LotusSquash - 29 september 2011 postponed to 27 october

LotusSquash: playing squash with other Lotus geeks - a friendly training session open for players of all levels and Lotus geeks of all levels - a quarterly event organised around the country.
Non Lotus geeks are welcome too ;-)

It is also an alternative, nice and sporty way of networking and chatting about IBM Lotus stuff. Watch for updates via twitter #lotussquash.
Let us know if you want to join via twitter or post a comment here.

Next LotusSquash:
Date: thursday 29 september postponed to 27 oktober
Time: 19:00 hrs
Where: Squash & Cardiofit Centrum Zwolle
Address: Dobbe 69, 8032 JX Zwolle (NL)
Organised by: TooConnect Software Solutions

Another Lotussquash coming up, 7 april - Apeldoorn

Last year in Q4 we picked up the Lotussquash initiative and agreed to have a Lotussquash event approximately every 3 months.
The next Lotussquash will be on the 7th of april in Apeldoorn (NL) and is organised by Clear IT Consulting.
More information can be found on their blog.
I hope to see you there.

NotesStream to the test

At the NL LUG 2009 Martin Scheafer improvised during his shortened session Domino Globetrotting/Dev talk. Due to customer regulations he could not show all he had planned to show.

And so he did a couple of side steps into @function and lotusscript coding. NotesStream was mentioned as a performance booster when building (long) strings e.g. in webagents when building return data for a webservice. During execution of demo code the difference between concatening a string using [string = string + extrastring] and the same code but now using NotesStream to build the return string, concatenating was a factor 4 to 5 slower than NotesStream.
I immediately saw an opportunity to improve the performance of the several agents we have running every day to transport product and other data from Notes to our Websphere Commerce servers via xml files. Some of them deliver a xml file of over 100mb.
So I put it to the test running 4 agents delivering the same result and each of them differing slightly in how the data is written.

1. agent builds string (concatenate) to 65000+ bytes and than writes to file.
   
2. agent builds string (concatenate) per record and writes to file per record.
3. agent write to file directly, line by line.
4. agent writes to file line by line using NotesStream.

The first 3 agents write to file via LS print, agent 4 using NotesStream.

The output build has the following structure per record:
<persoon>
<voornaam>Jan</voornaam>
<achternaam>Jansen</achternaam>
<woonplaats>Scherpenzeel</woonplaats>
<persoon>

The results in performance are listed below:

1. Concatenated string test (concat string to 65000+ bytes before write).
   [Elapsed time: 296 seconds] [processed 123838 records]
2. Concatenated string test (concat/write per record).
   [Elapsed time: 163 seconds] [processed 123838 records]
3. Direct print to file test.
   [Elapsed time: 169 seconds] [processed 123838 records]
4. NotesStream string test.
   [Elapsed time: 170 seconds] [processed 123838 records]

Conclusion is, NotesStream is indeed faster, but only when building large strings. The agent (1.) that concatenates strings up to 65000 bytes proves this. When keeping the strings limited in size, agents 2, 3 & 4, NotesStream performs equal to the other string methods.
And as Martin mentioned in his session, NotesStream is certainly helpful in webagents that build return xml's on request.

NLLUG conference will see next edition in 2010

Last thursday and friday I spent my time at the Amsterdam RAI for the NLLUG conference. The first multiday conference in the history of the SNUG (Dutch Lotus software user group).
Over 300 visitors, 25 business partners, 37 speakers and 39 sessions in 3 parallel tracks (and on friday even a fourth track) have made it a succesfull conference.
As always the sessions were of great quality, enabling everyone to go away with new knowledge and ideas.
I loved Rob Novak's session in which he presented SNAPPS' MyDomino application whilst the audience was enjoying a beer, great format!! And awesome application!!
Ok it was Heineken, but you cannot blame him for that ;-), next time LaTrappe Blond Rob ?.

To continue the success, the dates for the NLLUG 2010 have already been set to the 17th/18th of june. So, mark these dates in your calendar.

During the NLLUG, 25 IBM Lotus business partners (together with IBM) have launched the "Lotus loves people" initiative to give the Lotus brand more attention (advertising ?) in the Dutch market.

SNUG team (Marnix Kemme & others), thank you very much for your hard work in putting together this great event.

NL LUG 09 29-30 october in Amsterdam

The registration for the NL LUG 09 on 29/30 october in Amsterdam is going fast.
The agenda is set and it has a pick for everyone in almost every timeslot and as always it has some difficult choices to make on which sessions to go to.
Interesting are some of the subjects in the "alternative" track which even has a session by Microsoft !!
The location is now also set, the RAI congress centre, which is a good choice as it very accesible by public transport and by car.

The SNUG (Dutch IBM/Lotus User Group) have succeeded in creating a packed and interesting agenda, getting a good venue and sponsors.
More information can be found on the NL-LUG 2009 website: http://www.lug2009.nl.

See you there.

I Do Poken, do you ?

Last thursday (5 march 2009) I went to the LCTY session organised by Eniac in Zaltbommel.

Guest speaker was Douglas Spencer, who did an awesome job of summarising the Lotusphere Opening General Session in 1 hour. I also watched the OGS via the webcast on the IBM site and Douglas did an outstanding job picking out the highlights. What I found the most astonishing was the Sametime United Telephony part. "On the phone" awareness in sametime and the ability to continue the same conversation from one phone to another, just great. Not that I see that happening at my present employer soon :-( .
For the full Lotusphere 2009 OGS webcast, click here.

As an extra Eniac organised two breakout session for the afternoon, I went to the Lotus Mashups session. They did a good job of explaining the purpose and use of mashups for temporary situational apps, combining information from several (disconnected) sources into new information.
I like to draw an analogy with the query tools and web 2.0. I think that is what it really is, query tools 2.0.

The sessions ended with a Poken as gift. Poken is the new thing in social networking and provides a way to easily connect digitally with people in all the social networks they want to share. You just need to let your Poken touch (high four) with another persons Poken for a couple of seconds and you have exchanged your Poken (business) card. Back at your computer just plug the Poken in an USB port and connect to the Poken site to upload your new friends Poken cards. Through the icons at the bottom of the Poken cards you can see what other social networks your friends are active on.
Pity Eniac did not take the opportunity to preload the Pokens with the Poken cards for some of the key Eniac employees.

Anyway, I have activated the Poken and will carry it with me at all times. So when you see me and you have a Poken too, lets do a high four.

More information on Poken can be found at www.DoYouPoken.com.

Eniac, thanx for organising this event.

Getting used to Lotus Domino Designer 8.5, findings so far

Shortly after the announcement I upgraded to the Notes 8.5 platform, including the new Eclipse based designer client.
And of course it is looking very familiar as we Notes developers were already using the very similar and good working IDE. But it is now based on Eclipse which makes adding plugins and tools easier and is close to the RAD client we are using for our Websphere Commerce development.
But there are definitely some things that need getting used to. I guess it is mostly getting used to a new way of working, but there are also some issues.
I thought I'd share my initial findings and I am curious what others think.

1. The designer client takes more time to start, as does opening the first pane of design elements (enough to get the first cup of coffee of the day). After that it appears to be performing like the "old" client.
2. Databases are now called applications.
3. The old bookmarked applications stored in the previous designer client are not converted to the new eclipse workspace.
   
4. The application icons do not show until an application is opened/expanded. This make visually browsing for the application that needs some changes a lot harder.
5. The folders are replaced by working sets. Drag and drop of applications from one working set to another (like with the "old" folders) is not possible. This needs to be done opening the working set dialog box and consciously checking and unchecking applications (again by name, not icon).
   
6. The extra available eclipse views for specific tasks are helpfull and can be dragged to a suitable size and place..
7. The old familiar properties box comes up for "old" design elements and the new one at the bottom seem to be for the new design elements like the xpages, although it also shows some properties for the "old" design elements.
8. The lotusscript debugger still opens as a seperate window. I expected this one to be integrated as a seperate pane in the new designer client.

I won (IBM Lotus Technical Conference in Amsterdam)

You probably know the feeling. Entering yet another raffle to win a nice price, but somehow the price always goes to someone else.
I had the same feeling when I entered a draw held by the SNUG (the Dutch user group for IBM software) for tickets to the IBM Lotus Technical Conference in Amsterdam, featuring Alan Lepofsky. I only had to answer three not too difficult questions which could be found on their website. Obviously I did not expect to win, but to my big suprise this morning I received an email from the SNUG to let me know I won (woehaa!!).
So on 2 and 3 june I will be in Amsterdam and maybe I will meet you there.

More details about the conference can be found at link to the conference above.

New functionality and look & feel for Lotus forums. Q: when IBM ?

Ever since I attended the BP203 session at Lotusphere, "A look under the hood of a world class IBM-Lotus web application", everytime I go to the Lotus forums I expect to see the new look and feel presented.
In this BP203 session Scott Good and Henry Newberry of Teamwork Solutions inc., showed what they had build on request of IBM to get the forum look & feel and most importantly the performance into the web 2.0 era. The solution Scott and Henry presented was stepping away from full roundtripping for every page to making the best use of AJAX and JSON in building the pages.
During the presentation Scott hinted to some legal issues with IBM that where blocking a roll-out, but by now I would have expected that to be solved.

I have no commercial attachment to either party, nor do I know what the status of the issues are.
But here is my plea: go ahead IBM and suprise me the next time I go to the forums to participate to see this new functionality.