| Recent Blog Posts |
116
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Git reflog to the rescue
Fri, Sep 30th 2016 8:23a Mikkel Heisterberg
Earlier today while slaving away on my code I did some wizard-like changes and solved an issue I had been having with packaging Visual Studio Tools for Office (VSTO) add-ins for Microsoft Outlook. It was soooo cool that I just had to record a video on it as it involved a number of steps and it would be easier to record a video than describing it in text. So I commited my changes and reverted to an easier commit without thinking. And boom!! All my changes was gone - including some stuff I actuall |
181
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Date and time in Java 8
Wed, Sep 28th 2016 5:40a Mikkel Heisterberg
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23
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IBM Connections application development state of the union - part 6
Wed, Sep 14th 2016 5:39a Mikkel Heisterberg
Part 5 was about extensions/apps on-premises and this - probably final post - will be about extensions for IBM Connections Cloud. There are different ways to extend IBM Connections Cloud - one is to add links to the app menu and another is to add actual UI extensions to the applications within IBM Connections. This post is about the latter (although the observations about the administration UI applies to both). To get it out of the way from the beginning I might as well say it flat out. IBM has |
30
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IBM Connections application development state of the union - part 5
Tue, Sep 13th 2016 4:18a Mikkel Heisterberg
Part 1 was about API's and SPI's, part 2 about Mobile, part 3 about security and "coherent-ness". This part will be about apps/extensions this time moving to on-premises.
For on-premises the extension model for IBM Connections is iWidgets and OpenSocial gadgets. You can extend Profiles, Communities and Homepage. OpenSocial is only supported in Homepage. IMO the former two (Profiles and Communities) are probably the ones mostly extended using widgets. Unfortunately these also use the oldest |
24
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IBM Connections application development state of the union - part 4
Tue, Sep 13th 2016 4:14a Mikkel Heisterberg
While previous posts in this series has been about specific parts of the IBM Connections platform this is a bit more generic setting the stage for the next two ports. The next two posts are about extensions/apps for IBM Connections on-premises and in the cloud. Setting the stage for this is talking about the difference scenarios for extensions and what they would like to to and what capabilities they would need from the platform (IBM Connections).
In my mind when you provide a platform that al |
23
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IBM Connections application development state of the union - part 3
Mon, Sep 5th 2016 3:59a Mikkel Heisterberg
While part 2 was about IBM Connections Mobile this post will be about security and the "coherent-ness" of the platform.
IBM Connections runs/builds on IBM WebSphere Application Server (WAS) and much of the functionality is delegated to the underlying application server. Delegated responsibility is topics ranging from messaging to SMTP transport to database access and security. WAS also handles the clustering and fault tolerance and does it very well. Being built on WAS is a good thing for s |
24
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Developing plugins for IBM Notes on Mac
Sun, Sep 4th 2016 3:21p Mikkel Heisterberg
I've been developing plugins for IBM Notes on Mac for years now but never really got around to sharing the steps on the blog. The below steps - in very crude form - works with Java 8 on Mac OS El Capitan (v. 10.11) using IBM Notes 9.0.1. The below sections are additions to the regular steps on creating a target platform documented otherwise on this blog
Main-tab
Run a product: com.ibm.notes.branding.notes
Execution Envionment: JavaSE-1.6
Arguments-tab
Program arguments:
-personality com.i |
22
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Developing code using IBM Notes in Eclipse on Mac OS
Sun, Sep 4th 2016 2:48p Mikkel Heisterberg
I'm cleaning out my drafts folder and stumbled unto this one I never posted. The steps has changed slightly after IBM Notes 9.0.1 for Mac was released as that release works fine with the never JVM's for the Mac. Actually there are very few steps you need to do to make the code work. To complete a standard console app that prints the username from the current session to stdout do the following:
Write the code - could be something like this:
import lotus.domino.NotesFactory;
import lotus.domino |
23
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IBM Connections application development state of the union - part 2
Wed, Aug 31st 2016 10:04a Mikkel Heisterberg
Part 1 was about API's and SPI's - this part will be about widgets or apps as IBM likes to call them now. There are big differences between how widgets / apps works for on-premises, cloud and on Mobile. Let us starts with Mobile as it's the quickest one to address but also the most depressing...
Besides adding menu items to the IBM Connections mobile app menu (the one that slides in from the left) and having the content load in an embedded browser control there is no support for widgets / a |
17
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IBM Connections application development state of the union - part 1
Tue, Aug 30th 2016 4:34a Mikkel Heisterberg
IBM Connections has been on the market for a lot of time now and has always been a real strong player when it comes to application development. I thought it was time to review where we are application development wise over what will probably be a couple of posts. First off is API's...
IBM Connections is and has always been strong from the point of API's - there is an API for almost all areas of the product and always has. I think IBM Connections was the first product (maybe still the only on |
16
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Software Dependency Management and the associated risks
Mon, Aug 29th 2016 4:16a Mikkel Heisterberg
Being a Maven convert and a guy that likes to dabble in programming this topic is very interesting albeit not one I've thought much about - and I guess this is true for most. Or let's put it another way. After you start using Maven, npm, flask or whatever other dependency management tool you use for the job you think of dependency management as a done deal. Not having to download a jar / package makes it easier and thus, for some reason, less worrisome to add a dependency. Until this morning w |
15
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Simple tool to save certificate chain certificates as PEM files
Mon, Jul 25th 2016 11:04a Mikkel Heisterberg
It's been increasingly frustrating to support our OnTime Group Calendar for Microsoft customers with on-prem Exchange as they usually use a self-signed certificate for TLS resulting in Java throwing a fit. Getting the certificate chain using a browser or OpenSSL is easy enough but for some customers that still prove too difficult. I couldn't find a tool to automate the export so I wrote a small tool in Java. The tool simply takes the address of the site to contact and saves the certificate cha |
13
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Actually making Eclipse work for plugin appdev on Windows 10 64 bit
Fri, Jul 15th 2016 3:34a Mikkel Heisterberg
Just yesterday I blogged about how easy it was to get Eclipse configured for IBM Notes 9.0.1 plugin appdev. And it was easy - it just didn't work for real development. After I imported all the plugins for the OnTime Group Calendar clients nothing would compile. After looking for a while I could see that most errors was from resolving the SWT classes such as Display, Canvas and so on and that made me think of a similar issue I had on Mac. I dove into the target platform definition. In the target |
11
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Fake names
Thu, Jul 14th 2016 9:08a Mikkel Heisterberg
Needed to generate fake names and emails today for a stub API I'm developing. Found a github gist that did the trick. Very easy. Just had to install the faker gem first:
$ sudo gem install faker
The example generates to CSV but I needed from object instances for C# so changed the code as such:
require 'faker'
require 'securerandom'
File.open("output.txt", "wb") do |file|
i=0
until i == 500
uuid = SecureRandom.uuid
fake = "new SearchUserResult("" + Faker::Name.name + "", " |
14
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Configuring Eclipse Neon on Windows 10 64 bit for Notes plugin development
Thu, Jul 14th 2016 4:37a Mikkel Heisterberg
A member of the community reached out to me yesterday to ask whether I recognized a specific error message he was encountering trying to make Eclipse launch Notes 9 correctly for plugin development. I came back with a few suggestions but as I hadn't tried on Windows 10 yet I really couldn't offer much help. This morning I tried configuring Notes 9.0.1 for plugin development on Windows 10 and it went smoothly. Here are the steps I took:
Download Eclipse Neon for RCP and RAP development bundle |
10
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Reserved characters in WebSphere Application Server passwords... Really!?
Thu, Jun 2nd 2016 11:01a Mikkel Heisterberg
Had somewhat of a surprise today when IBM Support informed us that the issue our customer was experiencing could be due to unsupported characters in the password of the user mapped to the connectionsAdmin J2C alias. Say what!? But apparently there are restrictions on the different characters one can use. The password we were using had exclamation point (!) in it which is a no no. The customer is currently on WebSphere Application Server 8.5.5.6 and support suggested we try and upgrade to 8.5.5.7 |
14
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First Git hook for Atlassian Bitbucket (formerly Atlassian Stash)
Thu, Jun 2nd 2016 10:55a Mikkel Heisterberg
For my current project I've setup a full CI pipeline to automate the build process of the application (an EAR-file in this case) and deploy it to the test server. The build itself is a Maven build that runs all the tests and builds the EAR file. We are a number of people working on the application - some do frontend work (mainly JavaScript) and I do the backend. The Git repository we use is split into three branches as it concerns this project - one for backend (feature/eventboard_backend), one |
15
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Using Tomcat APR (Apache Native Runtime) on Mac
Sun, May 15th 2016 5:30a Mikkel Heisterberg
I had to document some steps using the Apache Portable Runtime (APR) and TLS configuration and for that needed APR on my Mac. I couldn't really make it work at first but after fiddling a bit I figured it out. There are the steps in bullet form:
Download APR and compile
Download APR from Apache (http://apr.apache.org/). I downloaded v. 1.5.2.
Compile in Terminal.
CFLAGS='-arch x86_64' ./configure
make
make test
make install
Install OpenSSL with headers
The OpenSSL on Mac doesn't come wi |
6
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Test agents in Eclipse by extending AgentBase
Wed, Mar 30th 2016 3:27p Mikkel Heisterberg
I continuously get questions on how I do Java agent development and I'm happy to answer them as I hope that some of the answers I provide means that more and more Domino developers see Java as a strong alternative to LotusScript for background processing. Most times the approach I recommend is a mock object approach that I wrote about waaaaaay back in 2006 (did I really write that 10 years ago?!?!?).
If / when you want to read the posts please start from part no. 1. Here's a link to all 5 pa |
6
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Working with routes from the IBM Bluemix CLI
Tue, Mar 29th 2016 4:48p Mikkel Heisterberg
Today I played with routes on IBM Bluemix. Routes are how you access the app on IBM Bluemix so basically they are hostnames mapped to apps. By default apps are assigned a hostname under mybluemix.net but once you've proved a domain belongs to you you may also may custom domain names to your apps. Of course you still need to create a CNAME record in DNS to make it map correctly but you get the point. Working with routes is possible from the GUI but the command line interface (CLI) is more effici |
4
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Slides and recorded, narrated, demo from my Engage.ug session on OAuth
Tue, Mar 29th 2016 6:41a Mikkel Heisterberg
Last week at the Engage user group in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, I gave a session on OAuth 2.0, how the protocol works and how easy it is the code against. The demo I showed at the end of the session showed just how easy it is and how little code is required to make a fully functioning OAuth 2.0 Client. Below you'll find the slides on Slideshare as well as a recorded, narrated, demo. The demo walks you through coding an OAuth 2.0 app in Eclipse and deploying it to IBM Bluemix.
Oh and do rem |
6
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OpenVPN
Wed, Feb 17th 2016 4:19a Mikkel Heisterberg
Have a Synology Diskstation at home which I among other things use as an OpenVPN server. When I'm traveling I enjoy being able to watch Danish TV without any geographical restrictions. I do this by having my OpenVPN profile (ovpn file) tunnel all traffic through the VPN incl. DNS. It also means that I can use it to safely browse if on a questionable wifi such as no-encryption hotel wifi or conference wifi. The two commands you need to add to the configuration generated by the OpenVPN server on |
11
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Certificate bananza...
Wed, Feb 17th 2016 3:29a Mikkel Heisterberg
Helped a collegue yesterday for a few hours configuring his system with TLS certificates and showed code to enable authentication using client certificates. All easy enough if you know how... :) Start by creating keys and certificates for a server and a person and create a Domino KYR keystore using the kyrtool from IBM. The below commands were all executed on Linux.
# change dir
cd /local/notesdata/
# generate key and self-signed cert for server
openssl genrsa -out server.key 4096
cat server.k |
12
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Custom widgets for IBM Connections v.5.5 and what the "themes" attribute mean
Tue, Jan 26th 2016 8:27a Mikkel Heisterberg
Starting with IBM Connections v. 5.5 a new required attribute was added to the widgets-config.xml file that controls how widgets are rendered for Profiles and Communities. IBM addresses the issue by referring to a technote (Custom widgets not displaying correctly after migrating to IBM Connections 5.5) that mentions just adding an attribute. The fact that simply requiring customers to add static text is lunacy for a product - if you need something where a static text will do for most cases and i |
4
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If only IBM had a mail client...
Wed, Jan 6th 2016 2:57p Mikkel Heisterberg
Over the last year we've seen more and more customers move to Microsoft Office 365 for mail and calendaring. The funny thing is that very few users actually end up using the webmail experience but almost all end up in Outlook. This made me think that IBM could probably still be competitive in the mail market including for the people who prefer a rich client if it wasn't for IBM Notes. The client is simply too bloated, too slow and too difficult to centrally manage and update. Oh and then there |
7
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Introduction to OAuth - the technology you need but never really learned
Thu, Nov 5th 2015 4:11a Mikkel Heisterberg
OAuth is core to integrations these days but I see many developers that try and use OAuth without really understanding the protocol. The protocol is very easy to understand so I created this presentation to try and explain it in easy, visual, chunks. I'll present on the topic tomorrow (Friday 6 November 2015) at the Social Connections IX conference in Stuttgart, Germany. I hope you'll come see it live if you are at the conference.
Introduction to OAuth - the technology you need but never re |
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