We all know "Notes doesn't print". Nevertheless the topic of document output and reports is not going away, even if I'd like to ban the reports. There are plenty of ready made tools, but today I'd like to start with home cooked reporting.
Why the effort? Using only tools that use open standards you gain more control over the whole process and you can use whatever deems fit. The downside: it is more things you need to know and might not be suitable for business users (but its great to torture interns). In the long run you have a portfolio of source transformations that you can combine potentially faster than any reporting tool. The general principle is "Extract Transform Render":
Extract: Whatever will pull out the XML for the second step will do the trick. For list type of rendering ?ReadViewEntries will do the trick or simple DXL exports. Quite often you might opt for some bespoke code to extract code with an eye of a fast and/or easy transformation phase. You also might consider to extract your data in conformance with an established international standard
Transform:
This step usually takes the XML from the extract phase and runs it through one or more XSLT transformations. XSLT is kind of IT Black Magic (other say it's just settheory) and can use quite some computing power. For high performance the pros use a dedicated applicance. Once you get the heck of XPath you can do some amazing reporting (e.g. "give me all sales guys where withing the last 5 sales of the 3 guys next to his ranking there was a carpenter")
Render:
Rendering is easy. The outcome of the transformation step will be XSL:FO which is a page description language. Use a free renderer or a commercialoffering and a few lines of code. The output typically is a PDF file, but you can target graphic formats too.
Don't try this at home!
Tue, May 21st 2013 1:14p Stephan H Wissel Domino has a refined security system, so the java.policy file can be a real PITA. So you would be tempted to write a few lines of LotusScript and run it on a scheduled agent, so on the next server restart that pain goes away. Of course you wouldn't write code like below which lacks any error handling.You also would not hide this code from your admin people who would want an impact study and your firstborn for any change they make. So instead of doing all this you wait until there is a proper co [read] Keywords: admin
agent
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lotusscript
xpages google
java
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97
Enterprise 2.0 and weight loss - siblings separated at birth?
Tue, May 14th 2013 12:18p Stephan H Wissel This blog entry is inspired and largely translated from this German article authored by enterprise consultant Andreas Schulze-Kopp. Having gone through some personal transformation (final results in November) myself I found Andreas' comparison of Enterprise 2.0 initiatives and weight loss programs intriguing.
The tasks are comparable: alter habits, break through the mould of old behavioural pattern (a.k.a processes in business lingo) show enough determination and will power to see it through. [read] Keywords: connections
ibm
development
enterprise
linux
profile
wiki
CRM > Sales Tracking
Sun, May 5th 2013 9:20a Stephan H Wissel IBM is ditching Siebel CRM in favour of SugarCRM. Cloud based CRM was made popular by SalesForce while Zoho wants a share of the pie too.
All to often CRM offers or is used as sales force automation tool, which it is not (only). But what makes a good CRM? It needs to provide access to anything that relates to a customer. Doh - that's what the name claims.
In larger organisations CRM typically is understood very narrowly as sales tracking tool, the broader definition as outlined above gets c [read] Keywords: ibm
lotus
notes
applications
wiki
123
Dear SingTel, please fix your routing performance!
Wed, Apr 24th 2013 9:18p Stephan H Wissel Slashdot asked for the latency to their site, so I ran a few tests with pretty consistent results in the 250ms range. Slashdot labels that as "still stuck on dialup or in space". Their expectations for overseas users was 80 to 150ms. Puzzled by the result (local websites typically respond in the sub 2ms range), I used traceroute to get to the bottom of this. Here are the results:
td.Default {border-right : 1px dotted #CCCCCC; border-bottom : 1px dotted #EEEEEE; padding : 1px}
Hop
IP
DNS [read] Keywords: admin
css
MAMIL*
Sun, Apr 21st 2013 6:17a Stephan H Wissel Cycling in Singapore can be fun once you:
Find the right group
Do it at night
Are not afraid to cycle along an unlit Cemetery or ghosts
* Middle Aged Man In Lycra [read] Keywords: wiki
180
A more actionable Connections UI
Fri, Apr 19th 2013 6:18a Stephan H Wissel IBM Connections is a two headed beast: on one hand it is a set of rich APIs offering different services (Status, Blogs, Wiki, Text, Activities etc) on the other it provides a set of UIs on top of this APIs. Yes, not one, but a set: Browser, Android, iShiny™ and IBM Notes. I'm a big fan of the APIs. After all they stand for IBM's commitment to open standards and are build with XML, REST, ATOM and ActivityStreams compliant to the OpenSocial specifications.
I'm not so sure about the UIs, [read] Keywords: connections
ibm
notes
application
wiki
xml
244
Planning applications (XPages MindMap)
Thu, Apr 18th 2013 8:18a Stephan H Wissel In a recent XPages workshop in Kuala Lumpur, the class brainstormed on the planning process for an XPages application. This is what we came up with. For every item on the list one could elaborate quite a bit, but putting that on the map would make it rather messy.
Enjoy [read] Keywords: xpages application
applications
312
Is SharePoint a Failed Vision for Collaboration?
Sun, Apr 14th 2013 6:16a Stephan H Wissel Rich Blank (of Jive software) makes a case on CMSWire to consider SharePoint a failure for collaboration. Looking closely it isn't SharePoint to fault.
SharePoint with its place concept and flat views is a 1:1 conceptual copy of Lotus Notes implemented with a (then) current Microsoft technology stack. Thus it does have the potential for successful collaboration, as the (then) success of Lotus Notes clearly showed.
With the right effort of adoption any collaborative technology can be successfu [read] Keywords: collaboration
connections
ibm
lotus
notes
email
linkedin
microsoft
sharepoint
skype
wiki
(other say it's just 
