Kapalienator.WEB: Convergence: Websphere & Domino

March 8 2006

I was asked recently whether there are a lot of Domino customers taking advantage of the WebSphere Application Server limited entitlement that has been part of the Domino 6 and 7 license.  I had to say that honestly, I don't know the answer -- I certainly remember the decision-making that lead up to this entitlement, but have never gone back and critiqued it.

"Kapalienator" wonders:

I am wondering why Java doesn't capture the attention of majority of the notes/domino developers. In openNTF there are very few projects that are based on Java (ofcourse, you could argue that there are fewer or nill in .NET/PHP/Ruby/whatever category). The same applies to the bloggers - few domino bloggers talk about Java).
The blogger goes on to suggest six different ways that the entitlement could be leveraged...combining Domino and WebSphere into a powerhouse.  Are you doing anything along these lines?

Ed Brill | Oslo, Norge Category:  IBM  Add/View Comments [15]

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  1. 1  Christopher Byrne http://www.controlscaddy.com/ | 3/8/2006 2:24:26 PM

    Why not Java? Because I would have to see business benefit and gains from it that I cannot accomplish using LotusScript or .Net or whatever. Why reinvent the wheel if things work ok without the additional overhead of Java? Why expend time and energy on openNTF projects that use Java (and there are some out there) if that where the users of the templates are living (i.e they have to be able to sup[port it if they use it)?

    Of couse, I could really get good at it and make real money with Websphere...nah...

  1. 2  Rob McDonagh www.CaptainOblivious.com | 3/8/2006 3:14:31 PM

    I've thought about using that entitlement a few times, but it always came back to the fact that it didn't really make business sense. The entitlement only covers access to Domino data (if I'm wrong, please let me know, but that's what I've been told). Why should I (my company) invest hardware (real) money and significant rampup and training costs and decreased productivity from some of our best people, just to have the ability to write Java code instead of Lotuscript code? It's not that simple, of course, and there are benefits. But the costs are there, too, and the limited license typically makes the decision easy. Need access to Domino data? Use Domino.

  1. 3  Brian Green www.automatedlogic.com/domino | 3/8/2006 3:20:07 PM

    We no longer use ODBC drivers to connect to Lotus Notes data. Instead we use Java, DIIOP connections, and the NCSO.jar libraries. We also use Domino7's web services to read/write data from Java and .Net applications.

    WebSphere's limited license was not attractive to us (an SMB). Instead we chose Apache Tomcat as our Java web server. Applications can have SSO with Domino, and can use the JSP tag libraries.

    Users continue to use full Lotus Notes clients, and we can serve that same data up as HTML/JSP/XML/RSS, and read/write to it from non-Domino applications. Domino is an incredibly robust platform. The future Eclipse tools are exciting as well.

  1. 4  Ben Poole http://benpoole.com | 3/8/2006 4:58:20 PM

    I rarely use Java *IN* Notes: it's too much of a hog for many things, there are signing issues in many organisations with Java agents that do anything on the network (i.e. most of them), and there's no Java support for the Mac client.

    Where I do the Java thang is in Tomcat and Websphere. And I have done a few projects which combine the best of Domino with a nice fast J2EE container -- they work very well together.

  1. 5  Ken Yee http://www.keysolutions.com/blogs/kenyee.nsf | 3/8/2006 5:20:17 PM

    It's just easier/faster getting apps done in Domino vs. J2EE...something Kapalienator doesn't address.

    Unless you have lots of connectivity w/ different backend databases (transaction processing, etc.), do folks seriously tell customers w/ a straight face "you should migrate some Domino apps to J2EE Websphere"? Or do you say, "it'll take 3x as long to do in J2EE/Websphere w/ 3x the resources but we should migrate one of your apps so I can get a chance to play w/ J2EE so I can stuff my resume and get you to spend more on a really hefty server to run Websphere and Domino on the same server"? :-)

  1. 6  Turtle http://www.weightlessdog.com/msxsux.html | 3/8/2006 5:26:29 PM

    Longer answer? No.

    For the apps we run here, I haven't found a thing I can't do just fine in 6.5x or 7. For a while around here, there was a fad of "let's develop J2EE apps just so we can sound like we're cool," but that died out when we realized, as Ken does above, that it takes triple as long, only one out of ten people can debug the code later, and it really doesn't offer us anything more than we already have and use.

  1. 7  Ed Brill www.edbrill.com | 3/8/2006 6:21:46 PM

    OK, I think this has gone a little off topic.

    The question was about use of Domino -- web applications -- with WAS. The entitlement is specifically around things like JSPs, servlets, and web services. It's not a migration question, it's not a Notes client question, and it's not an alternatives question.

  1. 8  Richard Schwartz http://www.yellowisthenewblack.com | 3/8/2006 10:43:11 PM

    No, I'm not doing any of those things. Why not? I think it's the same reason for me as it is for most people, Ed: the terms of the entitlement are too restrictive to be interesting to people whose real interest is in meeting business requirements and SLAs at the lowest cost.

    If you want significant uptake on this, IBM needs to change the entitlement terms to allow developers to re-use existing J2EE application code that has high business value. Otherwise, in almost all cases it's going to be faster and cheaper to just use Domino to meet whatever business requirements. And the key to this is dropping the restriction against accessing non-Domino data, because that's the code that has the most business value to offer.

    Without that, the entitlement allows you to use different technologies, but it doesn't allow you to solve business problems more effectively.

  1. 9  Bill Geimer  | 3/8/2006 11:06:11 PM

    We also briefly looked at the entitlement. However, we did not have the capacity to spare to have WAS running and while the price was right, we could not find a suitable application. We find that the Domino HTTP support is working quite well on our application servers. We have had mixed results with Java; we use the Sun JVM for other applications on several LOB workstations, and until recently, that did not work well (pre-Domino 6) with domino apps. We had to yank java to get http apps to work on R5 boxes. We were really happy to see Sun's JVM to work with 6, 6.5, but by then, things were happily running in lotusscript. Viva le Lotusscript.

  1. 10  Ed Maloney  | 3/9/2006 5:09:44 AM

    I think that IBM should bundle the full Gluecode/Websphere community edition with Domino, make the integration a check box in the server document and include some templates.

    As for why Domino developers haven't embraced J2EE... I find 95% of the time it is just faster to write my apps in LotusScript. If there is a class or method that doesn't exist in LS, then Java is the way to go. Tom and Julian had an excellent session on this at this year's Lotusphere.

  1. 11  david racicot  | 3/9/2006 10:02:59 AM

    Badges? We don't need no stinkin' badges. Oh mean Java. Wait for it ...

  1. 12  Samuel deHuszar Allen  | 3/9/2006 11:56:07 AM

    I don't have much need for WebSphere entitlement, personally, but I think as Hannover (and in the interim, the WMC w/Notes plug-in) helps put Notes into the Linux realm, you will see more need for Java services as LotusScript's COM/OLE connectors will be useless. To tap into apps like OpenOffice on Linux, Java/Corba connectors will be the only game in town. So I hope that as Kapalienator suggested, there will be more tutorials and the like on Developing with Java in the Notes environment.

    I think the reluctance to incorporate new tech when there are already mechanisms that work is also due to a slightly different problem which I've ranted on in past blog comments and will continue to do here.

    IBM hasn't been able to create a lot of incentive to bring in a lot new blood into the developer realm. Most of the Notes Domino bloggers are seasoned veterans and were using LotusScript instead of Java because they were more familiar with LotusScript, and the Java Class library for Domino wasn't as extensive, nor was the JVM as stable or fast when they were shaping their core skills.

    I still am of the mind that IBM needs to sit down with Kathy Sierra and the Head First Team over at O'Reilly's and get some books published on how to program in LotusScript, a book about Java for Domino, a book for Web Devel with Domino, XML for Domino, etc. There are a bunch of books which touch on a little of everything, but not a lot on any one. I know there's a good RedBook on XML in Domino, but how visible is it to potential developers OUTSIDE of our, lets face it, rather insular community. IBM needs to push out some very accessible skill building publications, and get them on the shelves of Barnes & Noble.

    If there's 35 Books on the Shelf for Exchange, 50 for Java, and 5 for Notes/Domino and 4 of them are over 5 years old, then no potential developer is going to think there's much future in the platform if there's no visible present where people are accustomed to look. If that has sunk in with your collegues Ed, I don't see it from out here. I'd love some comment on it though, especially if I'm wrong.

  1. 13  Gerald Mengisen  | 3/9/2006 2:42:29 PM

    For a large and busy public website based on Domino, we knew that some functionality had to go into servlets and not agents - for performance reasons. We considered the WAS entitlement, but dropped it because the web server in itself was busy enough and Websphere brings associations like "mammoth" or "big" and "hard to manage" along. This would be OK if Websphere had alreday been deployed at that client's site, but it wasn't. So Tomcat was the better choice for that project.

  1. 14  Henning Heinz  | 3/9/2006 2:57:04 PM

    For me, Websphere just adds too much overhead to a Domino server.At least I could never say that I haven't had a chance to get familiar with Websphere. Garnet (fully integrated Tomcat) would have been a much more elegant approach for me.

    I do not agree with the book story though. Complicated products have more books but I do not think that making Domino more complicated is what I want.

  1. 15  Charles Robinson  | 3/14/2006 2:50:33 PM

    I had no idea there was a limited entitlement for WAS, not that I see any particular use for it. I would possibly use more of these entitlements if there was clear documentation of the business case, implementation, integration and use of the products. Right now I'm in the camp looking at Java, XML, XSLT, and all the other acronyms and scratching my head wondering what the big deal is. I get the concepts, I just don't see that taking the time to learn all that stuff is really worthwhile.