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  • in Editorial
  • 4 min read

Travels In Manila

As I sit in the airport awaiting my flights back to the UK, I'm reflecting on a busy and eventful 10 days in Manila. For those not aware, in addition to some global members of the team, the bulk of the HCL Labs technical team are based in Manila in the Philippines. This was my first chance to meet the team in person, as well as my first chance since joining HCL to sit down with Stephan Wissel in person. Those who were at Collabsphere got a sneak peek at what the team has been working on. But with the start of 2020, it's time to ramp up planning for the user groups and factory tours this year, starting with Engage.

  • in Vert.x
  • 3 min read

Vert.x and JUnit Testing

My experience with unit testing with either JUnit or TestNG is limited. With Domino development, business logic is often tightly coupled to accessing the underlying database. That makes automated testing a challenge. Similarly, the development of OpenNTF Domino API has been typically focused on code that interacts with the Domino server and databases, again making automated testing challenging. Where data persistence and the database-layer API is the main focus of the development, creating mock classes doesn't really bring much benefit. So it was Watson Workspace Java SDK which was my main experience of JUnit testing. Unit tests make a lot of sense where the business logic is about managing REST service access, both inbound and outbound.

  • in Editorial
  • 2 min read

Congratulations to 2020 HCL Masters

This week is going to be a big week for the HCL Digital Solutions brands and it started late last night with the announcement of the 2020 crop of HCL Mastershttps://www.cwpcollaboration.com/class_of_2020.html. Congratulations to all who were selected, it continues HCL's commitment to the community and those who go above and beyond to bring benefits to all who use the products.

  • in Domino
  • 4 min read

Domino on Docker - Some Learning Points

About a year ago I did a blog post on Domino on Docker, with the intention to follow it up on developing against that Domino Docker server via Notes Client and integrating with it from other Docker containers or outside of Docker. Unfortunately other things got in the way, and it then got put on hold pending the work Thomas Hampel and Daniel Nashed were doing on the IBM repository for Domino on Docker and Roberto Boccadoro's Domino on Docker guide posted on OpenNTF's wiki guides site.

  • in Tutorials
  • 4 min read

Project Jig3dw: Tutorials Re-Imagined

Project Jig3dw

The world of HCL Digital Solutions is evolving rapidly. This brings a lot of excitement but also a lot of challenges. The last certification exams for Domino were in the era of Domino 8.5. Training materials have also languished a lot - official ones from the vendor and from elsewhere, as the ecosystem has contracted. At the same time, the product has diversified and expanded.

  • in Editorial
  • 5 min read

Pastures New, New Challenges

After 14 and a half years at Intec, I'm moving on to pastures new. I've learned a lot and developed in ways that were never envisaged by anyone when I started at Intec. I'm very fortunate to have had a company that backed me, and I think we've both benefited greatly. But I've always sought to embrace opportunities and accept responsibilities throughout my career. And now is no different.

  • in Support
  • 6 min read

Thoughts on Troubleshooting Support

Over the years I've spent a lot of time supporting applications. I would like to think I'm pretty effective at it. So I thought it was the right time to share my approaches. The key is a systematic, logical approach to identify the cause - or causes.

  • in Coding
  • 5 min read

Error Management

Over the years I've done a lot of development on a variety of platforms. Error management is something developers either bake in from the start, add in later, or never get round to! It seems a good time to review my experiences and my philosophy.

tl;dr - it varies.

  • in Coding
  • 2 min read

Danger of Mid Code to Pro Code

People discussing Domino application development have been using a new term since early this year - "mid code". This has become necessary because of the evolution of Domino development since Domino V10.

  • in Java
  • 3 min read

Java Outside Domino in Eclipse

Recently I've been diving back into running Java outside of the Domino HTTP stack, picking up some work I did quite a few years ago playing with Vert.x and Domino based on Stephan Wissel's blog series on Vert.x and Domino. Quite a few things have happened since I was last working on the project, not least the laptop I had at the time got rebuilt, I have got a new laptop, several version of Eclipse have been released and XPages SDK has been deployed to the Eclipse Marketplace (thanks Jesse Gallagher).