Category Archives: Notes/Domino

Six Days Left…

Posted on by Posted in #Domino2025, #IBMChampion, App Modernization, CollabSphere, Community, IBM/Lotus, Lotusscript, MWLUG, Notes/Domino, Uncategorized, Watson 1 Comment

I have finished the slides for my presentation at CollabSphere in Ann Arbor next week. I just have a little more code to add to demo database, and perhaps throw in a bonus or two…

My session will be next Wednesday (July 24) at 9am in Grande III.  There are still a few seats available for CollabSphere 2018. The cost is only $100 for 3 days of presentations, workshops, and networking, This is great value for the money!
Don’t miss the latest from IBM and HCL on Notes and Domino 10, Nomad and probably a surprise or two.

 

 

I’ve Seen Things You People Wouldn’t Believe…

Posted on by Posted in #Domino2025, #IBMChampion, AppDev, CollabSphere, IBM/Lotus, Lotusscript, MWLUG, node.js, Notes/Domino, Verse Leave a comment

This last week about 50 other specially invited people visited HCL America in Chelmsford, MA for a tour of their Collaboration Workflow Platforms (CWP) office. I was one of the lucky ones, and for two days we got to meet many of the engineers at HCL and see what they were working on around Notes and Domino. There are some parts that are under NDA, but I will talk about what I am allowed to mention.

We got to play with the latest build of Notes 10, compiled that same morning. It included some of the new Lotusscript classes we have heard about before, like the NotesHTTPRequest class and NoteJSONParser class. That functionality had just been added in right before our visit (it is not available in the private beta that was released a few weeks ago), but when I tested it (yes, we got to play with the code right there!) it worked perfectly.

This is a testament to the skills of the HCL developers. Most of them came over from IBM, and you probably know many by name. But there were also new-hires, and HCL is looking to fill many more positions in the US. The investments HCL is doing in this is impressive, and the whole atmosphere was extremely positive and filled with excitement.

We were split up into smaller groups and were treated to a number of very interactive presentations of the directions taken in different areas. The biggest focus was on application development, and with the addition of support for node.s to the platform and the new classes in Lotusscript, the engineers were visibly excited to be able to show off what they have accomplished.

The HCL developers have the right to be excited and proud. We were treated to two major announcements. The first one is a new extremely fast query language called DGQF (Domino General Query Facility). It is not an add-on, but part of the core code. It will be available in Notes/Domino 10, and can be called from everywhere, using Lotusscript, Java, Formula, and Javascript. Initially the searches can be made only in one database at a time, but in the future there will be support for multi-database searches.
At CollabSphere 2018 in just over a week, there will be presentations on DGQF. If you have’t registered yet, do it now. You don’t want to miss this!

The second announcement is under NDA for now, but I would expect for something exciting to be announced at CollabSphere, as well as at later conferences like ICON UK in September.

So stay updated by attending user group conferences during the fall, leading up to the release of Domino 10 at some day in some month, who may or may not contain a 10. I am very excited about the future of Notes and Domino!

 

My session at CollabSphere 2018

Posted on by Posted in #Domino2025, #IBMChampion, CollabSphere, Community, IBM/Lotus, MWLUG, Notes/Domino Leave a comment

My session Elementary! – Consume Watson Services using Node-RED and Domino 10 has been accepted at CollabSphere 2018. It has been scheduled for first thing in the morning on Wednesday, July 25 at 9.00 am.

During my presentation, I will show how you can integrate IBM Watson into both Notes applications and web applications. You will see how you can use the new Lotusscript classes for HTTP and JSON in Notes/Domino 10. These classes will be used to connect to IBM Cloud, where a Node-RED instance will be used to consume Watson services. By using just a few lines of Javascript, we will translate text between different languages, as well as converting text to speech.

CollabSphere will be a great learning opportunity, especially if you are interested in node.js and how it will be integrated into the upcoming Domino 10. There are a number of sessions focusing on Node.js and Node-RED, and I highly encourage every Notes developer to attend them. Here are just some of the sessions:

This three-day conference will immerse you in an intensive exchange of knowledge and fun with other members of the ICS community. If you have not registered yet, it is about time.  Note that the guaranteed room rate will only be available for one more week.

I hope to see you in Ann Arbor, MI in a few weeks.

Come see me at CollabSphere 2018!

Posted on by Posted in #Domino2025, #IBMChampion, App Modernization, CollabSphere, Community, IBM/Lotus, Lotusscript, Notes/Domino, Watson Leave a comment


I will be presenting my session Elementary – Consume Watson Services using Node-RED and Domino 10 at CollabSphere 2018, taking place in Ann Arbor, MI inn just a little over a month (July 23-23). If you haven’t registered yet, hurry up! This amazing conference that Richard Moy have been arranging for 10 years now will be full of news and sessions about Domino 10. If you are a developer, you should be very excited. There are a large number of session focusing on everything from classic Lotusscript and the new improvements coming in Domino 10 to sessions about Node.js and how it is supported in Domino 10. There are even introductions to Node.js and Node-RED, and how you can use them in your Domino environment as well as making yourself more marketable.

In addition to all the technical sessons you also have networking and social events. Don’t miss out on this great and inexpensive ($75) conference!

You can now sign up for Beta 1 of Domino 10!

Posted on by Posted in #Domino2025, #IBMChampion, IBM/Lotus, Notes/Domino Leave a comment

June 25 is the date when the first beta version of IBM Notes and Domino version 10 will be released to a selected group of testers. If you are interested in testing this beta version, you can apply to be a part of the closed beta program here.

This first beta version will be Windows only, and will not contain the DominoDB NPN package for node.js. The second beta, due in the second half of July, will include clients for MacOS, server for Linux, Verse-on-Premises and DominoDB for node.js.

The support for node.js in Domino 10 is something I am looking forward to. This is huge, not only can you integrate Domino with other solutions and components available through NPM, but any developers can now take advantage of Domino and it’s secure data storage. Products like Mongo DB does not have the built-in security we are used to from IBM Domino, but now developers can build secure applications using DominoDB, and not have to worry about building their own security solutions.

I will be checking my mail on June 25!

CollabSphere 2018 – Still time to submit abstracts

Posted on by Posted in #Domino2025, #IBMChampion, CollabSphere, Community, IBM/Lotus, MWLUG, Notes/Domino Leave a comment

The deadline for submissions of session abstracts for CollabSphere 2018 has been extended to Sunday, June 3. This is your opportunity to share your knowledge with the community. Register on the brand new CollabSphere website. The link is http://collabsphere.org/ug/collabsphere2018.nsf/sessionabstract.xsp.

This year we can expect a number of session on technologies more or less new to the Domino community, for example Node.js and React.js, as well as what’s new in the upcoming Notes and Domino 10. So if you haven’t registered for Collabsphere yet, take this opportunity to register and experience the learning atmosphere, networking and a lot of fun.

Hope to see you in Ann Arbor in July for the 10th MWLUG/CollabSphere conference!

 

 

CollabSphere 2018 – Registration is Open

Posted on by Posted in #Domino2025, #IBMChampion, CollabSphere, Community, IBM/Lotus, MWLUG, Notes/Domino Leave a comment

The conference formally known as MWLUG (Mid-West Lotus User Group) is now renamed CollabSphere. This year the conference will be held in Ann Arbor, MI on July 23-25.

Visit the brand new website at www.collabsphere.org to learn more, to register for this very cost-efficient conference, or why not submit an abstract for a session?

I have been attending MWLUG for several years myself, and it is an excellent conference. High quality speakers presenting over 50 sessions and workshops, networking with representatives from IBM as well as with presenters and other attendees and an exhibit floor where sponsors and vendors are showing their products and services.

With IBM expanding its portfolio of products and services, and with the new innovations in the rejuvenated  Notes and Domino product line, this will be the conference to attend this summer. Expect some exciting news to be presented at CollabSphere, and to see more of the latest version of Domino, due to be released in the second half of 2018.

I hope to see you at CollabSphere, and perhaps even see you present!

Domino 10 is coming… in 2018!

Posted on by Posted in #Domino2025, IBM/Lotus, Notes/Domino, Uncategorized Leave a comment

IBM and HCL have promised to release Domino version 10 by the end of 2018. The other  week there was a joint webinar where some of the new features were discussed. If you missed this, there is a replay of it available. I will discuss some of the features in just a moment. But just look at the infographics below. There are so many new features already lined up.

The promise of Open IDEs means that we should be able to use more modern development tools. Hopefully the latest version of Eclipse, and maybe even Visual Code and/or Visual Studio. Those were frequently requested during the Domino 2025 jam. Support for OAuth authorization was also promised, as well as more REST APIs. Support for Loopback was mentioned.

There were even demos, despite HCL only being 8 weeks into the development. Quite a few features had already been developed earlier, at IBM, but were not released for one or another reason.

For being less than a month before the big IBM Think conference, where you would expect some big news to be presented, HCL and IBM did not hold back. This makes me very excited about what all we will get to see in Las Vegas later this month.

So what all did we get to hear about and see last week?

Let’s go directly to Domino. A new file format, called NSF-2 is being discussed, and we were promised an increase of the maximum file size from 64 GB to 256 GB per database. This is very welcome. DAOS has been a stopgap, helping when the database contains a large number of attachments. But when you have a very large number of documents, you previously had to split them into multiple databases. 

While on the subject of a lot of documents, IBM is planning to overhaul the search as well, using elastic search (ES or E-Search as IBM calls it) to search even faster in large data sets. Even more support for running Domino in Docker containers is planned, including Docker Enterprise images. Domino running on Raspberry Pi?

For me as developer, the most exciting news is that Domino will support Node.js. HCL promised a full node.js implementation, so you can use the package manager npm within Domino. It also sounds like HCL is at least thinking about ways to implement support for Git. This is huge, and it will give Notes/Domino developers access to modern tools and functionality. But not only that, it will be easier for Domino customers to find expertise in the form of developers, as node.js is a very popular framework. In addition, Domino developers will learn new technologies, making them more attractive on the market.

 

During the Q&A session afterwards, the representatives for both IBM and HCL promised even more cool features to be presented at IBM Think in Las Vegas, coming up next week. Among what is to be presented is a brand new roadmap and a list of the features requested during the Domino 2025 jams earlier this year. I can’t wait to see what is in store for Domino.

There are several sessions covering Domino 10, and you can bet I will be in the audience! I hope to see you in Las Vegas next week.

 

 

Will I see you at IBM Think?

Posted on by Posted in #Domino2025, #IBMChampion, App Modernization, Community, Connect, IBM/Lotus, Lotusphere, Notes/Domino, Watson Leave a comment

It is just over a month until IBM kicks off Think 2018 in Las Vegas. This conference takes place March 19-21 and merges several conferences, including IBM Connect (formerly known as Lotusphere).

After attending 19 Lotusphere/Connect conferences in Orlando (as well as one in Nice and one in San Francisco), I am ready for something new and exciting. IBM Think brings in many different parts of the IBM portfolio into one big conference, where we can learn about new and exciting technologies that we may not been exposed to before. I am looking forward to learning more about AI, security, blockchain, IoT and much more.

But I am of course also excited to learn about the upcoming Notes and Domino 10. IBM and HCL has promised too show actual working code at Think, and will present a timeline not only for what features we will see in the end of the year in Domino 10, but also in upcoming versions.

I have a feeling we will finally see functions and features people have been requesting for many years. A large part of the IBM:ers who worked on Notes and Domino moved over to HCL late last year, and I suspect they have been very busy. Here is an excerpt of a session description:

For those of you who want to integrate Domino applications into modern web applications and cloud platforms like Salesforce, etc., we will show you how. Domino is embracing JavaScript, Node.js and open source to become a full-stack web development platform anyone you hire off the street today can be productive in.

If anyone is interested in attending IBM Think I have a special promo code that will give you a $100 discount. Contact me at texasswede@gmail.com (use the subject “IBM Think Promo Code”) and I will mail you a code. You can also contact any other IBM Champion for a code.

See you in Las Vegas in a month!

 

Domino 10 and Beyond – my thoughts

Posted on by Posted in #Domino2025, #IBMChampion, App Modernization, IBM/Lotus, Javascript, Lotusscript, Notes/Domino, Watson, Web Development 5 Comments

It has now been a little over a month since IBM announced the new direction of IBM Notes, Domino, Verse and Sametime. I have been thinking through what I think this means for the product and the ecosystem of third-party tools and business partners. Some people view the move of development from IBM to HCL Technologies as an abandonment of the product family. But that is not how I see it.

IBM has, despite their size, limited resources to dedicate to development of the Domino family of products. They have new products and services they are trying to bring to market, and by having HCL take over the development and add more resources, this is a win both for IBM and for Notes/Domino.

With more developers dedicated to the product, I expect to see more frequent updates and new features added quicker than we have been used to the last 5-6 years. The product management and future direction of the platform is still managed by IBM, but with more non-IBM resources at their hands I hope the product managers will be able to push harder for the addition of new technology and updates, bringing Domino back to a first class development platform.

Domino was an outstanding product, but for the last 6-8 years the innovation mostly stopped. New technologies were not added at the pace they were adapted by the rest of the world, and the support for new protocols like TLS 1.2 was lagging. IBM also but on Dojo as the framework for XPages, while the rest of the world mostly went to jQuery.

But if IBM allows HCL to update some aging parts and add new functions, requested by the community, I can see this being a great platform. And IBM says they will listen to the community and the users. Starting this month, IBM is bringing the Domino 2025 Jam to four cities in North America: Toronto on 12/8, Dublin (Ohio) on 12/13, Chicago on 12/14 and Dallas on 12/15. here will also be several events in Europe as well as a virtual Jam sometime in the future.

At the Domino 2025 Jam developers and users will be able to suggest what features they find important, what needs to be fixed, and where they want to see the product go in the future. I don’t think the Jam will have a huge impact on the upcoming Domino 10 release next year, but it may help IBM prioritize where to put their effort. Where I see the Domino 2025 Jam being helpful is in the longer timeframe, especially if it is repeated every 12 to 18 months to verify that the product direction is still what the market is looking for.

I also would like to see IBM addressing at least the most requested changes on IdeaJam.

Let me describe some of the functions and features I want to see in an upcoming version of IBM Domino.

Javascript Everywhere

For the last 20+ years we have mainly been using Lotusscript, both in the client and for agents on the server. It is a powerful language, but if you have been working with other more modern languages (Lotusscript is based on Visual Basic) there are many limitations and functions you are missing.

I would like to see Javascript made into a fully supported language everywhere. Both in the client and on the server. Add support for jQuery, to make it easy to address elements, and create a Javascript API to complement the Lotusscript functions.

In addition to making it easier to create and parse JSON (used in and by most web applications today), it would open up the product to new developers who may come from a more traditional web development background.

I would love to see Lotusscript get a modernization, but I doubt that will happen. In order to improve Lotusscript, a quite lot of changes are needed. Instead I think the future improvements should be on the Javascript API side.

External API

Any modern product needs a public API so other tools and applications can integrate with it. I would like to see support in Domino for LoopBack, like IBM is doing in LiveGrid. When you create a view, there would be a matching API created to create, read, update and delete documents, as well as list all records, perform searches, etc.

But there should also be additional more specialized API:s available, perhaps the most common functions should be exposed as API calls out of the box.

Integration with External Services

Notes and Domino also needs integration with external services, e.g IBM Watson, Mongo DB or Node-RED. Why not support for IFFTT? Expose the calendar as a Google Calendar feed. But also make it easy to connect external services to Notes and Domino. Make it easy to use Oauth 2.0 to login to a Domino-hosted service and vice versa.

New Domino Designer

Unlink Domino Designer from the Notes client. Create a Eclipse plug-in (and make sure it stays updated to work with new versions of Eclipse). This will help new developers to start working with Domino, using tools they are already familiar with. The goal should be that someone familiar with Javascript should be able to open Eclipse and start writing code for Domino, and the only thing they need to learn is the Domino Object Model.

Add ready-to-use web components/plugins, so the developer can easily add for example a name-lookup into Domino Directory or a date/time selector. Support CSS frameworks like Bootstrap, and make it easy to modify the look of the applications.

Notes Client

The Notes client makes it easy to quickly build applications. You get a lot of the core functionality of the applications “for free”, like views, forms, etc. But you are also limited in how the application looks. You can change the look of views somewhat by selecting background colors, fonts and a few other attributes. On forms you can select between two different looks for some of the fields, while other fields can not be modified at all. What I would like to see is a way to easily restyle everything by using CSS. Then you can make the forms and views look much more modern. Let the developer create “themes”, a set of CSS rules and perhaps images that can be applied to new applications in seconds. These themes could be published online, for other developers to use.

These are just some of the ideas I have for improvements to Domino. What are you ideas?

Creeper
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