I wanted to know what it takes to run Vista. So I headed over to CNet's " Are you ready for Vista" Advisor:


Seems like I'm in for some serious hardware shopping. This looks more tempting every day. Anyhow I moved most of the data off NTFS onto a NAS and experiment with an alternative. My nice from Australia is here for a visit and after a week she hasn't figured out, that it is not Windows she uses to read here email.

Domino 7 allows you to create web services easily. You can start with a WSDL file and have Domino generate the Stub Classes for you or you start with the Class File and get a ready made WSDL file. Unfortunately both approaches require that you code quite a bit. Domino doesn't provide a ready baked set of SOAP web services out of the box. You do have a kind of REST web service using ?ReadViewEntries, but that is read ony.
A very likely candidate for a web service is the creation, update and deletion of documents with a given form (commonly refered as CRUD). Domino allows you to store any field in a document, even if it hasn't been defined anywhere making it very flexible and so difficult to understand if you are used to an RDBMS.
It would be fairly easy to design a web service (after Julian has enlightened you here, here and here), that allows an arbitrary number of field value pairs to be stored in a document. However this would defeat the principle of clear cut interfaces. More appropriate is to limit the possible input to the input fields defined in a form and giving back all fields including the computed ones. How to get there?

1. Export a domino form as DXL
2. Transform the DXL into WSDL using XSLT
3. Import the WSDL into a Domino Web Service

Creating the WSDL file first instead of Webservice code has a number of reasons. First it follows the "contract first" programming patterns, where the WSDL file is the "contract" and code has to stick to that interface, secondly it allows you to decide whether to use LotusScript or Java to implement the service. Last not least: Currently you can't easily export/import a web service design element in DXL.

Could be me:

(The Santa or the boy?)

We got quite some resumes after my last post. Processing them is currently slow so this might not happen before Lotusphere. However I'm pleased to announce positions that are open now. If you are in India or like to work there you might consider these. Work locations are Dehli and Mumbai:

Technical Sales /Pre Sales for Workplace and Websphere Portal Server

Responsibilities:
Articulate market vision and strategy for IBM's WebSphere Portal Server to clients/IBM Business Partners.
Design Solution around IBM's Portal Server and Application Servers to be able to position IBM's Value propostion Viz Competetive products like Sharepoint Portal, Oracle Portal, Sun One Portal etc.
This requires deep undertstanding of Features/Functions of Web Application Servers, Portal Servers & Directory Servers (Like LDAP/NDS), Security Products etc.

The Job Responsibilities would include doing Presentations, Demonstrations, Proof of Concept, RFP, system study, preparing a solution/architecture document, making proposal & getting the solution validated and following IBM's best practices. This job is a Technical Sales or Pre Sales job where the candidate would involve in technically positioning the solution/products during the sales cycle & work closely with Global SI's to position IBM Solutions to their customers. The candidate would support IBM Business partners in building the solutions on IBM SW for their customers. This job would also involve training the IBM Business partners on IBM technologies.This job would require frequent travels for short durations.

You have:

• 7-10 Year Industry Experience with at least 2 years in building Web Applications (Java J2EE preferred, C# and .NET acceptable).
• Working knowledge of Web Services and similar technologies for integration
• Good knowledge of technical issues in GUI design and building (JSP, ASP, XML, CSS)
• Some limited skills in making GUI look nice desired (for simple demos).
• Applied knowledge of security products for access control (LDAP, Single Sign ON etc) a plus
• Experience with Portal Products (IBM, BEA, Microsoft Sharepoint, Oracle) a very strong plus.
• "Communication Skillsets
  - Must have strong written and verbal communication and presentation skills
  - Proven experience in customer facing situation"
• Web Application Servers - Websphere Application Server or WebLogic or Oracle Application Server
• Portal Servers Like :- Websphere Portal Server or MS Portal or SunOne Portal, Oracle Portal Server, HummingBird/Broadvision or any other portal
• Development Experience in Java, J2EE or C++ or .Net
• Development Tools like - Eclipse, WSAD, RAD, Borland etc.
• Operating Systems: Unix /Window Server/Linux
• Solution Design & Architecting Skills
• Designer skills to appreciate high performing and good looking Web site

That's from the official Job requirement description. I would add: you need to be curious and passionate. The team is fun to work with and appreciates skilled contributions.
Let Gopi know if you are interested (and copy me).

Unless somebody made the extra effort to use a state-of-the-art-tool to document the LotusScript used in an application understanding the Scripts can be quite an adventure. Add a mix of JavaScript and Java and you are in for a headache. Wouldn't it be nice if we could produce flowcharts from all these. Luckily with the release of Visustin 4.0 you can document LotusScript, Java, JavaScript, C#, VB.NET, Cobol and many more. The beginning of the SendToNext Routine (from the R7 Document library) looks like this:


The graphics can be exported to Visio, Powerpoint, Word etc. The trial version is free.

I'm currently in Sri Lanka visiting customers and speak about Lotus Notes 8, Lotus Expeditor, Websphere Portal and Lotus Ventura. On Wednesday I was presenting together with Dialog Telecom on Blackberry Enterprise Server and Lotus Domino. Unfortunately I didn't have much time to visit the beauty of Sri Lanka as I did 20 years ago during my last visit. I rather was reminded that this paradise island hasn't found peace.
Just a few blocks away from the IBM office a confused soul choose the path of suffering and bombed himself. May he and his victims find peace.