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BOOK EXCERPT
What's New in IBM Lotus Notes/Domino 8 Development: Composite Applications
In this book excerpt, learn how Composite Applications change application design and the programming model.
By Tim Speed, Dick McCarrick, Barry Rosen, Bennie Gibson, Brad Schauf, David Byrd, and Joseph Anderson
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In order to allow your Notes or Domino application to participate within a composite application, you must first decide which design elements need to be accessible to other components. To make these components available to other components within your composite application, they are specified within a Web Services Description Language (WSDL) file. The composite application property broker then uses this WSDL file as a map into your application and its published properties and actions.
To allow this mapping to occur, the Composite Application Editor is used. Without making changes to legacy Notes/Domino application functionality, the Composite Application Editor can be used to surface the elements of the application such as forms, views, documents, and other Notes elements to the composite application.
Another element of composite application design is deciding where the application components will reside. Composite applications can be hosted within a local NSF file on a Notes client, on a Domino 8 application server, in WebSphere Portal, or in Lotus Expeditor. The Notes/Domino application components are created with the Composite Application Editor while WebSphere Portal composite applications can be created with the Composite Application Editor or the Portal Application Template Editor.
Programming
As mentioned previously, the addition of composite applications to the development strategy for Notes/Domino 8 required some changes and additions to the existing programming model.
Within a composite application, the components must be able to interact even if they were defined with different tools and technologies. Some components may even be stored within different database technologies. One component may be NSF based while another may be stored within a relational database store. The components need a standardized way to define the properties and actions that they support, so that an application developer can wire them together into a composite application.
The standard way to define these properties and actions is via a WSDL file.
Let's take a quick look at properties, actions, and wires.
Properties
Component properties are the data items that a given component produces. They are either input properties (consumed by the component) or output (produced by the component) properties. Each property is assigned a data type, which is based on the WC3 primitive data types. These include string, Boolean, decimal, time, and date. The primitive data types can also be utilized to build new data types. For example, within Notes 8, some new data types for components will be available that map to common data available within the mail, calendar, and contacts applications. Some of these new data types are listed in table 1.
Table 1
| Data Type Name | Extends Data Type | Description | Example |
| mailTo | String | List of people to receive an email | "mailto:suzie@company.com?
subject=Our Dogs are Smart&cc=
frankie@company.com,
domino@company.com&bcc=
gromit@company.com |
| emailAddress822 | String | Email address following RFC 822 | "My Gerbil <shelbie@company.address com>"
"Little Man <nate@company.com>" |
| distinguishedName | String | LDAP name | "cn=bubbles,ou=turtles,
dc=company,dc=com" |
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Tim Speed is an IBM Certified Systems Architect with IBM Software Services for Lotus. In that capacity, he's responsible for designing, implementing, and supporting various engagements with its clients. Mr. Speed lives in Denton, Texas, and has been an IBM/Lotus employee for more than 12 years in a variety of networking, technical, hardware and software support and consulting positions. He has been working with Notes for more than 15 years focusing on administration roles and infrastructure. He also has international experience with working on infrastructure engagements in Spain, Japan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, the UK, and Indonesia.
Dick McCarrick is a freelance writer who has worked extensively with Lotus Notes and Domino over the years. Dick spent more than 15 years with the Lotus Notes and Domino team, initially as a documentation writer, then later with developerWorks: Lotus. Since leaving IBM, he continues to be involved with Notes/Domino, co-authoring three previous books on this product.
Barry Rosen is an Advisory IT Specialist with IBM Software Services for Lotus. During the last two years, Mr. Rosen has worked on several large messaging and migration projects as well as performed Domino upgrades and messaging assessments. Before that he was a Software Engineer in Lotus Support for more than five years. While in support Mr. Rosen was on several teams specializing in mail routing, Lotus Notes Client, calendaring and scheduling, and server core. He focused on clustering, Lotus Notes for the Macintosh, and rooms and resources. Currently Mr. Rosen resides in Houston. Having graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, Mr. Rosen enjoys following Longhorn sports.
Bennie Gibson is an IBM Certified Systems Architect with IBM Software Services for Lotus. In that capacity, he is responsible for managing various engagements with its clients. Mr. Gibson lives in Wake Forest, NC and has been an IBM/Lotus employee for more than 24 years in a variety of sales, consulting, and management roles. He has been working with Notes for more than 10 years focusing on architecture and infrastructure. He also has international experience with working on infrastructure engagements in Malaysia.
Brad Schauf is an IBM Executive I/T Architect with more than 20 years of experience in the computer services and consulting industry. He has experience with enterprise-wide software and messaging and portal deployments, with a concentration on Lotus Notes/Domino messaging infrastructure architecture, application development, and integration as well as WebSphere portal architecture design and deployments. His experience includes API-level application development and lead programmer, enterprise lead for messaging and portal deployments to General Manager including P&L commitments. He was a founder of a successful IBM business partner before joining IBM in 1999.
David Byrd is an IBM Senior Certified Executive IT Architect with IBM Software Services for Lotus from Fayetteville, GA. He has been an IBM/Lotus employee for more than 9 years in a number of consulting positions covering various technology areas. David has a deep background in virtually all areas of Lotus products and technologies covering areas ranging from low-level API development and collaborative application architectures, to security architectures and messaging architectures. His current focus is on Lotus Quickr as well as other team collaboration technologies and its deployment in enterprise customers. He has worked with Lotus Notes and Domino for more than 15 years.
Joseph Anderson is an IBM Certified Senior Managing Consultant from the IBM Software Services for Lotus team. Joseph has worked with Lotus Notes/Domino, Lotus Sametime, and Lotus QuickPlace since the early 1990s, primarily as a consultant. He is currently working with the Competitive Software team focusing on Domino/Notes administration, migration/upgrade, and security. Prior to working in the consulting industry, Joseph worked in the legal industry as a Director of Operations, where he leveraged his Master of Science in Legal Administration from the University of Denver College of Law.
Keyword Tags: Composite Applications, IBM, IBM Lotus, IBM Lotus Domino, IBM Lotus Notes
ADVISORAMA The significant problems we face cannot be solved with the same level of thinking that we were at when we created them. -- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
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