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Thoughts on my XPages Experience

By Steve Zavocki | 9/16/16, 2:11 PM | - | Added by Oliver Busse

It is painfully obvious that XPages is on its way out as a technology solution. Although I will always have a fondness for XPages, its time of relevancy was much shorter than I ever expected.

New Directions

By Steve Zavocki | 6/27/16, 3:39 PM | - | Added by Oliver Busse

It has been a long time since I have posted any blog updates, so I wanted to give an update on what is happening in my world. As I write, it seems like a very long time since I attended IBM Connect 2016 this past January/February. It was a great conference and I came home from it very optimistic and fired up about the future.

A Java Agent Which Extracts a File Attachment to the D:\ Drive of the Server

By Steve Zavocki | 3/25/16, 12:25 PM | Infrastructure - Notes / Domino | Added by John Oldenburger

Recently I was given an assignment to extract a file from a Notes document and place it on the server’s D:\ drive. The file would then be picked up and delivered elsewhere. I was originally asked to place this file in a network share but I knew that Notes security only allows access to the file system of the server itself.

Thoughts on IBM Connect 2016

By Steve Zavocki | 2/6/16, 3:55 PM | Business - Events / People | Added by John Oldenburger

Three days have passed since I returned home from IBM Connect in Orlando. This was my fourth ‘Sphere’ with my last being two years ago. This is my first time to attend as an IBM Champion! My overall impression was extremely positive. It certainly exceeded my expectations, and my expectations were pretty high.

Looking Forward to IBM Connect 2016

By Steve Zavocki | 1/21/16, 1:40 AM | - | Added by Oliver Busse

In less than two weeks I am excited to attend IBM Connect 2016 in Orlando. It is now a full twenty years that I have worked in the yellow bubble. I was just a newbie when I attended my first Lotusphere in 1996. I went again in 1999, and then not again for another fifthteen years until 2014. This will be my fourth time.

Limiting Keyboard Input in XPages

By Steve Zavocki | 11/17/15, 1:32 PM | - | Added by John Oldenburger

One way to make your validation easier is limit the types of characters allowed in a specific input field. For example, if you have a numeric field you simply don’t allow the user to type a letter in that field. If you know that an email address cannot contain special characters, you can simply prevent the user from typing those special characters.

Creating JSON objects in Java using the JSON.simple toolkit

By Steve Zavocki | 10/1/15, 6:19 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger

I needed a way to create JSON objects in Java for displaying in a grid. There are several options for doing this that I could have chosen. There is GSON from Google, or I could roll my own using StringBuilder. After doing some research, I decided to use the JSON.simple toolkit because, the examples looked simple and straightforward to me.

Sorting a Java ArrayList of SelectItem Objects

By Steve Zavocki | 9/21/15, 10:29 PM | - | Added by John Oldenburger

Recently I had a task where I needed to read all the names from several groups in the Name & Address Book. I needed to get all the names sorted and unique for presenting in a Combobox. In this post, I will show you how I did this, but more importantly I will show how I used the Java Collections Framework to my advantage.

Quick Tip: Don't Forget to Hide Views from Web Browsers

By Steve Zavocki | 9/17/15, 7:48 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger

One item to add to your checklist before deploying a new XPages application is to remember to hide your views from web browsers. The last application I deployed used a DB2 backend for everything but we still used views to hold keyword documents and error messages.

Notes Speak: Using DB2 in XPages Part 10: The MWLUG 2015 Presentation Slides, Thoughts and a Promise

By Steve Zavocki | 8/23/15, 9:47 PM | - | Added by John Oldenburger

MWLUG is now a wrap. I was honored to be chosen to speak along with Dwain Wuerfel on Integrating DB2 and XPages. I am a somewhat bummed that technical troubles limited the demo I wanted to show. Thankfully as I have been told, my backup plan did get my point across.

Using DB2 in XPages Part 9: Access DB2 from a Java Agent

By Steve Zavocki | 7/27/15, 10:47 AM | Infrastructure - Notes / Domino | Added by Oliver Busse

Unless I think of something else worthy of writing about, this will be my final post in this blog series on DB2 and XPages. I am grateful and honored by the compliments that have come my way with regards to this series.

Using DB2 in XPages Part 8: Updating an Existing Record into DB2

By Steve Zavocki | 6/29/15, 12:42 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger

As this blog series is winding down, in this second to last post, I will give an example for performing an UPDATE to an existing DB2 record. For updates, you only need to update the columns that you want changed. You do not need to include columns that you don't want to be updated.

Using DB2 in XPages Part 7: Inserting a New Record into DB2

By Steve Zavocki | 6/21/15, 6:25 PM | - | Added by Oliver Busse

My apologies for the long break in my blog series. The project that this is the basis for this blog series is wrapping up which is causing work to be extremely busy. Before I get started I am excited to report that I will be co-presenting a session at the MWLUG conference in August titled Real World Experience: Integrating DB2 and XPages.

Using DB2 in XPages Part 6: Populating a Combobox dropdown with relational data

By Steve Zavocki | 5/10/15, 4:52 PM | - | Added by John Oldenburger

In the last post I showed how to perform a simple SELECT statement to populate a page. In this post I will show how to use a SELECT query to populate the contents of a ComboBox. This example will loop through a result set, and create a SelectItem object with a value for 'label' and a value for 'value'.

Using DB2 in XPages Part 5: Creating a Simple SELECT Query to Populate a Page

By Steve Zavocki | 5/1/15, 8:19 AM | - | Added by Johnny Oldenburger

Now that I have finally laid the groundwork for connecting to DB2 in parts 1-4, it is time to show the fun stuff, actually using it. In this post, I will show how to populate the contents of a page using DB2 data. This example will SELECT data based on a value inputted by a user and refresh the page.

Using DB2 in XPages Part 4: Setting up the Database Connection for use with SSJS

By Steve Zavocki | 4/27/15, 1:05 AM | - | Added by Johnny Oldenburger

In this fourth entry in my blog series on XPages and DB2, I will explain the additional steps necessary for SSJS access, if using parameterized connection information. This post isn't intended to stand alone but build on what I discussed in part 3. I will say this, if you decide to store your credentials in the db2.jdbc XML file then everything here in this post is unnecessary for you.

Using DB2 in XPages Part 3: Setting up the Database Connection

By Steve Zavocki | 4/16/15, 1:03 AM | - | Added by Johnny Oldenburger

In this third entry in my blog series, I will explain the process that we used to set up a connection to the DB2 database. The major ground rule that we had to follow was that connection parameters, including username and password, cannot be stored in an XML file the way that IBM recommends.

Using DB2 in XPages Part 2: Application Architecture Overview

By Steve Zavocki | 4/8/15, 6:18 PM | - | Added by Oliver Busse

This is the second in my blog series on using an Db2 backend with XPages. I will go over the application architecture, and do my best to explain why we did things the way we did. Working for a very large financial company, they are extremely concerned with protecting the security of their customers. This is a good thing of course, especially considering some of the high profile breaches in recent years.

Notes Speak: New Blog Series: Using a DB2 Datasource in XPages

By Steve Zavocki | 3/23/15, 2:22 AM | - | Added by Johnny Oldenburger

This post is the introduction of a blog series on using a DB2 backend datasource in XPages. I will discuss how we set up the connections and give examples of different types of queries. There should be very little here specific to DB2, but for ease of writing, I will write 'DB2' throughout this series.

Using Javascript RegExp Object to replace a XPages Contraint Validator

By Steve Zavocki | 2/22/15, 11:39 AM | - | Added by Johnny Oldenburger

I had an occasion yesterday where I needed change a partial refresh to process data without validation in order to fix another problem. Despite this I still needed to validate the data the user enters based on a regular expression. The previous developer was was using a <xp:validateContraint> to check the data, but this check would no longer trigger since I am skipping validation.

Using a Hidden Input to Validate if a Button was pushed

By Steve Zavocki | 1/8/15, 8:24 AM | - | Added by Johnny Oldenburger

In one of my current projects, I came across an issue where I needed to validate a form using the XPages validators. This is a mature application that only uses SSJS everywhere, and I have to work with the boundaries already in place. This particular problem is hard to describe but I will try. I wanted to prevent a page from advancing to the next step. The "Next >" link uses validators to control whether it works or not.

Using Domino Designer's 'Sign Design' to solve strange Java exceptions

By Steve Zavocki | 12/30/14, 1:27 AM | - | Added by Johnny Oldenburger

Today, I reached out to another XPages developer who works on the same project in order to help me get past a strange error I was getting. The issue was that Java code within an XPages application that previously worked fine started failing, even though it had not been altered. He had experienced this issue before and knew what to do to fix it. The fix I am about to describe was new to me, so I felt it was worth sharing here.

Notes Speak: My First Experience Using the JSON-RPC Service.

By Steve Zavocki | 10/10/14, 2:12 AM | - | Added by Per Henrik Lausten

This is one of those posts, where I am writing to my future self so that I can remember all that I learned about using the JSON-RPC service.

Angular JS - Another Tool in your XPages Toolbox - Part 1

By Steve Zavocki | 5/18/14, 8:52 PM | - | Added by Oliver Busse

Around this time last year Twitter Bootstrap was becoming the big thing in the XPage Community, and a year later it is widely adopted and has become another tool in your XPages toolbox. Not that they are that similar but it seems that Angular.JS is now becoming the next big thing for 2014.

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