regards to what users “Samantha” can understand and how software should look. I learned a lot from Scott.

I have the luxury of presenting three different presentations next week in Orlando. It looks like it is going to be a fun and busy week for me. Here are the three sessions and below are the times I will be presenting them, if you are going to the conference feel free to stop by or hook up for a beer.

D10 – Developing Offline Applications for WebSphere Portal with Lotus Expeditor ? Technical Deep Dive

N13 – Building Rich Client support for WebSphere Portal with Lotus Expeditor

N05 – Extending Portal based Composite Applications to Lotus Notes

Monday:
4:15-5:30 N05 Extending Portal Based CA's to Lotus Notes
6:00-7:00 BOF – Lotus Expeditor; Desktop, Toolkit and Device

Tuesday
1:00-2:15 N13 Building Rich Client support for Websphere Portal with Lotus expeditor
4:15-5:30 D10 Developing offline applications for WP with Lotus Expeditor
6:00-7:00 BOF – Composite applications in your business

Wednesday
1:00-2:15 N05 Extending Portal Based CA's to Lotus Notes

If you are interested in using Portal to deploy your composite applications to Expeditor or Notes 8, you might want to watch these two videos that were put together. They give a pretty good in-depth introduction to the technology and concepts:

Portal Managed Client Overview
Using Portal Managed Client

I wrote about getting this working on the CA blog over here. To get this working, you will need the Lotus Expeditor plugins for the Dirby database support since the sample uses a local Dirby database to store the customer, car, and credit card information. Here are the features that you would need to install:

com.ibm.rcp.database.feature
com.ibm.rcp.database.derby.feature

Here is the same picture from the CA blog but I highlight what parts are SWT, Portlets, and Notes views:

Not sure why I did not think of this before but the Yahoo pipe I created a bit back has the ability to have an RSS feed of it. This is a pretty cool concept because I can basically get all “Expeditor” news from this feed in my reader.

Pipe feed.

After playing with the UI of the XPD Dashboard I have found that having the breadcrumbs navigator on the bottom makes a lot more sense, at least it is more aesthetically pleasing then on the top because of my category selection proxy. Really, it would probably look best if I created a hybrid component with both the category selection proxy and breadcrumb within the same view.

Here is a screen shot of the new XPD Dashboard – a lot more room to view the main content – in this case my problem reports.

Since I can select most of what I need from the History button, I can actually use the dashboard without the side teams view – even more space to see the main content. This makes working with the views very easy.

Tags: Lotus Expeditor : eclipse : Lotus Notes : Composite Applications

Wow, there are a ton of topics around composite applications for Lotusphere sessions, bofs, labs, and jump starts. Make sure you communicate what you would like to learn about or see on the CA blog or here.

Tags: Lotus Expeditor : eclipse : Lotus Notes : Composite Applications

I have been developing Lotus Notes applications for almost 14 years (since version 3 of Notes) and given the latest press on Notes development, composite applications, and what Notes 8 can or can not do, I feel inclined to write my own beliefs about the new Notes 8 client.

When I was at Key Bank I felt I could literally do anything in Notes. And I seriously meant that. When you hear the blogosphere Notes development gurus bash composite applications or Expeditor development in Notes 8 by stating “I could do that already” they are most likely not lying. The problem is, they are right, THEY could do it. However, 90% of the rest of the Notes community could not.

Given that, I think we need to take a step back and think why IBM did Notes 8 in the first place. The top reasons were: better UI for PIM, better customization of applications, and a broader programming model. Of course, those are my personal interpretations.

With the introduction of Lotus Expeditor (and ultimately Eclipse) there is a whole new set of capabilities for application developers and end users. From UI, Web Services to an entire open source community (Eclipse), the capabilities have just quadrupled (or even more). Managers will now most likely have new hires coming directly out of college with Eclipse and Java experience. How many people coming out of college know LotusScript or the NSF architecture? I have interviewed dozens (if not more) and unless they did an internship with IBM or a large IBM customer, the answer was NONE.

This also applies to Sametime. You will now have a common programming model and application architecture all based on Lotus Expeditor. Lotus Expeditor and Eclipse developers are the new “system level engineers”.

Composite Applications are more than just a development platform. It is an end user feature. For the first time applications can now be built without writing a line of code. The problem out of the gate is, we have no component catalog filled with neat, cool, and functional components. This is in fact now our biggest challenge. In order for everyone to “see the light” about composite applications we need a robust catalog of components that can be used and wired across applications. To me, this is a challenge to all of the Notes Guru's out there. Create competitive components that will put the Notes and Composite Application programming model well in front of .NET.

I feel between the JSP, Eclipse, Expeditor, Portal, Notes, and Java communities you will see more compelling commercial and open source components to this overall Expeditor architecture. Because remember, Expeditor can surface all of those technologies today in its UI- and so can Notes 8.

Tags: Lotus Expeditor : eclipse : Lotus Notes : Composite Applications

Yes, that is the last vacation I will be seeing for a long time. It looks like there was a lot of activity in the blogosphere while I was out. I kept up to date through the use of the google reader and feed subscriptions – which 90% of my news is now read this way. Lotus Notes 8 has some amazing download numbers and it looks like the composite application space is getting a lot of attention. Being on the beach in the Adirondacks got me thinking a lot and it spawned the addition of a cool new component for our team dashboard that I blogged about over at the CA blog. I am really impressed with the samples that shipped with Sametime 7.5.1 toolkit. I was able to take the RecentBuddies sample and modify it in a couple of hours to get what I needed.

Tags: Lotus Expeditor : eclipse : Lotus Notes : Composite Applications