Introduction

What is this tutorial about?

Do you need the powerful collaborative features that Lotus Domino provides, such as industrial-strength messaging, interactive applications, secured access, workflow, and content management? Do you also want to take advantage of J2EE applications and the object-oriented, portable, multi-threading capabilities they provide? You can have it all with JavaServer Pages (JSPs) technology. The latest release of Lotus Domino -- version 6 -- provides custom tag libraries that make it easier to build JSP pages that allow you to access, update, create, and delete information in Lotus Domino.

The purpose of this tutorial is to help you understand JSP technology and how to use it to access Lotus Domino. We'll begin with a brief overview of JSP pages. We'll then use a news story scenario to walk you through the steps to create a JSP page to access a sample database. The JSP page will use the new Domino custom tag libraries to access the Domino database, and it will select and then create a list of approved news stories. This is a simple example, but it shows you what you need to know without getting sidetracked on other issues.

Because Domino can store large amounts of data, and because it stores data in such a way that it is easily accessible, the news stories are stored in a Domino database. A workflow process could also be implemented within Domino to review and approve the news stories. We'll use the Application Developer configuration of WebSphere Studio to develop and test our JSP page. The JSP page will be hosted on WebSphere Application Server since JSP pages cannot execute on a Lotus Domino server.

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Who should take this tutorial?

This tutorial is intended for developers working in an environment where Lotus Domino is deployed and Domino applications are already developed. It's also intended for developers interested in using Domino 6 to extend their existing applications with collaborative services such as threaded discussions, document libraries, workflow, and content management.

Even though JSP pages can include Java code, Java programming skills are not required to complete this tutorial. We'll be using the Domino custom tags which simplify the JSP development process.

A basic understanding of Application Developer is required. In Application Developer you need to know how to create a Web project, and there should already be a server instance and server configuration established. Refer to the help perspective in Application Developer for more information.

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Software requirements

You need to have the following products installed on your machine in order to complete this tutorial. If you do not already have licensed copies of the software, you can download free trial versions of the products. Be sure to follow the installation instructions provided with the products.

Lotus Notes and Domino
Lotus Notes/Domino is groupware software. Notes is the e-mail, calendaring, group scheduling, Web access and information management client. Domino is the integrated messaging and Web application server providing directory services, messaging, security, and much more. This tutorial uses Notes/Domino 6. You can download a free trial of the latest version of Notes/Domino.

WebSphere Studio Application Developer
Application Developer is the application development tool for the WebSphere Application Server. We'll use Application Developer Version 4 to develop our Web services application.

WebSphere Application Server
WebSphere Application Server provides a complete set of application services to host your J2EE applications. These services include capabilities for transaction management, security, clustering, performance, availability, connectivity and scalability. This tutorial uses WebSphere Application Server version 4. You can download a free trial of the latest version of WebSphere Application Server.

Sample Domino database
Download NewsStories.nsf. We'll use this database in our scenario.

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Table of contents

• Introduction
• Overview of JSP technology
• Accessing Domino
• Set up the development environment
• Create the JSP page
• Add Domino JSP tags
• Run the JSP file on the server
• Summary
• Resources
• About the author

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