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XForms, XFDL and Lotus Domino

John M. Boyer Tags: domino xforms xfdl 2 Comments 4,379 Visits

Just ran across a good developerWorks article on Integrating Lotus Forms with Lotus Domino.

Domino is a web application and web services platform that is often used in combination with the Lotus Notes rich client platform. However, as this article shows, it is possible for Domino to have broader reach out to all web browsers without a large client-side installation. The intelligence and interactivity of XForms are combined with the high precision presentation layer of XFDL to describe a rich client experience, but the Lotus WebForm Server is used to convert that to HTML and AJAX that is natively understood by the web browser. The net result is that XML data processing and web services from Domino servers are extended right out to the webtop.

Of course, if you do have the Lotus Notes client platform installed, then the story gets better because the Notes replication capabilities can be brought to bear for when a user needs to work in offline/disconnected mode. You can also use the Notes Composite Application Framework to create mashups involving Lotus Forms and other application components deployed to the Notes client. Whether you use the Lotus Forms Viewer or the Lotus Forms WebForm Server to render a Lotus Form in Notes application component, you have access to a running Lotus Form using an API. This gives you getters and setters, of course, so you can push data from other components into the Lotus Form, but you can also set up event listeners that are notified of changes made within the Lotus Form, so you can push changes from the Lotus Form to any other component in your mashup.

But net-net, if you want to extend your Domino applications and services beyond the usual enterprise IT boundaries and get access to new B2C and G2C market opportunities, using Lotus Forms is a way to do it. See the new article for technical details.

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Consuming DB2 Web Services with Lotus Forms

John M. Boyer Tags: lotusforms db2 3,773 Visits

Check out this developerWorks article for a step-by-step guide to deploying a DB2 web service and then consuming that web service using the Lotus Forms Designer.

Once the WSDL for a particular DB2 web service is pulled into your Lotus Forms Designer, you select and autogenerate a data instance and a specific service, drag-and-drop the data instance onto the design canvas to autocreate the user interface, and then generate the run-time XForms submission for the service. The article above shows exactly how to do each step.

A smart XForms client and a smart interface to the server database mean no custom code in the middle. Thus, computing power is made available to a broader class of IT knowledge workers who require only forms and database skills. Process democratization in action.

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The Way Forward for HTML5

John M. Boyer Tags: ubiquity standards html5 2 Comments 3,044 Visits

Despite all the excitement about the possibilities that HTML5 offers for a better world wide web, I believe there is a critical flaw in the go-forward plan of those who are feeling the momentum.The problem is that they still haven't got ~80% of the web browser makers on board!By which I mean they haven't got you-know-who.

There's really only one way to break the loggerjam and move forward with advancing thestate of the web. We need to get you-know-who out of the way of progress by showingthat we can innovate on the web with or without their participation. We have now shown that this is feasible by way of the ubiquity strategy based on our abilityto deliver an interactive web application language in multiple web browsers with no client-side plugins and no server-side processing of the language. Click here to visit the project.

For all web advancement technologies, including HTML5, the longer term effect of the ubiquity strategy should be that the late bloomers are shamed into implementing the advancements, thereby obviating the need for the ubiquity code. But meanwhile the ubiquity strategy is the way to enable web advancement technologies including HTML5 to emerge (in the proactive verb sense of the word).

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