Weblog by month (June 2003)
Lotus Advisor
Years ago, we used to get Lotus Notes & Domino Advisor magazine at work. After a while, we decided to let the subscription lapse: we just weren't getting enough out of it, and frankly, some of the articles and tips were a bit "noddy" (getting into searchdomino.com territory). Indeed, I have been a little rude about the magazine in the past... I know! Me? Opinionated? Shurely not (sic)...
However, prompted by the fact that Rocky Oliver, Thomas "Duffbert" Duff and Joe Litton are all writing for Lotus Advisor and possibly her sister publications (e.g. Websphere Advisor), joining greats like Bob Balaban, I figured it was nigh time I took another look.
And it was good. And the Ben did like what he saw.
Word for the day: Portalizing
Draft IBM Redbook: Portalizing Domino Applications for WebSphere Portal
We begin by describing why the Portal integration is a crucial step for any company who has a Domino environment as well as why it is extremely important to integrate Domino applications to the WebSphere Portal. In the introductory chapter, we also describe some of the key concepts of a portal and Domino application integration. We also outline some recognized design patterns for Domino application integration.
What, "crucial" in terms of IBM's revenue stream you mean? But seriously, if you're embarking on this kind of thing, this Redbook could be useful; final edition will be published in August.
Hurrah for Ed!
In this age of toeing the corporate line and presenting consistently bland public personae, it's refreshing to see people like Ed Brill stand up and fight for the product they believe in. Ed really gets out there and cuts through the crap. Way to go!
Additional reading:
Ed's official Lotus weblog.
Moving on, but still within the realms of IBM, Ed also mentions Sam Ruby in the Lotus 'blog, specifically, linking to a recent interview with the man on the developerWorks site. I'm no Sam Ruby — I'm not even remotely close — but I really identified with this bit:
developerWorks: How did you end up working on Web services?Sam Ruby: I'd pretty much been a developer my entire career. I write code. I liked writing code. And as I progressed at IBM, what they say as you get promoted is, "You can't write code anymore." Well, I refused to do that. I tried being in an architecture role for a while. These are natural places for you to move up to, but what I've refused to do is move in any direction that got me to move from actually writing code.
I love the challenge of learning new stuff and finding solutions to problems, but I find that sadly, there isn't much in the way of a career path for people who enjoy this kind of work. Dove-tail this with the IT situation as it's been for some time now, and it's all very depressing.
NotesViewEntry
Check out this example in the R5 Domino Designer help file for NotesViewEntry:
Set view = db.GetView("By Category")
Set entry = view.GetEntryByKey("Breed")
If entry.IsCategory Then...All well and good, but this doesn’t make it clear that if you derive your NotesViewEntry object another way, the IsCategory property won’t necessarily work! How have others fared with this kind of stuff? It was only yesterday I discovered that in some new code I’m doing, IsCategory always returned False unless I instantiated the NotesViewEntry object via the NotesViewNavigator class (this is in Notes 5.0.11). Doh. So, I was doing this:
Set vwLookup = db.GetView("Whatever")
Set entry = vwLookup.GetFirstEntry
Do While entry.isCategory...Nuh-uh. Only this will do:
Set vwLookup = db.GetView("Whatever")
Set viewNav = vwLookup.CreateViewNav
Set entry = viewNav.GetFirst()
Do While entry.isCategory...Ah, Notes development is a subtle art, no? So many ways to skin a rabbit. Oh well, I just hope this helps someone Google-ing someday...
WWDC 2003
Volker's 'blogging on the Apple WWDC in San Francisco as I type, and some of the stuff coming out of Infinite Loop (with IBM's help in the case of the new G5!) is worth salivating over.
... Which is all I'll be doing for the foreseeable future. Oh to have cash for boys' toys...
Anyway other nifty stuff includes a preview of OS X 10.3, codenamed Panther and a public beta of iChat AV. The much-heralded WebCore is also the focus of many sessions at the conference, which can only be good — the new version of Mail will be using it for HTML rendering. All great stuff, especially if the new Finder turns out to be everything it should!
Finally: don't forget to go get Safari version one!
Update: how could I forget: Xcode. With predictive compiling, distributed builds, and — I like this one — "on the fly" editing and re-compiling whilst you're in the middle of a debugging session. Very cool.
24th June update: A good breakdown of the keynote and WWDC messages from Dan Hon (two parts).
Funky
Mike's been doing the RSS thing all week, and it's been good stuff. As for me, well, I've found out that my feed is funky. Is that a good thing?
My Stick
I checked this site out in French, just for a giggle, and discovered that the Google English-to-French translation service reckons a Chapman Stick is "Le Bâton De Colporteur". Splendid!
I particularly liked the "le crikey!" for my ejaculation in yesterday's post.
Article update
Its parent UNID is no longer corrupt (crikey!), so you can comment against the Permutations article now. The attachment is also fixed so that it has an ODS of 41 and not 43. Doh. Sorry about that. Thank God I don't still use UNIDs for view keys!
A new article
At long last, a new article! but it's not by me. I have my good chum Chris Molloy to thank for this one. Enjoy!
Get a grip
Senator Orrin Hatch: prick. Sorry, I don't normally "do" politics, least of all US politics (studied American government for too long). But, well, you know!
It's nice to know that we in the UK aren't the only poor saps having to deal with politicians who have extreme reality distortion fields. Jesus wept. This twonk is trying to get computer manufacturers to agree that any machine receiving dodgy music downloads from the web should then somehow destroy itself. Hello! Clearly you're in the pay of the music corporations! Get a grip, and start legislating for good! The good old US of A has a lot of problems, as do all countries. Time to re-prioritise.
Urgh
I don't think IBM would like this one bit: a whole load of the most recent job postings in London for Notes and Domino-related work require — in addition to the usual Notes skills — VB and VBA rather than that funky Java stuff.
Urgh.
Uh, not that I'm looking you understand.
Zzzzz
Crikey I've been quiet! Sorry about that. Work and all, you know how it is. Golly, if I carry on like this, this will constitute the dullest 'blog in the world. Anyway, some miscellany for ye:
- UML templates for Visio
- James Duncan Davidson talks about how many programmers use Macs now!
- An old Stick acquaintance from some time back, Jason Bell is J2SE Editor of Java Developers Journal and recently wrote an article entitled Testing, Testing which hits the nail on the head about this development malarkey, oh yes.
Right, more work, some floor-mopping (we've had an amazingly heavy storm here), and then I'm off to cook!
JavaOne
There's not been any mention yet — at least from what I've read so far — of the JavaOne Conference in the "Domino Blogsphere." I guess that's 'cos none of us are there . Anyway, there have been some cool developments, and some of them — like the new Java-focussed consumer and developer sites from Sun — are not before time. If you want to get a really good round-up of the JavaOne conference, and reactions to it, you should head on over to Erik Thauvin's weblog. As always, he rounds up all the good stuff so you don't have to!
There is an official JavaOne weblog site and, best of all, James Gosling has started 'blogging! The other initiative that intrigues me is the new Javapedia:
The goal of the Javapedia Project on java.net is to create a complete and accurate online encyclopedia of all things Java. Anyone with a question about Java technology should be able to find the answer there. Javapedia entries will cover all aspects of the Java language, class libraries, history, philosophy, you name it---if it relates to Java, it belongs in the Javapedia.
It's all good stuff. Check it out.
Standards-ism?
This is worth a giggle in light of recent web standards discussions. Look at the webgeek.com "About" page. Note how the founder (formerly of the HTML Writers Guild — anyone remember that when it counted for something?!?) was instrumental in the development of many W3C web standards, ya-da ya-da. Indeed, this person is also a member of the team who came up with the XHTML 2 spec., and we all know what some think of that!
Anyway, once you've been to the webgeek.com site, check it in the validator.
OK, so they don't claim compliance with anything, but, well (and no, I don't think I'm compliant either at the moment )
CVS 'n' tings
Recently discovered: Andy Hunt's weblog. Andy is one of the two authors of The Pragmatic Programmer (written with Dave Thomas). His weblog makes for good geek reading, and the following links were of particular interest:
- The difference between a programmer and a developer. Heh. Something I've often asked myself!
- Not actually at the site: A Conversation with Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas, Part 1. This series of interviews is on-going, and continues many of the themes covered in The Pragmatic Programmer.
- Andy on his predilection for CVS.
The last item reminds me: the other day, I started to look into CVS on my Mac, with a view to running the Mac as a CVS server. I went to the logical place to find more information, cvshome.org, and got nowhere. It's all about old CVS clients for Macs pre-OS X. Tchcoh. So I went to the horse's mouth and discovered something I should have already realised: CVS comes with the standard OS X developer tools. Duh. For those of you also interested in getting CVS up and running on their Mac, I present a link to the Apple Developer Connection article, Version Control with CVS on Mac OS X. Splendid. sudo here I come...
