8.5.2 Notes/Domino
It was just announced that those of us in the 8.5.2 beta program can start blogging about it in detail. Since we're such an app dev heavy shop I'd like to mention some cool things in that area from the latest 8.5.2 beta:
The most important feature in 8.5.2 from an App Dev standpoint is this:
NotesAgent.runWithDocumentContext(NotesDocument)
WIth this you create an in-memory document and then pass this document to an agent. You do NOT need to save the document prior. This is available for LS, Java, and SSJS code meaning we finally have a bridge to call legacy LS agents from an XPage. This allows XPages to completely duplicate WebQueryOpen/WebQuerySave functionality from legacy Domino forms. Finally you can incrementally add XPages functionality onto older applications while still leveraging your older backend code. An interesting extra use case: If you've got any LS agents that need to call Java code it's arguably better than the LS2J connector in some cases.
XPages received numerous other enhancements, and this is a good thing. Remember that all this stuff works in the client AND on the web:
- On Xpages you can drag and drop directly into the source pane. This is long overdue. Now if only we could have the design AND source up at the same time (e.g. multimonitor).
- XPages also have some new controls, checkbox groups and radio groups being a few.
- Dojo is upgraded to 1.4.1 (if I recall, I might be slightly off here). This framework is getting really sweet and the integration with XPages is even better. If you haven't checked out Niklas Heidloff's latest projects on OpenNTF you need to. He's got an XPages framework for mobile devices that needs only one extra library from Dojo 1.5. Based on the progress I'm seeing here, 8.5.3/9.0 will likely converge with those efforts, giving us a 100% integrated development environment for mobile platforms with XPages. There are also formal "Dojo" attributes everywhere, allowing even better hooks into the framework directly from the IDE. Those of you who have heard me strongly suggest looking at Dojo instead of JQuery over the past few month now know why. The ROI of using native Dojo hooks in XPages is great, and it's only going to get better from here on out.
- SSJS now has a new way to create a session: sessionAsSigner(). THIS IS AWESOME. You can now simultaneously have code that runs with the permissions of the signer of the XPage AND code that runs with the permissions of the current user.
- OneUI v2.0.1 is included as a formal theme. It fixes quite a few quirks and cleans up things a bit over OneUI version 1.
Lotusscript received a tiny bit of love, but not much. Database Scripts now use the Eclipse editor. And you can define database scripts as @Formulas, which is a new capability. I have absolutely no idea why Lotus went out of their way to add that though.
NSFDB2 is formally "no longer available." i.e. if you install 8.5.2 you don't have the option to install NSFDB2. If you were already running it and are upgrading you'll need to contact IBM support to get the files you need to add to the install process.
A big deal in 8.5.2 is silent server failover. This no doubt crosses over with upcoming cloud-related services, but essentially 8.5.2 can silently failover to another server (or even a local replica) if your server goes down. Done right this could be huge.
The 8.5.2 web server also now has a full REST API (of course, you can enable/disable this). [Disclaimer: This is all speculative stuff from the current Beta, which may or may not make it into the final 8.5.2 shipping product.[
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Comments (3)
Hey Eric. I am curious. But what means was it that IBM "announced that those of us in the 8.5.2 beta program can start blogging about it in detail"? I am unable to find anything.
@1 - In the beta forum somebody asked about blogging, Ed said that as of CD4 we can post.
Thx Eric. I found it.