Intec blog: New XPages White Paper: Maximising the Benefits of Lotus Domino 8.5.x with XPages

June 6 2010

This is a nice, relatively concise whitepaper, that covers the pros and cons of learning and developing in XPages.  Essentially a risk-benefit analysis, the paper covers technology, learning, delivery, and software impact.

The white paper has been published on Intec's website to enable customers and non-customers to justify the move to XPages and the roles IBM Business Partners like Intec can offer. It is worth emphasising that you do not necessarily need to upgrade your whole infrastructure and do not necessarily need to rewrite your complete application to take advantage of the benefits XPages offers. With a single 8.5.x Domino server you can manipulate data on a different trusted pre-R8 Domino server, and so offer individual functions or interfaces into an existing application. This offers a low cost, low risk opportunity to gain experience of XPages and create proof-of-concept functionality.
Please check it out.

Link: Intec blog: New XPages White Paper: Maximising the Benefits of Lotus Domino 8.5.x with XPages > (thanks, Tim)

Ed Brill | Highland Park, IL USA Category:  Notes and Domino 8.5  Add/View Comments [4]

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  1. 1  Brendan Long  | 6/7/2010 6:25:29 PM

    Thanks for the link Ed.

    As an old-school notes developer trying to work out if and when to take the plunge into XPages, articles like this are quite helpful.

    The only thing I haven't managed to find yet is something that points out what types of applications, patterns or situations present an opportunity for a quick win with XPages. Maybe the answer to that will become clear if I just put my head down and learn it?

  1. 2  Erik Brooks  | 6/7/2010 8:56:37 PM

    @1 - Yeah, best to "just do it".

    Probably the quickest win would be if you needed to create a form on a new, from-scratch app. You'd immediately get good CSS / theme support, the repeat control, and easy data bindings and validation. Plus it'd work in the Notes client and browser with virtually no extra effort.

    The main reason I recommend a "from-scratch" app is because you wouldn't suffer from the biggest problem with XPages: the ability to consume legacy LS code. There's some work underway here for 8.5.2 to where you can effectively call WQO/WQS agents, but only as long as they are "run as web user".

    But it's looking like we still may be missing the largest piece of the "bridge" to XPages adoption, which is the classic "run as signer" capability. I've mentioned this in the beta forum and contacted the appropriate person at Lotus so hopefully we'll see something happen there. I'd argue it's a ship-stopper at this point simply due to the fact that there have been companies waiting for this functionality forever, it's too heavy for a Fix Pack, and 8.5.3 will be an eon away.

  1. 3  Rajeev R Menon http://NA | 6/25/2010 7:47:19 AM

    Hi Ed,

    I work for US Army as a Domino Developer for past 4 years. I have developed a huge application for Army built around 10 databases. There is a 11th database which is cloned for more than 600 offices of Army around the world.

    Now the issue is that the deployed soldiers are unable to access the application because of poor bandwidth.

    We tried the DOLS as the off-line solution. But Army doesn't allow it because of security reasons. I heard XPages can support off-line capability. So my question is based on that.

    Question:

    Can XPages be used to implement an Off-line solution? Meaning, develop once for web, and use it on notes client off-line.

    We have a huge application consisting of 10 master databases that needs to support off-line capability. We cannot use DOLS for security reasons.

    I was thinking that once I migrate the entire design to XPages, users can take local replica copies of these databases and work on it, then replicate the data back nightly or whenever the internet connection is good.

    I tried this, but I am facing an issue in terms of databases inter-connectivity.

    From a local database A, I want to open a notes document or an attachment which is sitting in a local database B. Can you advise me what will be the URL like?

    I tried all different URLs, but none worked.

    Few URL patterns I tried.

    { Link }

    { Link }

    { Link }

    Are the standard web URL syntax supported on local databases running on XPages? Is there a documentation available about the URL syntax for local replica databases built on XPages.

    Please forward this e-mail to the right technical person in IBM. Or please give me the contact details of the IBM Tech.

    Thank You.

    Rajeev R Menon

    Senior Lotus Domino Architect.