by Paul Withers
Domino App Dev Pack: Understanding Scopes 
By Paul Withers | 5/28/19, 8:35 AM | - | Added by Oliver Busse
One of the aspects of the app dev pack yet to fully coalesce is the concept of scopes. But I think it will be key to the future, as an app dev and admin tool. It’s certainly something that will not be familiar to those who have never stepped beyond Domino.
Modernising Domino Applications: Technical Dive
By Paul Withers | 5/20/19, 8:19 AM | - | Added by Oliver Busse
Last week I did a session on modernising Domino and XPages applications. Filling an hour seemed daunting when the session was accepted. So I went to the Oxford English Dictionary definition of modernisation:
The process of adapting something to modern needs or habits
Engage 2019 Summary
By Paul Withers | 5/19/19, 6:31 AM | - | Added by Oliver Busse
Historically Engage has been shortly after a major conference in US, so it’s been an opportunity to catch up on sessions missed there. This year it followed the Factory Tour by a few months. Unfortunately for me, most of the key products sessions conflicted with sessions I was delivering or preparation.
OpenNTF Snippets - Investigating The Design
By Paul Withers | 2/11/19, 7:06 AM | - | Added by Oliver Busse
As you’ve hopefully seen, we’ve relaunched XSnippets as OpenNTF Snippets. There are quite a few changes, some decisions made that are less than traditional, but driven by some key factors. Indeed some may seem bad practice and are certainly not what may be made for other applications. But the driving force is a deep understanding of the application and its administrators.
Domino 10.0.1 on Docker Setup Video
By Paul Withers | 1/15/19, 2:21 AM | - | Added by Oliver Busse
I’ve created the first in a set of videos about setting up Domino on Docker for development from Notes Client, XPages and Node.js / Node-RED
Installing ODA Into DDE Without Download
By Paul Withers | 1/4/19, 2:52 PM | - | Added by Oliver Busse
Just before Christmas Jesse Gallagher added directory download support to OpenNTF’s p2 Repository Browser. This means projects like OpenNTF Domino API can be installed into Domino Designer directly from a URL rather than going to OpenNTF and manually downloading the relevant release. It also means it’s possible to get the latest snapshot code as well.
The Changing Domino Environment Architecture - Intec Systems
By Paul Withers | 11/12/18, 3:33 PM | - | Added by Oliver Busse
This article has been prompted by my previous one on Domino application development. One of the major differences between Domino application development in the past and the approaches for Node.js-related development in the future is architecture. But part of that could also be an inhibitor for existing customers, because of the incubated world of Domino.
Whither XPages?
By Paul Withers | 11/8/18, 8:55 AM | - | Added by Oliver Busse
Some years ago I wrote a blog post called “Whither the Notes Client”. At the time (2012) XPages was flourishing, the Notes browser plugin (subsequently ICAA) was being launched, Symphony was being stopped and the IBM-specific enhancements routed back to Apache OpenOffice and iNotes was being integrated into what is now Connections Cloud.
Domino V10 Developer Resources
By Paul Withers | 10/12/18, 2:24 PM | - | Added by Oliver Busse
It’s great to see the buzz around Domino over the last two days, with the launch events at Frankfurt on October 9th and around the world October 10th. I was fortunate enough to be at the London event and it was a great turnout from customers. According to figures Andrew Manby gave about the Frankfurt livecast, 7000 people watched that (presumably also from the replays too).
Paul Withers interview about IBM Domino
By Paul Withers | 6/27/18, 7:25 AM | - | Added by Kenio Carvalho
In this interview, Paul Withers shares his opinions about IBM Domino
Notes, Domino, The Cloud and Performance
By Paul Withers | 8/24/17, 9:44 AM | - | Added by Oliver Busse
Over the last month or so, I’ve been working on an application that pushes performance quite a bit. Last week I published a blog post about aspects of developing for performance. I’ll be writing a future blog post (maybe more than one) on the approaches I’ve taken for performance. But in this blog post I want to take a step back and discuss why I had to address performance, even after quite a bit of optimisation from the initial development.
Developing for Performance
By Paul Withers | 8/18/17, 2:33 AM | - | Added by Oliver Busse
One of the themes which crops up from time to time in Domino application development and beyond is the theme of “performance”. It’s a topic which makes me grit my teeth because of the basic premise. Most articles start from what, for me, is a narrow terms of reference: performance optimisation being about how quick a specific amount of data can be served to a specific environment.
Dojox Charting Update - Part Two
By Paul Withers | 8/10/17, 12:21 PM | - | Added by Oliver Busse
First of all, with the demo database, there are a couple of basic, standard changes. The first is that I’m using the XPages extension library, so that’s enabled in the Xsp Properties. That’s used for the Java code, to leverage the ExtLibUtil class to give easy access to standard XPages objects and virtually every Java XPages developer will be using ExtLibUtil.
Domino Server for Developers Entitlement Announced
By Paul Withers | 5/9/17, 8:27 AM | - | Added by Oliver Busse
Today at Engage Ed Brill announced that in Q3 there will be a Domino server licensing entitlement for developers. Yes, you read that correct. There are still some logistics to be finalised (e.g. access to feature packs to keep up to date), but this is great news.
IBM Connect - Domino Application Development Review
By Paul Withers | 3/5/17, 4:50 PM | - | Added by Oliver Busse
This time last year, the message about Domino application development was very straightforward. Domino 9.0.2 was slated for Q4 2016, with the expectation that this would include open sourcing of not only XPages Extension Library components, but all XPages components.
Git Flow, Maven, ODA and Domino FP8
By Paul Withers | 1/27/17, 4:05 AM | - | Added by Oliver Busse
The last few weeks quite a large amount of my work has been outside the NSF, so using more standard development tools in a more standard environment. There have been some challenges but also some refreshing experiences.
ViewScope, Full Refresh and reloadPage()
By Paul Withers | 12/9/16, 1:17 AM | - | Added by Oliver Busse
Recently I picked up on a discussion about managed beans, viewScope and full page refreshes. If I understood the comments correctly, the expectation was that a full page refresh would reload the managed bean.
Watson Work Services Java API Introduction
By Paul Withers | 11/25/16, 6:36 AM | - | Added by Oliver Busse
For a few weeks now, Christian Guedemann and I have been working on a Java API to send requests to Watson Work Services to interact with a Watson Workspace. I blogged about the approach recently. I was determined to avoid Java developers having to write strings of JSON data to pass as queries to Watson Work Services.
Whatever Happened to "XPages Extension Library: Second Edition"
By Paul Withers | 10/11/16, 3:54 PM | - | Added by John Oldenburger
I’ve mentioned at user groups that there is unlikely to ever be a second edition of “XPages Extension Library” and many of the reasons have been apparent for all well before now. Whatever the decision about the future of application development on Domino that IBM release, whether at the end of this year or later, I am now more convinced than ever that there will be no point in writing a second edition.
From XPages to Web App Part Seventeen: CrossWorlds
By Paul Withers | 10/5/16, 9:41 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger
It’s been a while, but the final part of this series will cover CrossWorlds. I pushed up the CrossWorlds project to OpenNTF and completed the documentation at the beginning of May. But first it’s right to position CrossWorlds. I’m a big fan of CrossWorlds and have used it for a number of applications related to sessions I’ve delivered at user groups and IBM Connect.
REST Services, JsonJavaObject and Dates
By Paul Withers | 9/24/16, 10:35 AM | - | Added by Oliver Busse
In REST services, the standard format for dates is the ISO 8601 format, which formats the time offset against UTC. So 24th September 2016 12:00:00 British Summer Time would be a string in the format “2016-09-24T12:00:00+01:00”. However, when you want to use that in your application, you need to convert the text string to something your application can use, which when doing a JAX-RS REST service means some flavour of Java date.
The Importance of Community
By Paul Withers | 9/19/16, 4:17 PM | - | Added by Oliver Busse
Back in April, after Engage and an XPages on Bluemix seminar at IBM Ireland I wrote a piece called “The Future of (Domino) App Dev in a Single Word”. That word was community, and the feeling was driven by public and private initiatives around XPages and XPages development. This seems a profoundly apposite moment to revisit that sentiment.
SSJS Revisited: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
By Paul Withers | 8/17/16, 1:42 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger
It is a number of years now since I decided to commit to Java, for a number of reasons. A little while after starting with Java I had a discussion with Tim Tripcony. Typically for Tim he explained exactly what SSJS was, which makes all those limitations totally understandable and reinforced my conviction that less SSJS and more Java was a no-brainer.
JSON RPC Service, Component Tree Manipulation and OpenLog
By Paul Withers | 8/4/16, 4:39 PM | - | Added by John Oldenburger
One of the parts of the XPages Extension Library I’ve not used extensively is a component under the Data Access category called Remote Service – the JSON RPC Service. This allows server-side code to be triggered from client-side JavaScript and return a string response.
Vaadin
By Paul Withers | 7/26/16, 7:49 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger
Before I started working with IBM’s XPages framework in 2009, I was starting to use AJAX calls in web applications and starting to dig into Dojo charting options for an application. So not unsurprisingly, when I started with XPages I blogged quite a bit about Dojo charts and understandably chose to write the Dojo-related chapter and a half of “XPages Extension Library”.
Displaying Images with "Don't Allow URL Open"
By Paul Withers | 7/18/16, 5:40 AM | - | Added by Oliver Busse
Recently I was adding a new XPages front-end onto an existing database. I chose to split database and XPages application, so the data is in a separate database. So, for security purposes and to prevent access to the old web front-end, I had the bright of locking down URL access by enabling the “Don’t allow URL open” property on the database.
XOTS: Background and MultiThreaded Tasks the OpenNTF Domino API Way (Part Four)
By Paul Withers | 4/30/16, 11:18 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger
It’s been about a year since I last blogged about XOTS. Just to recap, XOTS is a method of running background multi-threaded tasks coded within an NSF. It’s basically DOTS tasklets within XPages. The tasklet extends Runnable if you just want to call it and let it run in the background, or Callable if you want to wait for it to complete and return a value.
From XPages to Web App Part Sixteen: OSGi JAX-RS REST Access with ODA Revisited
By Paul Withers | 4/25/16, 3:48 PM | - | Added by John Oldenburger
In Part Eight I covered using OpenNTF Domino API in a servlet.I’ve been digging a bit deeper in preparation for a couple of potential projects that will need RESTful web services, and picking up an issue identified to me some time ago with my code.
Public Access XPages and NoAccessSignal
By Paul Withers | 4/12/16, 1:53 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger
There are times when you want to secure an application using the ACL, but Anonymous still needs some access to hit a home page. In those scenarios, a common approach is to enable the Read and/or Write Public Accss Documents privilege on the ACL for Anonymous.
DataSources and ViewScope
By Paul Withers | 3/31/16, 7:54 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger
One of the key learning points from my session at IBM Connect and Engage last week was around datasources and using viewScope. It was only when I was initially creating the demo application that I learned what is in this blog post, but it drew upon something I was aware of for some time and have mentioned before on this blog.