as promised, i will do a more technical screencast now. I will show you, how to set up an XPage application, that is seperated into different layers, where each layer has its own responsibility. Why should you do this?

It’s extremely easy to switch datasources, you could even switch between datasources (Notes, SQL, Webservice,…) based on the current time, current user,… . You will do this in a central Java Class, using the Factory-Pattern. No Changes in XPages,… are necessary.

Calculating the status of Objects (overdue, approved,…), formatting of Names,… will be done in a central place, if you change the logic, no changes to the XPages (UI) will be necessary.

Accessing the data in your XPage will be more user friendly, because you can write object.getStatus() etc… to access information.

You can use all the great Java editing features of eclipse and ~ 30% of your application can be developed by a pure Java programmer, no notes knowledge necessary.

And I’m sure there are loads of more advantages, otherwise these multilayer architectures wouldn’t be the de-facto standard.

To better understand the architecture, you can download a stripped down version of the application, containing only the display of the users e-mails. 

If you are really interested in the subject and willing to learn Java, you should search the internet for the following topics: “Interface driven design”, “Data Access Objects”, “Factory Pattern” and maybe “Data Transfer Object”

Screencast (if you have problems viewing it, there is a link to download the .mp4 file after registering at vimeo

Demo NSF

*Update: the last 30 seconds of the sceencast are messed up, but you don’t really miss anything except a java interface explanation – there are better ones online, and i don’t want to recreate it now – its 00:52 am and i finally need some sleep

from march until may this year, i had to write my bachelor thesis and because i love challenges, i had to write about the new kid on the block: XPages.

Because of the lack of documentation it was a hard time, but finally i made it *still can’t believe it*. Round about 95 Latex Pages have been written and 15 Pages had to be deleted because of university rules *grr*.

The finished prototype

The topic of my thesis was the enhancement of the usability of the information management in the company that i work for. The end-result is an employee portal / dashboard inside Lotus Notes, where each employee has all information necessary in an aggregated format. The Content is completely customisable by user-groups or single users,  and each user can layout the information-blocks as he/she likes. There is absolutely NO Notes Design element, that defines the overall content of the portal, all information-blocks are loaded dynamically based on the user, that opens the page.

Based on the fact, that the content of the portal is defined by notes documents, instead of hard-coded design elements, it should also be no problem to implement a portlet / widget – catalogue, where the user can create his portal completely on his own, by choosing from all available custom controls.

Because i wasn’t to happy about the mark that i got (1.6) i submitted my work to the yearly university competition of the DNUG – the german notes user group – and *surprise surprise* i won the first price

So now relax, and enjoy the first screencast about my application. Another screencast will follow in about a week, and will be more on the low-level technical side.

Screencast

this time not a tutorial, but a little info that could make Notes more known by the private mail users:

If you want to use Notes at home, to access you mail accounts by POP3, you can simply download the free Domino Designer Client , deactivate the development features during installation and configure POP3. You end up with a completely legal Notes Client, you only need a Domino Access License, if you want to connect to a domino server.

Downside: The Designer is ~600MB in size, so a shrunk down Notes Home Edition would be the better option

Source: Erik Schwalb (IBM) at Community Meeting Chat

Basics

To creat a new Sidebar plugin you need to extend 2 existing Extension Points – Extension Points are like doors, that are left open by other developers, so you can extend their “building” with new features.

Plugin Architecture

The first Extension Point is org.eclipse.ui.view, this is the standard point, if you want to create a new “view” – an area to display data.

The class that you have to write to create a new view – your extension – needs to implement the Interface org.eclipse.ui.IViewPart or if you want it simpler, extend the class org.eclipse.ui.part.ViewPart.

If you extend ViewPart, you need to implement the method createPartControl(Composite parent), in this method you will create your view-design using SWT features – the Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT) ist the UI-Library used by eclipse, to create native-looking UIs, no matter what OS you are running.

Additionally you need to implement the method setFocus(), you can leave the method empty but normally you will use it to set focus to the first UI-element in you view.

The second Extension Point com.ibm.rcp.shelfViews was added by IBM to Eclipse. It is responsible for managing the Sidebar. You don’t need to write any code to extend this point. All you need to do, is setting the view-attribute to the ID of your view-extension, that you want to show up in the Sidebar.

So basically Sidebar plugins are standard eclipse view-extensions, that could be used  in every other Eclipse environment (removing the sideShelf extension). If you want to learn writing Sidebar plugins you can buy an Eclipse development book, and all the content will be valid for Notes plugins.

Thank you IBM, for using this open platform, so we don’t have to learn some proprietary sh*t.

Implementation

Open your Eclipse Workbench, right-click in the Package-Explorer on the left and choose “New -> Oth

Plugin Wizard 1

er”, “Plug-in Development -> Plug-in Project” and give your project a name like “de-mariogutsche.sideshelfplain”. Its common to choose the root of your project package-architecture as Project-name.

As “Target Platform” you select the runtime environment of you plugin, we are developing only for Notes/Eclipse, so we choose “Eclipse 3.4″. That way we can use all Eclipse features. If you don’t want to tie your plugin to Eclipse, because you want to use it in standalone OSGI-Environments,…  you can choose OSGI as target and the IDE will make sure, that you don’t use unavailable features.

Now click “Next” and enter your project details:

• ID: de.mariogutsche.sideshelfplain
  

  Plugin Wizard 2

• Name: Sideshelf Plug-in
• Plugin Provider: Mario Gutsche (enter author,… here)
• Execution Environment: Java 1.6 (if used only in Notes 8.5.1, otherwise older Java version)
• Check “Generator an activator”  (responsible for the Livecycle of your plugin)
• Check “make contributions to the ui”  (You are using UI-Extension points)
• Give the activator a name  that fits your project, for example: de.mariogutsche.sideshelfplain.DemoPlugin

Since Version 3.4 of the Eclipse Plugin Development Environment (PDE) – you are using this together with the Expeditor Toolkit – you can choose to “Enable API Analysis”. This choice is yours, i recommend activating it because it will help you to develop maintainable APIs.

Now click “Finish” and commit the question to change into the Plugin-Perspective. Perspectives in Eclipse are special UI-Layouts for specific Tasks, that are optimised for a good workflow.

MANIFEST Editor

Now you should see the special editor for the MANIFEST.MF file – that contains basic setting of your

plugin – and the plugin.xml – that declares your extensions.

Switch ti the “Extensions”-Tab and add an extension for the point “org.eclipse.ui.view”. You can optionally enter an ID and a name for this extension – this will make it possible to identifiy the extension in the runtime environment – for this example it isn’t necessary.

Now right-click on the new extension and create a new view via “New -> view” with the following settings:

• id: de.mariogutsche.sideshelfplain.views.MainViewPart
• name: Demo View (shown in the Sidebar as Title of the Plugin)
• class: de.mariogutsche.sideshelfplain.views.MainViewPart

Optionally you can assign a category, under which the view will be grouped if you do “Window -> Show View”

Now you need to create the class-file that you entered in the class-field. This class will create your plugin. You can create the classe manually via “File -> New -> Class” and entered all informations manually, or you simply click on the “class*” label in your extension settings and it will be done automatically. Now you need to fill the createPartControl() and setFocus() method with your code.

Da add your new view to the Sidebar you need to add an extension for the point “com.ibm.rcp.ui.shelfViews”. So go back to the “Extensions”-Tab, click on “Add…”, but this time you need to uncheck “Show only extension points from the required plug-ins”. Otherwise the extension point will be hidden, because we didn’t declare “com.ibm.rcp.ui” as Required Plugin on the “Dependencies”-Tab.

Now select the shelfView extension point. It will be automatically added to the list of dependencies. As a result the required library will be added to the java classpath.  The order of the dependency-list corresponds to the loading order of dependencies – this is a spot to be checked if you encounter loading-conflicts.

When developing big plugins, a lot of dependencies will be added by testing code. To find and remove dependencies that aren’t used, you can right-click into the Dependency window and select “Find Unusued Dependencies”

Now we need to tell the shelfView extension , which view we want to show in the sidebar, so enter the folling settings:

• id:  de.mario_gutsche.sideshelfplain.views.shelfView
  (ID of the shelfView itself, can be chosen freely )
• view de.mario_gutsche.sideshelfplain.views.MainViewPart
  (ID of your view extension)

Now your MANIFEST.MF should contain the following code:

And the plugin.xml:

The Toolkit can be downloaded from IBM, after registering a user-account for free.

After downloading the file with the code “CZ66FML” you need to uncompress it somewhere. Then you open eclipse and start the Update-Manager ( HELP -> Software Updates).

There you swich to the tab “Available Software” and click on “Add Site“. As local directory you choose “Expeditor_Toolkit_Install” within your toolkit directory. In the next step you will see all available toolkit features, select everything and click  on “Install“.

Expeditor Configuration

After the installation and the restart of eclipse, you will see the configuration window. As Testenvironment choose Lotus Notes and enter the path “xxx/framework/rcp/eclipse” of your Notes installation.

Now some fields should be filled automatically. If you are only developing Notes 8.5.1 plugins, you can choose “1.6” as compiler, so you can use all Java 6 features. To make the plugins work with older Notes versions, choose “1.5“. After clicking on “OK” you should see the welcome screen.

To test you plugins in Notes you need to create a new Run Configuration: Run -> Run Configurations. In the list on the left you select “Client Services” and push the button above, to create a new configuration.

Run Configuration

Now give the configation a good name (Notes 8.5.1 etc.) and adjust the Location in the Workspace Data, for example: ${workspace_loc}/../runtime-Notes8.5.1.

To be able to start the plugin using the green play-button in eclipse you need to open the Tab “Common” and check “RUN” in the section “Display in favorites menu“.

Thats it

You need to download Eclipse 3.4.2 (Ganymede). IBM recommends “Eclipse for RCP/Plug-In Developers“, so download this version and extract the archive. An installation isn’t necessary, just double-klick the eclipse.exe.

After the start you will be prompted to select a “Workspace”. A Workspace is the location on your hard drive, where all your projects, and in the sub-directory “.metadata”, all your setting will be saved. Your project-structure will be mapped to the file-system, so that the class “myClass.java” of the package “de.mario_gutsche.test” will be saved in the directory “..workspace/project-name/src/de/mario_gutsche/test/”.

So if you want to make a backup of your project, you just need to copy your workspace-directory.

Workspaces can also be used to organise different plugins, by creating a seperate workspace for each one. Existing Eclipse settings can be imported into new workspaces by executing “File->Export->General->Preferences”.

You can create seperate start-icons for each workspace by creating a shortcut like this:

“c:/eclipse/eclipse.exe” -data c:\workspace-projekt-x

After selecting the workspace for this session, you will see the Eclipse startup screen, to get to the real development environment, called “Workbench”, klick on the circular arrow.

Now you are ready for the next Part -  the installation of the Expeditor Toolkit.

Workingsets:

Workingsets are an alternative to creating seperate Workspaces per Project. They act as a filter on the projects, that are shown in the Eclipse Navigator. You can create new Workingsets, and assign projects to them, by right-clicking into the Eclipse Navigator. A good tutorial is offered by Doug Hughes and Peter Friese.

At first you need to install “notes_designer_admin_851_w32_CZ5S0EN.exe“, please activate the installation of the “Remote Server Setup” – its a sub-entry under Domino Administrator and unchecked by default.

Don’t start Notes right after installation, first you need to configure Domino using the remote setup, as described in Part 2. When Domino is configured you need to start the Domino Administrator and setup the admin-user:

• User-Id:
  • – Ubuntu: /local/notesdata/admin.id
  • – Windows: xxx/IBM/Lotus/Notes/admin.id
• DominoServer: ubuntu/Dev
• ConnectionType: LAN
• Network Type: TCP/IP
• Server Address: 192.168.0.111

Now you should be able to connect to the server, i recommend to create a new location “admin” with the following settings:

• home/mail server, Passthru server, Dominodirectory server: ubuntu/Dev
• Mail file location: on Server
• Mail file: mail/admin.nsf
• User ID to switch to: xxx/admin.id

Now, in the Administrator-UI, you use the “Register” menu to create a new, normal user that you will use for development.

After starting notes with the new user account and creating a location, you can try to send mails between the admin and the user. Normally it should work now.

Mikkel Heisterberg, as well as IBM already wrote about it, but here it is again, these Versions do you need:

I will walk you through all the steps necessary to get a runing Domino Server, that can be connected to from you Windows Notes client.

After the installation of ubuntu as described in the previous article, you need to copy the Domino 8.5.1 installation file to the Home-Directory of the ubuntu user “user”. You can connect to ubuntu and transfer the file using Filezilla.

Now either connect to ubuntu with Putty or open a shell directly in VMWare and create a directory, that will be used for extracting the Domino installation file:

sudo mkdir /Dominoinstall

Now extract Domino and remove the archive to free up some space:

sudo tar -xvf lotus_domino851_xlinux_CZ5RWEN.tar -C /Dominoinstall
rm lotus_domino851_xlinux_CZ5RWEN.tar

Prior the installation you need to create a user-group called “notes”:

sudo groupadd notes

You can check for existing groups via:

sudo less /etc/group

Now you need to create a user “notes” – under this account domino will be running with restricted rights, to increase system security.  The Home-Directory will be created und the shell will be set to /bin/bash, because the standard ubuntu shell “Dash” can cause Problems with Domino (So i read…):

sudo useradd -g notes -s /bin/bash -d /home/notes -m notes

Set the password for user “notes”:

sudo passwd notes

Now lets create the Notes Data directory:

sudo mkdir /local
sudo mkdir /local/notesdata

The preparations are done, we can now install Domino:

sudo su
cd /Dominoinstall/linux/domino/
./install

When asked if installation should be done in console-mode answer “Yes”. The question about partitioning will be answered with “0″ and later “No”, for this dev-setup.  As installation directory choose /opt/ibm/lotus for the executables and /local/notesdata for tha Data.

Group and User will be set to “notes” and Server-Setup will be “Remote”, that way Domino will start in listen-mode and you can configure it using the  “Domino remote setup console” in Windows.

Installation type is “Domino Enterprise Server” (988 MB). After you finished the installation domino is in listen-mode. If you don’t want to configure it right now (you need to install the client-apps, as described in Part4, first), you can restart Domino in listen mode by going into the data-directory and starting the server with the parameter -listen:

cd /local/notesdata/
/opt/ibm/lotus/bin/server -listen

Now you start the Remote Server Setup in Windows (Needs to be installed with the Administrator):

xxx/IBM/Lotus/Notes/serversetup.exe -remote

In the wizard enter the following settings:

1. First server or standalone server
2. Server Name: Ubuntu; Server Title: Domino 8.5.1Developement Server 1
3. OrganisationName: Dev; Password: notes
4. DomainName: Dev
5. Admin Lastname: Admin; Password: notes; Also save a local copy of the id
6. Setup Internet services for:WebBrowser, Internet Mail Clients, Directory services
7. Enable Port Drivers: TCP/IP; Host Name: ubuntu
8. Prohibit Anonymous access, Add LocalDomainAdmins
9. I want to make additional copies of the ID files

Now you can start Domino after loggin in as user “notes”:

cd /local/notesdata/
/opt/ibm/lotus/bin/server

The server can be accessed from Notes by the name ubuntu/Dev.

Thats it,  don’t use these users/passwords on a live system.

As OS for for Domino I’ve chosen Ubuntu 8.0.4 because it’s stable, supported until 2013 and easy to install. I recommend to install it into a virtual machine because it doesn’t need a lot of ram and a special version called JeOS exists, that is made for VMs and only 100MB in size.

First you need to prepare a virtual environment with the following settings:

• Configuration: Custom
• Guest OperatingSystem: Linux, Ubuntu
• Processors: Two – if you have a dual-core
• Memory: 500MB – more than enough
• Network Connection: Use bridged networking
• Disk: Create a new virtual disk, capacity is set to 4 GB, reserved, to speed up access times

If all you have is VMWare Player, you can try to create a virtual environment using this tutorial.

Now start up your new virtual environment with the downloaded Ubuntu-JeOs Image set as cd-rom drive. In the Ubuntu installation-menu enter ubuntu as the computer name and choose as partition method “guided – use complete hd”. When asked create a new user called “user” with the password “user” – this will be the OS administrator account.

After the reboot you can login as “user” and install available update by executing:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

Next we will install Openssh Server to be able to log into the system from windows by using Putty and to transfer files with Filezilla.

sudo apt-get install openssh-server

After installation we can work with Openssh with the following commands:

• Start the server
  sudo /etc/init.d/ssh start
• Restart the server
  sudo /etc/init.d/ssh restart
• Stop the server
  sudo /etc/init.d/ssh stop
• connecting to a server (alternative to putty)
  ssh user@your-server-ip-address

Manually starting Openssh should not be necessary because the installation will add it to the startup script.

Network Setup

By default the network will be setup via DHCP. This is ok, if your pc has access to a DHCP-Server, that assigns IP-Addresses. If you dont have a DHCP-Server you need to set-up networking manually, to be able to connect to the system from windows. By manual setup you can be also be sure to always have the same ip, this is convenient for configuring other applications like putty (one time setup).

To edit the network configuration use the editor Vim:

sudo vim /etc/network/interfaces

Vim has two modes, the edit-mode to enter text and the command-mode to control Vim. Using Vim isn’t conventional, so here are the basic commands:

• Insert text infront of the current character: i
• Insert after the current character: a
• Remove character: x
• Start commando-mode: ESC
• Remove changes: u or :u
• Redo: :redo
• Exit without saving: :q!
• Save and Exit: :wq

First you deactivate the dhcp setting by using the comment-character “#“, then you insert your settings:

#iface eth0 inet dhcp
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.0.111
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.0.1

In case your network card is recognised as eth1 instead of eth0, or if you card is recognised differently every time you boot the image, you can add this section:

auto eth1
iface eth1 inet static
address 192.168.0.111
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.0.1

To activate the changes you need to restart networking:

sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

If you can’t access ubuntu using putty in windows now, by using the default bridged networking setup of vmware, you need to change the network-settings in VMWare:

Network Connection = Custom: Specific virtual network, VM-Net8(NAT)

And in your Windows Network Settings of the VM-Net8 Adapter, you need to enter an IP-Adress in the same range as your Ubuntu-IP (192.168.0.xxx). Check that the VMware Bridge Adapter is activated.

Thats it. Ubuntu is ready now for the installation of Lotus Domino…