Domino as an Update Site!

There's a great new feature that is included in Notes/Domino 8 that I don't think is getting enough press. It's a very useful feature that all Domino administrators and developers should be looking at to assist in your Notes8 rollouts. What is this wonderful new feature that will save you lots of time and heartache?

Domino as an Update Site!

Domino as an Update Site??? What is that? Why should I be looking at it? Why is it important to my Notes8 rollouts, you ask? Read on!

As we all know by now, the Notes 8 client is built on an Eclipse framework. One of the great things this provides us is the ability to do those wonderful side shelf and composite applications. You saw them at Lotusphere - and you saw all the cool little things you can put out there to help make end-users a little bit more productive. And, with the introduction of widgets in 8.01, we made it so that end-users can put their own productivity tools on their desktops without any administrative or development intervention. Pretty cool, huh?!

So let's take this one step further. Side shelf and composite applications can provide a lot of value in an organization. I have customers who are creating applications to provide functions such as an employee yellow pages, a skills look-up application and even a way to hook into CRM applications. These are all great uses! But as an administrator, you have to wonder - how do I manage all those applications? In the past, they were just icons on the workspace, and we all know how difficult it was to maintain those for an end-user. Sure, you could write a script in an email that would add them - but what if you moved the database to another server? It wasn't easy to maintain those icons on the workspace. But now - now it's much more than just an icon on the workspace. It's a composite application with multiple parts or a side shelf that's used every day! What if there's a new feature? What if the developer wants to change things? Now what??

Enter server-based provisioning and Eclipse update sites.

To add an Eclipse application onto your workspace, you point to an update site that has all the components of the application. In addition, when an Eclipse application is written, you have the ability to point it to an update site (.xml) where the application will automatically "look to" for any updates. So this concept of an update site is a powerful thing!

A new template was introduced in 8 called UPDATESITE.NTF. This template can be used to create an NSF-based update site that can provide site.xml features and plug-ins. Once you create this database, you can import all your update sites into this database and point your clients to this consolidated site. It's that simple! Now, the Domino server can selectively deliver incremental features and applications. And to top it all off, the Domino server can centrally manage all my update sites for all my eclipse applications -- whether they are in the Notes client, the Sametime client, or any other eclipse-based client! Your end-users have a single place to go to for user-based installs of applications, and your applications get automated updates! It couldn't get any simpler!

But wait..there's more!! Since it's a Notes database, it can be replicated across the organization for geographical considerations, and you can use Domino security to provide fine-grained access to the applications. So using Domino as an update site provides:

• Robust Domino-based security such as ACLs and reader fields for fine-grained access control
• Easy replication of features and plugins (read: http access from anywhere)
• Intelligent analysis and meta-data presentation of the entire update site in easy-to-read Notes documents (all plug-ins used by a feature are doc-linked)
• Built-in tools to import/merge from other update sites and...
• Globally change embedded URLs inside JARs (hello...globally change URL's??!!! WOW! Developer's don't have to update the apps for URL changes!!)

Like I said...it's a great feature and one that will make any administrator (or developer)'s life happier! Imagine the possibilities - create an eclipse plug-in, have users access a single, standard site to install it on their machines, and you can automatically provide updates!

For more information, see the following:

• Domino8 InfoCenter
• ID103 - Deploying Notes 8 Clients (Lotusphere 2008 presentation)
• For additional information about NSF-based update sites in conjunction with composite applications, see the composite applications blog at IBM developerWorks, for example, the NSF-based update site posting and the site index .

Oh...and as an aside note....this being my first "real" post... Enough? Not enough? Detailed? Not enough detail?