Here’s my first attempt at making a “Short” on YouTube. I have some topics that are just really quick and a full normal NotesIn9 is overkill. So that’s what “shorts” are far. So I figured I’d give it a try.
Tag: Designer
Yesterday at Collabsphere I was in a great session by Dan Dumont that was simply titled “Source Control in Designer”.
Source control is nothing new to designer as we’ve had this for years. I think there are at least 6 episodes of NotesIn9 that either are dedicated or touch on source control.
So what is all this about if we have this now?
The current take on source control has several issues with it. While it does work better for XPages design elements it’s not very usable with classic Notes client focused elements. DXL does not properly “round trip” so you are forced to output those elements as binary files and if you ever have a merge conflict on a binary file you can just kiss your butt goodbye. You will not be able to resolve that conflict inside the source control workflow.
As for the XPages elements, while those are better, there are problems there, most notably things like “last modified date” getting updated and looking like a change when no change has been made. There is also extra files just for metadata that muddy things up that actually spawned a neat OpenNTF project called Swiper that tried to fix this. So while we have had source control available to us, lets just say that it was challenging to deal with.
In theory that ends with Version 14. Source Control has been rethought from the ground up. As best as I can understand it at the moment is that there will be a new option in the application properties that you can turn on “enhanced source control” (my term – I don’t know the actual text) and that will produce YAML files to represent the application. These YAML files will by default contain binary representations of the application. This is to make sure that nothing gets missed and it’s fully round trip safe. So even if new design elements are added later down the road, they will automatically be included in the YAML file creation. Then HCL is creating “translators”. (I forget their term) which will go into the binary information and translate it to text on an element by element basis. This text translation will allow us to see in source control, or a pure diff tool what the differences are. They are actively working to translate as much as possible but not everything will be translated by the time 14 drops and there was talk about creating an OpenNTF project where the community could add translations to assist in this going forward.
Oh another thing is that notes documents – think configuration documents – can also be included!!
This is testable now the 14 early preview via a command line but will be working inside Designer as one would expect by the time 14 goes gold. I’m looking forward to testing this as soon as I can.
I’ve not been able to keep up with all the things HCL has been doing (app Dev Pack, Domino REST API, Volt stuff, etc…) but for me as a simple Notes/Domino/XPage developer this is the most exciting thing I’ve seen in years and can’t wait to get into this and hopefully introduce true and proper source control to the dev team at my company.
Thank you HCL and a big thank you to Dan Dumont!!!
In this show I take a look at adding additional tools to your toolbox. Specifically we’re going to grab some great projects from OpenNTF.org. Among them are:
Some Notes:
- When I talked about the OpenNTF Essentials. I didn’t realize there were 2 projects. The “runtime” and the “toolbox”. I was referring to the runtime even though I had clicked on the toolbox.
- I filmed a bunch of shows on a day I was under the weather and having some Asthma issues. So the mic picked up more “breathing” then usual. Hopefully that’s not too annoying.
This show beings my great experiment. I’ve wanted to do this for a couple of years actually. I’m going to ATTEMPT to start from scratch and build an XPages Application.
I’m going to assume that the viewer has little to no knowledge of Domino Development. I’ve gotten a bunch of emails from people brand new to the platform so the beginning shows are kinda geared for them. I’m really trying to start from square one.
When I get into the Application build – which won’t be till the 5th show I believe, I’m going to TRY and build a “typical” XPages application – Companies, contacts, Activities… stuff like that. But when I do get into the App build, It’s going to be built with a heavy preference for Java and Managed Beans. Why? Must I use Java to build this kind of application? Absolutely not. No Java needed. But I’m going to use it for 2 reasons:
1-People have been asking for this kind of information
2-This is how I might build an app in the day job so that’s what I’m going to do here.
So that’s why I’m using Java. It will also let me get into making a “business api” I hope.
I’m also going to use Bootstrap and the OpenNTF API. Basically any tool in the toolbox.
That’s the plan anyway.
P.S. In this show I meant to start with actually installing the designer software, but messed something up and didn’t want to redo it. I figure clicking on the installer isn’t that big a deal. So this show starts off after the initial install.
P.P.S If you’re a beginner and want further information and an alternate view point on starting XPages development, you might want to check out a video series from Paul Della-Nebbia on his blog.
Oh and there is one more thing….
Some episodes MIGHT contain some “bloopers” at the end.
In this show IBM Champion and everyone’s second favorite Doctor returns to NotesIn9. That’s right, Dr. Marky Roden is in the house with a GREAT tip on ways to speed up Domino Designer by using Design Definition to better control your database resources.
We last saw the good Doctor back on September 13th, 2012, Episode 74, talking about using jQuery. Don’t miss todays demo. You never know if he’ll disappear for another 684 days again.
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Also yesterday I mentioned that this month is the 5 year anniversary of NotesIn9. I just want to thank everyone for all the nice messages, comments, and even a blog post. It means a lot and is very appreciated!
Thank You!
UPDATE: The Audio for Marky’s demo isn’t great. I’m pretty sure I messed that up in the processing of the video.
This episode marks an early start to the NotesIn9: Drive to 99 event.
I recently spoke at the MWLug conference. This show is the first part of what might be 4-5 parts of that presentation turned into a screencast.
In this show I talk about Domino Designer and source control first. These are brief reviews of some longer shows I have done. Though I talk a little more indepth about source control “Branching” which I’ve not done before. I then talk about some tools that you need to have in your designers toolbox.
Hope you like it as our “Drive to 99” starts heading to the highway!
UPDATE: Since I stumbled in the show on what “Xmx” and “Xms” are I was excited to get some feedback from Dan O’Connor of IBM.
I saw you were a little unsure about the xmx and xms variables/args :-).
xmx is the maximum heap size, it is a variable that is passed to the JVM on startup, and is the maximum size the JVM will allow its heap to expand to.
xms is the minimum heap size, and while you might think setting this to a really low number can do ‘no harm’, it is actually advisable to set it to a ‘reasonable’ number, as the JVM is usually optimized to initialize to the minimum heap size, and if this size is too small for the number of objects needed to initialize the program (in this case Designer), as a result the JVM has to keep cycling until the optimal heap size is reached, which can have a performance impact.
Dan also suggests referring to the book “XPages Portable Command Guide”. There’s a section in there that starts around page 86 and goes into more detail on what the Java heap is and how it affects performance. While the book is geared for the server, the same principles apply to the client as well. I hope to review those pages and go into that in a little more details in a future NotesIn9.
Thanks Dan!!
In this show I take a brief look at Domino Designer and go over some enhancements that I’ve learned from some true experts, Paul Calhoun and Nathan Freeman. I’ll show how to check out and improve Designer’s memory usage and even make your XPages XML source code easier to read.
Here is the link to Nathan’s blog post detailing many Designer tweaks.
http://ntf.gbs.com/nathan/escape.nsf/d6plinks/NTFN-8GP6RP
In other news I’m trying to improve how I use other outlets for NotesIn9 information. If you like, please follow @NotesIn9 on twitter. I also have a facebook page.
This week marks the last couple of days of Wiki Madness. In celebration of the end of what I think was a great event I’m celebrating with a weeks worth of new shows.
In today’s show I talk about XPages and especially the need to start becoming comfortable with the source window. Unlike traditional Notes Development where you only have an IDE, XPages allows you to access the actual XML source of the page. Watch how you can use that to your advantage and do a couple of simple things that can not be done in the IDE alone.
May the source be with you!
Also in this show is a couple of shout-outs to some recent additions to the Lotus Notes screencasting and podcasting world.
Tips In Two
The X Cast
XPages101.net
One note about this show. It’s my first attempt using a new microphone. It’s called a Yeti. I’m not sure if I have it set right just yet. Certainly the keyboard came across too loud in this one. I think it’s better in tomorrow’s show.