Weblog by month (January 2008)
Fun with SOAP
So, in addition to yer common-or-garden Notes and Domino development (joking!) of late, I’ve also been tinkering with consuming unusual web services. This has been fun in a twisted kind of way, although there has also been a fair amount of frustration. I think it’s fair to say that the technology behind web services, both provision and consumption, still has a long way to go when it comes to doing stuff with SOAP. It isn’t simple inter-operability, not by a long chalk. In a Skype conversation today, Julian coined the perfect name for a user-group of IT types frustrated with some of the later developments in the wonderful world of software—but I digress, perhaps more on that later!
Rather than an editorial rant (far too many of those out there, and I’m as guilty as the next man), I thought it would be useful to piece together some resources for anyone else looking to branch out into the wonderful world of web service development. This list is random, by no means even remotely exhaustive, and has an OS X bent. It is not specifically aimed at Dominophiles, but should be as useful to them as anyone else. Note also that I am focussing on the development of web service clients, in Java.
Read more… (yes, I’ve actually added an article to this site!)Woowar
I’ve just realised that whilst I have mentioned the gentleman in previous posts, and he has commented on this site, I’ve thus far been remiss in mentioning his site. Allow me to address this oversight forthwith:
Julian Woodward has a weblog! And you should go read it!
Who writes these APIs anyway?
Argh.
I have been faffing around for much of the evening with a simple wrapper class to invoke ODBC calls from a Lotus Notes application to a SQL Server 2005 Express database. The ODBC connection is registered and working, the database is happy, and so now it’s time for code:
Well that’s helpful.
Trying to extract the actual error message via ResultSet.GetErrorMessage() doesn’t do much. I either get the error above, or NO ERROR. All I’m doing is retrieving a ResultSet (a few table rows) and then attempting to add a new row. The code consistently fails on the final ResultSet.UpdateRow call. The AddRow calls are fine. The user account has owner privileges against the table in question, the SQL is valid and works when applied directly to the database, and so on. I’m going to lose the last of my hair soon. This stuff is supposed to be easy and Lord knows I’ve done it enough times with other databases. Maybe the ODBC LSX doesn’t like SQL Server Express 2005? Who knows?
Update #1: tsk, you want something doing properly, do it yourself: INSERTing raw SQL instead of relying on LS:DO’s abstractions seemed to do the trick.
Update #2: Nothing like Stanley Clarke’s Life Is Just A Game as a way of getting a sense of urgency into your coding.
It’s getting really tired
Here we go again…
I note that in your desperation to put a negative spin on things you have no interest in actually telling the truth.
Jack Schofield: Fight! Fight! It’s Fake Steve versus the Lotustards.
A quote from a reader to Jack Schofield? Nope. A line from the man himself. Oh the irony, ’tis breathtaking.
Now, when it comes to claims of people taking stuff too seriously, I would normally agree about this whole Lotus-fanboy-storm-in-a-teacup. But both Lyons and Schofield have crossed a line here: “Lotustard” is a play on the word “retard”. Nice. And we already know about the stream of playschool rudery from Forbes’ brightest and best, in his pitiful attempt to be the next Hani Suleiman. So Schofield’s on the case again… and people wonder why “journalists” have such a bad name?
Schofield’s right about one thing though, this is a battle that IBM can’t win, so I suggest it gets left alone: let the code talk.
Argh! I missed TWO awesome conferences this month!
This sounds fantastic:
This years speakers:
- John will be explaining why his installation of Quickr doesn’t work.
- Pete will be explaining the latest advances in Calendaring & Scheduling, including how to tell the difference between Wednesday and Thursday.
- Keith will be stealing Bills whisky using Java and XML.
- Bill will be making excuses about being at some other conference. Yeah, right…
- Gordon will be showing off his new football boots and wondering why he’s running round a field in sub-zero temperatures when he could be down the pub.
Via Bill.
Anyone tried Naymz?
What a load of old shyte:
I've only been signed up a couple of weeks, and this is all I get. I repeat: shyte.
My second favourite wiki goes Lotus!
This is good news, and to be honest, something I was expecting ever since Atlassian announced their Sharepoint connector:
At Lotusphere today, IBM announced an integration they developed to connect Atlassian Confluence with Lotus Connections. Lotus Connections is a platform for social computing that includes blogs, workflow, and now the world's most popular enterprise wiki.
Atlassian: Confluence connects with Lotus Connections.
This post is brought to you by…
… the Notes 8.5 beta client on Mac OS X. I installed over the top of Notes 7.0.3 with no issues at all. None. It just did it. This is a first in the Poole household when it comes to Notes on the Mac This is definitely the best-looking Notes client yet. My site database looks clean, the client is responsive, and I am impressed. Now to dig deep!
Update: double right-click works!
What’s a Mactintosh?
Oh dear. Someone’s screwed-up eh. The blogosphere has been going crazy ape bonkers about the release of Notes 8.5 beta for t’Mac. Well, the download site has been dead through sheer volume all afternoon over here in the UK, but I finally got the download going earlier this evening. Imagine my joy to discover that once the 608MB tarball has downloaded (and yes, normally that alone would raise suspicions were this not IBM; tarballs are a rare thing in Mac land), I find that the file is actually a server install for Solaris.
Nice.
Oh well, it’s still grand news, especially given the initial disappointment many of us felt at not getting a Mac client in the 8.0.1 timeframe (I hope you admired my restraint at not ranting here when that news went public ). Once someone has had their bottom spanked for needlessly killing loads of fluffy bandwidth imps with that erroneous download, I am sure we will enjoy getting to grips with this release.
I just wish I had more time to evaluate everything I have sitting in my downloads folder. Grrr… where do all those hours go?
(Oh, and judging by the photostream why the hell did I not say “hang it all” and bugger off to Florida this week? Tsk!)
The biggest question about Lotusphere…
… has he done the beard too??
Charles Robinson: taking ASW to a whole new level.
Yellow
As we run pell-mell into Lotusphere season, I presume, dear reader, that you bleed yellow?
Listen to Taking Notes
Bruce and Julian have really been going for it of late: the Taking Notes podcasts series has now hit episode 74! Amazing. And the quality has not faltered, not one bit. I managed a long overdue catch-up whilst stuck on a train for three hours last night, and can heartily recommend all of the latest shows—PlanetLotus gets an episode, as do the shenanigans of Paul and Warren, not to mention some conference or other called Lotusphere…
So. Listen to Bruce and Julian. And buy them the tipple of their choice if you meet them in Florida: the pair of them perform a great service for the Dominoids out there!
A summary
Greetings!
- I’m still alive
- 2008 is proving busy
- Lotus Notes & Domino has so much going for it in comparison with other systems, I cannot tell you…
- … but it helps if you know what you’re doing
- (this is not chest-thumping or cheesey self-advertising; I know a fair bit, but I’m learning more and more day by day)
- Lotusphere 2008 will rock. If you can, go. I simply can’t this year, but I will in 2009 God-willing! (watch out Ireland 2008)
- RDBMS ain’t all that
- Apple are teases and that’s what makes life fun
- Families take more and more of your time as they get older
- … so do businesses. But it’s all good
- I’ve got a Netgear ReadyNAS and it rocks
More soon!
Proper blog-like
Apparently there has been some grumbling, conspiracy theories and the like, about the LotusphereUserGroup.org “Best Lotus Blogger” awards. Tchcoh. I think they’re a good fun idea, and that’s that. The whys and wherefores are an utter mystery that I don’t care to explore.
However, if you really want to get serious about ’bloggers adding value and seriously writing like there’s no tomorrow, my award goes to Jeff Atwood. Ye Gods, but the man is a machine! I should be so lucky to produce one post out of 3,000 that even starts to get as deep as his. Amazing work. Hurrah for the internet!
