Developping Distance

As promised in a previous post, Here is a shortlist of the first things I discovered when moving from Lotus Domino to ASP/SQL as an application Development platform.

Of course this is far from complete, but gives you an idea what its about. I will populate it over time. As I have just created one small app, I cannot list all the possible differences….. for the moment, the most obvious:

biggest differences between developing a simple database driven application on the Domino platform compared to the MS ASP.NET/SQL Environment
		DOMINO		ASP/SQL
Data Layer	No Intervention req. Using the Domino designer, only the fields need to be planned.		+	SQL Database needs to be planned and set up.	-
				Data connections need to be planned and set up.
Application Layer	Formula language, very easy to learn. (ex. @mailsend(“Alex K”;”cc name”;”bcc name”;;”Subject”;”Mail Body text bla bla)		+	ASP / SQL Both not an easy language to learn. However not impossible either, depending on your capabilities.	-
	Lotus script, very similar to plain VBScript.		-/+	to create a simple application, no coding is required.	+
Presentation Layer	Domino Designer is not really made for developing for web clients. However, using css pages, and “render as HTML” make it possible to layout your site well. However This is not very straight-forward, and will take a bit to get a hang of.		-	The Microsoft VWD is clearly a web development tool. Layout and design are really easy.	+
Other	Access control easily managed, up to field level		+	Access control depends on set-up, Active Directory access makes things easier, while using roles in the asp.net user management console can be quite complex when managing multiple applications	-
Application: 1 database table 1 form for entering data 1 reporting view Access Control

The Idea, The Challenge…

Good, even though I am just starting to have a look at the development of web based applications I received a comment on one of my previous posts that maybe comparing Domino development against ASP/.NET could have interesting results.

I believe this to be a good Idea, but my only worry is that my lack of knowledge, as a .NET starter will bias the outcome of this “test” a bit. However, if I choose to make something really simple, this should not be that much of a problem.

I am looking into developing the same project twice. Once in Domino, and once in VWD (Visual Web Developer), the tool I am using at the moment to learn more about the development in ASP and SQL.

This is a bit of extra work, but I believe I can make the time to do this, and that it would  be very valuable, especially to see where major differences create delays, or make things slower (or faster, probably in rare occasions). Therefore I will try the following:

An application (I am thinking about one I have to make soon anyways, which will be an IT Asset Management Tool), Web based,containing:

* Standard Navigation
* 1 Form
* 1 View for reporting

There are a few things I cannot really test yet. For example, the (ASP/SQL)environment I use now @ work is purely local, and I cannot query Active Directory for user management. Therefore, Ill skip the whole access and security part (which usually takes quite a bit of planning and work), also, I cannot use Mail functionality, as our development environment does not have Domino, nor an Exchange server.

The aspects I will look at are:
- Time spent on each part
- Effort/Knowledge required to finish each part
- General Overview of differences/problems encountered

As mentioned before, I will have to find time for this, and I will probably post it all bit by bit, and join all bits together at the end. Stay posted!

New Notes App Launched!

Last week I launched a new Domino Application. I believe that this application is going to have more impact than any application I have made in the last 2 years. Several Teams over the world will start using it soon, to log all the work 3rd party Engineers do for us.

You can understand that as the engineers, usually working for our partners, and bill us for each intervention, this is a very important tool. The Idea is very simple, interventions get logged, partner information is shown, related to the country the intervention will take place, etcetera. Loads of functionality, but hardly any difficult coding. Most of the tool has been done in Domino Designer, using the Formula Language. I have added a view-only web based interface, for off-site teams to access the info.

This week, we have finished training all the people who will be using the tool, and that too went pretty smoothly.

Some Screen-shots:

Sharepoint!

After some time in the dark, I finally have some time to write something about what I am up to lately.

The company I work for is moving slowly, very slowly from a 100% Lotus Domino environment to a MS one.

Personally, I am not sure if I am happy or unhappy with this. I am certified in Domino application design, and have been working in notes for more than 3 years now. The applications I develop are not too complicated, but satify the needs we have in our company for ad-hoc development. Since I started here, I used to do a lot of Lotus Notes Client troubleshooting too. It is safe to say, that I now know what I am working with.

Now, for some reason, somebody making decisions decided MS would be better. (I believe that MS has got a very effective sales dept.). The problems for us here in Barcelona start by beeing a dependance of a large UK based company. Basically, we are told this will happen, and just have to live with it. However, teh plan is not as clear as I would like yet. For the moment, the migration is planned in several steps.

The First step will be the migration of all email to exchange. This is the part I can really live with, because supporting the notes client in a 200+ employee office by yourself is not fun. I will miss all the extra functionality I managed to find in notes over time, but I am sure that with time, I can come up with an equivalent in the outlook client.

When this has been done, we will, according to the last and only company communication regarding this whole thing, “Move to Sharepoint“. This is Great, I thought.
As explained before, I am a technical lead in this office, and my job consists in knowing our infrastructure, our tools, and our people, and link these together to complete projects. So when this news came out, I was pretty enthousiastic about it. A new platform, new things to learn, etcetera!

However my enthusiasm went away quickly on my first “sharepoint google“, to my big surprise, there are may different ways to implement sharepoint technology, and the best one all depends on the organisations’ needs.
In our case, they (the UK people running this migration) will implement a full MOSS environment.
This is where my trouble starts. I would like to start studying as soon as possible, and think that starting with the basics, which is WSS 3.0 would be the best idea. We have a small Lab environment, and I would like to use that to build and study this.

MOSS however, the full server, has enormous hardware requirements. Our lab consist of 11 workstations, all running a windows XP Client, and one running a 2003 Server. the machines all have 1 gig of memory, and the server 1.5. Looking at the specs for MOSS, we would have to upgrade the server. harddisk, memory etc.
I am not sure how my supervisors, and my supervisors’ supervisors would look at me, after I submit them the business case to request this upgrade.

Please, if anyone reading this has any ideas experience with this, please let me know how you tackled this problem, and started learning. (As we have a microsoft Actionpack subscription, licencing is not a problem).

Starting HR System Project

This is the next big project coming up! Now, dont think the things here are the only ones I am busy with… I am preparing a physical move of a Domino Server, a Knowledge Management training, a couple of “simple” database projects… no, I am busy.

However this project is nice for me in a way. I can (up to my knowing) us the full potential of domino. This DB will contain 4 applications in one: InternalVacancies/Facilities Incident logging/JoinersMoversLeavers admin/ and Change management for the office I work.

All this, I would like to create web-based, and with an intelligent interface (use cookies to remember last pages visited, and customise the homepage, etc.).

If you have done this before, please let me know your ideas/findings!

New Project

A new Domino Development project has shown itself this misty morning! Nice.

The last one I did was completely done from scratch. No OpenNTF templates or domino ones were used. This time however the solution ideally would have been implemented …. yesterday… as always. Therefore I will have to go and have a look at open source templates with the following functionality:

- Incident recording database

- Work-flow / mail capabilities

- Assignment of different support groups

So resuming… A incident ticket tool. Anyone any ideas, or would like to promote his/her template here?? Go Ahead. For the moment I am testing out some OpenNTF Snippets and Ill let you all know the findings.

Guy’s @ OpenNTF … You’re Great!

Finishing Template

Finally it looks like a Domino database template I’ve been working on for the past month is coming through the pilot phase.

!!Yuhiiiiiiii!!

The template will be used to set up Knowledgebases for several different projects here in our office. Some elements are confidentially shared with end-markets/customers, and some between projects etc. This, for me, was one of the most complete projects Ive worked on, and contains about all my knowledge on domino application design.

To sum it up a bit, it contains things like a Document Change Control with approval cycle, expiry dates and warning emails on expiration etc. For this project, which started as a simple Notes Document library, I have been applying techniques like Javascript, and a lot of HTML and CSS to make it the mature kick-ass web-based-app it is now.

Want to have a look? Here is a small PPS:

Computacenter Knowledgebase V2 presentation

HAHA!! I am up again!

well, after some (good/bad/…) experiences on myspace or msn spaces, I believe I found a good spot to write about… err … stuff.

-Me- First comment on … myself is that I really like working aka. playing with computers. I have still not been able to define any limits here. I have had a larghe variety of jobs and hobbies, and most of them included a pc. Currently I am very busy with the development of web-based applications for Lotus Domino.