Before you start

The process of building composite applications can involve multiple procedures. This tutorial organizes the procedures into multiple lessons that you can perform in the order presented.

About this tutorial

This tutorial contains the following steps you need to create an NSF-based composite application that includes both NSF and Eclipse components:

• Overview and setup
• Lesson 1: Create a WSDL file to support intercomponent communication
• Lesson 2: Define IBM Lotus Notes view columns that publish properties
• Lesson 3: Define IBM Lotus Notes actions for intercomponent communication
• Lesson 4: Assemble an NSF-based composite application
• Lesson 5: Add NSF components to the composite application
• Lesson 6: Wire components in the composite application
• Lesson 7: Publish properties using LotusScript APIs
• Lesson 8: Add Eclipse components to the composite application
• Lesson 9: Wire Eclipse and NSF components in a composite application
• Lesson 10: Additional actions and wiring

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Overview and setup

This tutorial includes procedures to guide you in creating an NSF-based composite application. The final composite application contains two NSF components from two IBM Lotus Notes applications and one Eclipse component. These components have loosely coupled event/action relationships across application and system boundaries, and they change their display based on user action in a single component.

In this tutorial, you are a developer using IBM Lotus Domino Designer V8 to modify the Lotus Notes application design elements to support intercomponent communication. You also use the Composite Application Editor (CAE), an optional feature of the Lotus Notes V8 client to assemble the components and to wire the components into event/action relationships. Developers and line-of-business users with proper access to a composite application can use the drag-and-drop capabilities of the CAE feature.

Figure 1 shows the composite application, which uses intercomponent communication. The user of the composite application can select a name in the Lotus Notes Contacts component displayed at the top left of the screen. The user name is published by that component, and the two other components execute their predefined logic to display information relevant to the selected user.

The user can also select a topic in the Tag Cloud component displayed in the upper right; the NDForum component, displayed at the bottom, executes its logic to list documents related to the previously selected user.

Applications for this tutorial

For our composite application, we include the following Lotus Notesapplications:

• Lukas Geiger 8.0 Contacts, LGContacts.NSF
  This Lotus Notes application contains contact information for fictitious users. The design of this application is the design of the Lotus Notes Contacts, formerly known as the Personal Name and Address Book. You use one view as an NSF component and survey how the supplied properties and actions can be used.
• Lotus Notes/Domino V6 and V7 Forum, NDForum.NSF
  This Lotus Notes application is a forum of questions and answers about Lotus Notes and Domino-related topics. Authors include the same fictitious users listed in LGContacts.NSF. This content and design are a subset of the Lotus Notes and Domino forum accessible from IBM developerWorks.
  
  You use one Lotus Notes view as an NSF component and modify it to support intercomponent communication.
• Customer Interests Update Site, Tag Cloud Eclipse component
  As defined in wikipedia, a tag cloud (or weighted list in visual design) can be used as a visual depiction of content tags used on a Web site. Often, more frequently used tags are depicted in a larger font or otherwise emphasized, while the displayed order is generally alphabetical. Thus, finding a tag by alphabet and by popularity are both possible. Selecting a single tag within a tag cloud generally leads to a collection of items that are associated with that tag.
  
  The Tag Cloud component was built by another developer using the Eclipse IDE. Because the Lotus Notes V8 client supports components of different technologies, you include this component in your composite application. The Tag Cloud component is available from an update site stored in TC_US_8.NSF.

Setup procedure

Follow these steps to complete your setup for starting the tutorial lessons:

1. Extract the contents of the ZIP file to a new folder of your naming.
2. Copy the three Lotus Notes applications to the data directory of your Lotus Notes V8 client:
   
   • NDForum.NSF
   • LGContacts.NSF
   • TC_US_8.NSF

The following two text files contain LotusScript code that you can paste into Lotus Notes actions through your Lotus Domino Designer V8 client as noted in Lessons 3 and 10:

• SelectPerson_Action_for_NDForum.txt
• SelectSubCategory_Action_for_NDForum.txt

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System requirements

To complete all lessons in this tutorial, you must install and setup the following:

• IBM Lotus Notes V8 client software with the optional Composite Application Editor feature
• IBM Lotus Domino Designer V8 client software

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Table of contents

• Before you start
• Lesson 1: Create a WSDL file to support intercomponent communication
• Lesson 2: Define Lotus Notes view columns that publish properties
• Lesson 3: Define Lotus Notes actions for intercomponent communication
• Lesson 4: Assemble an NSF-based composite application
• Lesson 5: Add NSF components to the composite application
• Lesson 6: Wire components in the composite application
• Lesson 7: Publish properties using LotusScript APIs
• Lesson 8: Add Eclipse components to the composite application
• Lesson 9: Wire Eclipse and NSF components in a composite application
• Lesson 10: Additional actions and wiring
• Conclusion
• Download
• Resources
• About the author

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