Concept Proven: A Complex Production XPages App Running Outside Domino 
By Jesse Gallagher | 10/8/19 12:55 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger
Around the start of the year, I took a little time to see if I could get XPages as it exists today running outside of a Domino server, specifically inside Open Liberty. I met with a good deal of success, finding that I could run stripped-down apps "freely" inside a normal WAR web app.
Medium-Term Ways to Improve XPages
By Jesse Gallagher | 8/29/19 1:06 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger
Following up on my jeremiad the other day, I've been thinking about some of the short- to medium-term ways that XPages could be improved. I'm not fully sold on the idea that it should be massively improved in-place due to some of the systemic decisions and the general goal of future-proofing.
What Makes XPages "Not Modern"?
By Jesse Gallagher | 8/25/19 10:43 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger
A big part of figuring out how to move past XPages is discussing what makes it no longer modern in the first place. Some of these reasons will be gimmes - out-of-date or outright-missing features - while some will be less about what XPages is strictly capable of and instead more about how XPages development and deployment works.
How we use XPages
By Sean Cull | 8/19/19 7:43 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger
Cameron, Jesse and Paul have been putting a lot of effort into explaining how they use XPages and it has prompted me to post this on how we at FoCul use XPages, something I have been meaning to do for a while. I will hopefully post more about why we like XPages so much but this is a long enough read for now.
Developing Open Liberty Features, Part 2
By Jesse Gallagher | 8/19/19 12:07 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger
In my earlier post, I went over the tack I took when developing a couple extension features for Open Liberty, and specifically the way I came at it with Tycho. Shortly after I posted that, Alasdair Nottingham, the project lead for Open Liberty, dropped me a line to mention how programmatic service registration isn't preferred.
Developing an Open/WebSphere Liberty UserRegistry with Tycho
By Jesse Gallagher | 8/17/19 11:10 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger
In my last post, I put something of a stick in the ground and announced a multi-blog-post project to discuss the process of making an XPages app portable for the future. In true season-cliffhanger fashion, though, I'm not going to start that immediately, but instead have a one-off entry about something almost entirely unrelated.
Upcoming Webinar – How we are using XPages
By Cameron Gregor | 8/16/19 9:25 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger
If, like me, you’ve been following Jesse Gallagher’s blog you will see he has been putting a lot of thought into ‘the XPages problem’ (where to next for those of us still heavily dependant on XPages). I have been following Jesse’s thoughts with interest as I am hoping to make the right decision for our company about where to focus our efforts on next.
A Possible Role For XPages
By Paul Withers | 8/16/19 8:19 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger
A comment from Mark Maden on my recent blog "Thoughts on the Problem of XPages" prompted me about a potential area XPages could add value for the future. One of the strengths of XPages from the start has been flexible reporting.
How Do I Use XXXX Java / JavaScript in XPages?
By Paul Withers | 8/16/19 12:52 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger
A common request seems to be how do I use XXXX Java or JavaScript project in XPages. One of the strengths of XPages was that it made the approaches more standard. So the answer is often less an XPages question, and more a generic web development question. There are a few caveats, but many of those are standard for web development.
Thoughts on the Problem of XPages
By Paul Withers | 8/14/19 8:25 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger
Jesse Gallagher posted a thoughtful blog about the challenges for the way forward with XPages. It's a challenge I've had a number of discussions around, many of which are ongoing. The reason there's not a simple solution - throw whatever resources are required into XPages - is that it simply doesn't make business sense.
How Do You Solve a Problem Like XPages? Redux
By Jesse Gallagher | 8/13/19 3:49 PM | - | Added by Oliver Busse
The better part of a year ago, I mused about what to do about the XPages problem. For better or for worse, I'm still musing about it to this day, without a good answer. The nice part for me is that it's not actually my job to come up with a real plan to "solve" XPages in a grand scale, but I do have my own set of clients I'm responsible for, and I've been personally invested in it for so long that I'd like to be involved in bringing it to a safe landing.
Modernising Domino Applications: Technical Deep Dive Part Three
By Paul Withers | 7/25/19 3:30 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger
In part one we covered Notes Client and XPages. In part two we covered Domino Mobile Apps. Technically, with both the previous parts we’ve covered interacting with a Domino application via a REST service. That’s nothing new – a LotusScript agent could have been a poor man’s REST service endpoint.
How the ODP Compiler Works, Part 7
By Jesse Gallagher | 7/9/19 12:01 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger
In this probably-final entry in the series, I'd like to muse a bit about possible future improvements and additions to the compiler and the NSF ODP Tooling generally. For the most part, the big-ticket future additions seek to answer one question: Could this be used to replace Designer?
How the ODP Compiler Works, Part 6
By Jesse Gallagher | 7/8/19 12:03 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger
In this post, I'd like to go over another main component of the NSF ODP Tooling project, the ODP Exporter. The exporter is significantly simpler than the compiler, but still had a surprising number of gotchas of its own. My goal in writing the exporter was to replace the need to use Designer to create an on-disk project out of an NSF.
How the ODP Compiler Works, Part 5
By Jesse Gallagher | 7/6/19 9:23 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger
One of the things that came up frequently when writing both the compiler and exporter portions of the NSF ODP Tooling was rationalizing the multiple ways an NSF is viewed, and determining which aspects are reified in the design notes themselves and which are entirely runtime conjurations.
How the ODP Compiler Works, Part 4
By Jesse Gallagher | 7/3/19 11:35 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger
In today's post, I'd like to go over a bit of how the NSF ODP Tooling project is organized, and specifically how I structured it to support both server-based and local compilation.
Setting aside the feature, update site, and distribution modules, the tooling consists of seventeen code-bearing components.
How the ODP Compiler Works, Part 3
By Jesse Gallagher | 7/3/19 12:43 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger
In the first two posts in this series, I focused on the XPages compilation and runtime environment, independent of anything to do with an NSF specifically. I'll return to the world of OSGi and servlets in later entries, but I'd like to take a bit of time to talk about some specifics of grafting the compiled XPage results and the rest of the on-disk project's contents into an actual NSF.
How the ODP Compiler Works, Part 2
By Jesse Gallagher | 7/2/19 12:02 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger
In yesterday's post, I briefly touched on how the XPages runtime sees its environment by way of a FacesProject and related components. Today, I'd like to expand on that a bit, since it's useful to understand the various layers of what makes up an "XPages app" at compilation and runtimes. Designer and Domino largely take two paths to try to arrive at the same location in how they view an NSF.
How the ODP Compiler Works, Part 1
By Jesse Gallagher | 7/1/19 12:15 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger
A year ago, I started a project to compile NSFs - and particularly large XPages projects - independently of Designer. Since the initial releases, the project has grown, gaining an ODP exporter, extra Eclipse UI integration, and the ability to run without installing components on a remote server. It's become an integral part of my workflow with several projects, where I include the NSFs as part of a large Maven build alongside OSGi plugins and a final distribution.
My thoughts on the HCL Redesigning Templates Project
By Chris Toohey | 6/26/19 8:41 AM | - | Added by Oliver Busse
Having absolutely no inside knowledge of whatever-is-going-on-lately in the world of IBM / HCL Lotus Notes & Domino, and coming solely from the perspective of an enterprise software developer who spends his day writing code across several different platforms but mostly still Notes & Domino with new development efforts using XPages, /*deep breath*/ here are a few thoughts on the recently announced HCL Templates Design Project.
ISBG is Now NCUG – A Report From Stockolm
By NCUG | 6/19/19 4:28 PM | - | Added by Oliver Busse
Now that IBM has sold the entire collaboration portfolio to HCL, we could no longer call ourselves IBM Collaboration User Group (ISBG in Norwegian). And since we now have set ourselves the goal of becoming a user group for the entire Nordic region, it was time for a new name, a new strategy and a new logo.
Our current Deployment setup: Github + Jenkins + BuildXPages
By Cameron Gregor | 6/18/19 9:33 AM | - | Added by Oliver Busse
I recently received a question from Patrick Kwinten about whether I am still using my BuildXPages project, and whether I have involved Jenkins in the setup.
The answer is yes, I still use BuildXPages on a daily basis, and in regards to Jenkins, I have been using Jenkins for almost 5 years to build and deploy our XPages projects.
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
My Slides From Engage 2019 - De04. Java With Domino After XPages
By Jesse Gallagher | 5/20/19 7:36 AM | - | Added by Oliver Busse
Engage 2019 has come and gone, and I had an excellent time. I also quite enjoyed presenting my "group therapy" session on some options that XPages developers have for the future. In a lot of ways, it was similar to my presentation at CollabSphere last year, mixed with the various new developments I've talked about on here since then
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 at Engage
By OpenNTF | 5/3/19 6:02 AM | - | Added by Oliver Busse
It‘s probably fitting thatI’m writing a blog post about Engage sat in a coffee shop, on my iPad, using Domino Mobile Apps. The last year has brought the product a long way and one of the most significant new projects has been Theo Heselmans’ Wine App. Admittedly the OpenNTF Blog database is unchanged from the desktop version, but it’s probably only going to be seen by a handful of people, so investment is less beneficial.
Preparing for HCL's Domino: What Managers and Technical Need To Know
By Paul Withers | 5/3/19 3:46 AM | - | Added by Roberto Boccadoro
With Engage around the corner and the acquisition of Domino, Connections and more expected to close soon after, followed by build up to Domino V11 it’s a good time to assess readiness for the future. A few facts are clear:
The pace of delivery of new features for Domino has increased significantly.
That pace shows no sign of slowing after HCL closes the deal.
HCL is committed to taking Domino into new markets and opportunities.
The strategic direction for application development on the platform is evolving.
Customers need to evolve to consider the needs / requirements for their strategies and their technical teams.
Extended XPages Extension Library Demo Database (a.k.a node-demo.nsf)
By Paul Withers | 4/18/19 12:39 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger
With the App Dev Pack available on Windows and IAM server out of beta, HCL and IBM have done the work to go beyond the anonymous access to Domino data from Node.js. And with Engage around the corner, no doubt all speakers are thinking about demos, if they haven’t started doing them already.
NSF ODP Tooling 2.0
By OpenNTF | 4/5/19 1:15 PM | - | Added by Oliver Busse
The other week, version 2.0 of the NSF ODP Tooling project was released. This project allows for the compilation and generation of on-disk-project representations of NSFs without the use of Designer, and as part of a tree of Maven projects.
Easy Kanban Silos in XPages
By Michael G. Smith | 3/28/19 5:44 AM | - | Added by Oliver Busse
Recently, I came across this post on the #dominoforever ideas forum.
My assumption when reading this is that the OP would like to have this capability in a web application since it’s in the XPages category. Having done something similar in a previous project, I had some code I could dust off to create a quick demo to show how easily functionality like this can be implemented now in XPages.