Category: Well Crap

Categories
Well Crap

No More.

I hate doing opinion stuff.  Who cares about my opinion?  Probably not you.  Certainly not my dog. I don’t often blog my opinion and it’s very rare that it makes it onto NotesIn9.  It’s one of my rules actually.

No More.

I’ve had enough and I’m no longer going to stay silent.

Today IBM released information that they’re going to be supporting Domino to 2021.  And yes it’s clear that the terminology is actually “at least 2021”.  So there’s nothing to say it’s going to end in 2021.  Ok that’s good news and some people took it as a very positive sign.

Yeah that’s not going to work for me.

I’m going to come out and disagree with this positive spin stuff.  Yes Domino is “not dead” as they’re going to “support” it.  And yes they’re going to move to some kind of “incremental delivery model“. So probably not a new “version” but fixes and features are still on their way. Who cares about the version number?  Not me.  No big deal there.

But “incremental delivery” is only beneficial if you have stuff to deliver that people actually want and that adds value. 

I am just a customer.  I don’t want “Bluemix” crap.  You can’t have production XPages .nsf data on Bluemix.  So it’s a waste of my time as an XPages developer.

I don’t want some new email thing that shows pretty circle pictures of people I already know and many who probably would never add their picture anyway.

I don’t want some new Chat tool that no ones going to use.  I want to better work with what people are using tools like Slack, Skype, Skype for Business, and Sametime.  Why did Google + not take off?  Not a lot of people used it.  They stayed with Facebook and Twitter.

I WANT a modern Designer client and not the current one which is based off Eclipse 3.4 from 2008.

I WANT updates and improvements to the core XPages runtime and core .nsf database to build better apps.

I WANT a built in Domino Java API so I can ask a question on Stack Over Flow and not be laughed from Java people for using obsolete Vectors.

I WANT Source Control that actually works well, because by God everyone else has that so why can’t we?

And by God it would be nice to see some IBM documentation that I didn’t have to produce myself!

Domino is tough.  It can run forever BUT support to 2021 (and beyond) is not a promise to fix things or add things you want. It’s simply a promise to take your phone call and not play Pokemon Go for the 5 minutes it takes to enter a ticket.

Look at support for XPages.  9.0.1 is “IBM Supported”. BUT enhancements and bug fixes come out via the OpenNTF Ext. Library.  Which really has better “Support”?  The official IBM version which hasn’t been updated for years?  Or the OpenNTF version that has had regular bug fixes and enhancements?

I maintain that the “unsupported” project from OpenNTF has better real support then the “supported” product from IBM.

No, Notes and Domino are not “Dead”. But they’re not flourishing and they’re not vibrant.  What else is not dead?  OS/2 it seems. Does anyone want to try to find a job with that “Not Dead” technology?

To be continued on NotesIn9 201….

Categories
Community Well Crap

Can anyone help with “Notes 9.0.1 64-bit for Mac Open Database Issues”

Here is a post by CaySal Lackey who’s an rising XPages developer but is losing dev time to problems with the Notes Mac OSX client not being able to open and properly use 14 year old basic Form and View based databases.

https://caysal.wordpress.com/2016/03/20/notes-9-0-1-64-bit-for-mac-open-database-issues/
If anyone knows anything that can help her please post it on her blog.

Thanks!

 

 

Categories
Bluemix Well Crap

BlueMix and Spam

Bluemix

Blue Mix and Ham

I am Dave
Dave I am.


I did not sign up for Bluemix today

I did not sign up yesterday.

I did not sign up thirty days ago

I did not sign up with an Eskimo


I did not sign up from a plane

I did not sign up from a train.

I did not sign up for a trial

Most days I don’t even drive a mile.


I did not sign up in the snow

If you’d ask me I’d tell you no.


I did not sign up on a bet

I simply did not sign up yet.


I did not yet build an app

I would rather take a nap.


Someday I might

When the time is right

People tell me it’s actually rather sweet

They tell me in chat, and even via tweet

It actually looks really neat


They’re smarter then me,

So they plainly see,

There’s power in Watson

Which might lead to adoption


I’m sure I’ll give it a try

I mean it, I can’t tell a lie

XPages in the cloud,

Would make me so proud


One day I’ll try Bluemix

Until then, please stop being ___


Well crap, I guess nothing rhymes with Bluemix… This will forever be unfinished now…  Sigh….

====

Way back in November I blogged about getting some similar emails from Bluemix. I didn’t like it then and I don’t like it now. I don’t like the wording, as again, I’ve not signed up, validated an email address or placed any apps or data on Bluemix.  I really wish IBM would cut this out.  People don’t need to be tricked into using Bluemix. It’s a turn off.  Just make Bluemix as great as you can and people will come. I’ve heard a lot of good about Bluemix from the recent IBM Connect conference.  And with new updates into Domino Designer I’m probably getting closer to actually giving it a try which is why getting this in my inbox is extra annoying. If I sign up today I feel like I’m giving into a phishing scheme.  And can I even sign in?  It says my trial period has ended?  I bet there’s a good chance that’ll be a pain to sort out.

Sigh.

update: Changed the title on suggestion from a friend to “Bluemix and Spam”. That sounds better.

Categories
Bluemix Well Crap XPages

The XPages and IBM Bluemix showstopper, for me at least

Ok I’ll admit it..  I’ve not really been paying much attention to IBM’s Platform as a Service offering called “Bluemix”.  For the longest time there was no XPages component.  Of course I’d love to play with all the other technologies that it offers, and there are a lot, but as primarily an XPages Developer at the moment I just don’t have good time or practical ideas for anything else.

Then they finally put XPages and the “XPages NoSQL” database into Bluemix.  Experimental for now, but it’s in there.  Now it has my attention.  I could run XPages in Bluemix and maybe hook into all the Watson goodness and all the other bells and whistles that they offer.

As soon as the XPages Experimental went live I saw several posts by Marky Roden and others and I’m thinking cool,  now I can get started.

Then I went to MWLug and learned something really REALLY unexpected.

Because the Domino server is NOT “Multi-Tenant” it means that the “XPages NoSQL” database is really just a semi-isolated slice of I guess an actual Domino server.  I’m not sure of the plumbing.  But it specifically means that this “XPages NoSQL” database should NEVER EVER be used for PRODUCTION data. If one customer caused a crash it would take down multiple customers. The “XPages NoSQL” database on Bluemix has only ever been intended to be a “developers playground”.

My current understanding is that if you actually do want to use XPages on Bluemix for a production app then you must host the data either on IBM’s Softlayer service or “On premises” with your own copy of Domino.

So I guess that you need to subscribe to Bluemix for the “app” but then also pay for the data either in a Softlayer subscription or via Domino licensing.

This really REALLY disappoints me and assuming I’m understanding this correctly, I’m not sure I see the point in anyone doing much with XPages and Bluemix unless maybe you just HAD to access some Bluemix specific resource from an XPages application. Maybe there are use cases for this but none that really jump out at me.

If I’m wrong on any of this please let me know.

Categories
Well Crap

BAD bug found in IBM Domino 9.0.1 FixPack4 (FP4)

So Declan pinged me about a weird problem he discovered which I was able to confirm.

Get this:

If you have a view column that is calculated by a formula and you change the programmatic name of the column to something that matches a field on the document that that fields value will show in the view column and NOT your calculated formula.  OUCH!

This does NOT occur in FP3. We’ve seen this in the Notes Client as well as in XPages Code. Jave Code I believe.

 

If you look at the screenshots.  The first one has 2 arrows pointing to “test” and “15”.  Those values come from a field called “legacyID”.  The other documents have correct information because they don’t have that field on them. The second screenshot shows the programmatic name with the formula I’m using.  All I did was change the programmatic name from what I was using “homeCode” in this instance to “legacyID” which is a field that was NOT already inside the view.

It’s possible that this problem does not occur into DDE makes a change to the database – either via direct edit or design refresh.

I saw some other posts about bugs in FP4.  I’m not sure what they were though.  I know there’s some debug information that was left turned on that shows on the server console.  That has already been corrected in IF1 I’m told.

We’re not running IF1 yet so I do not know if there’s a fix for this view problem yet.

 

fp4bug-1

fp4bug-2