Don’t get me wrong, I love working with Domino and documents and all that, but with XPages I sometimes want to use good old fashioned SQL or even hybrid solutions. I do not want to be bothered with writing sql statements myself in the DAO classes, and I just want to use a prebuilt solution that just works. Enter JPA.

Up until this point, I must admit that I have been lazy. Even though most of the XPages I have created in the last two years have made extensive use of Java Beans, I have left the attachments to the XspDocument and the typical upload and download controls.

If you are following me on twitter, you will know that I have had my first tastes of the Lotussphere / Connect experience. It has been quite a day, and I could not be more ecstatic with some of the information I am receiving. The ideas that I am seeing are astounding and the people are wonderful.

I had an interesting experience today that I would like to share. I met a group of Notes power users today for a small and informal gathering. The food was good, the alcohol was flowing (so was the soda), and we all started talking. Some of us were developers, some of us were administrators, some of us were in management, all of us use Notes.

Today I am really happy to present my first NotesIn9 video! It was really great being able to make this sub-series and be a part of the tutorials that really got me going with XPage development. I want to thank David Leedy for giving me the opportunity as well as thank my employer for allowing me to use what I learn on company time to create content for others. This is turning out to be a hobby that is really starting to take off.