Ding Ding, Round 2 - Lotus TechJam! - Tuesday 2 September 2008 @ IBM Staines

Building on the success of the first event, the IBM Lotus techies are running another LTJ event in September. The agenda is being polished up, but it'll be similar to this: -

This will be a technical session, aimed at technical people or, in the words of the invitation, those who are: -

    * Nuts about Notes
    * Salivating about Sametime
    * Quackers about Quickr
    * Potty about Portal
    * Confident about Composite Applications
    * Excited by Expeditor
    * Caught by Connections

      or simply Wowed by Widgets

Interested ?

Let me know :-)

Installing WebSphere Portlet Factory on Linux - in pictures

here

WebSphere Portlet Factory on Linux ........... wooo, my life just got a whole lot better

As per my earlier posts, I'm in the transition phase from Windows to Ubuntu Linux. One of the final challenges was that I had to boot into Windows in order to use WebSphere Portlet Factory Designer.

Well, one more obstacle has been removed with the recent release of WebSphere Portlet Factory 6.1.

It's worth noting that IBM does not formally support WebSphere Portlet Factory on Ubuntu - the two supported Linux platforms are: -

• SUSE Linux Enterprise SLED 10
• Red Hat Enterprise Linux release 5.1

as per the Announcement Letter here.

In my particular case, I'm using WebSphere Dashboard Framework (WDF), which extends WebSphere Portlet Factory (WPF) with a set of dashboarding capabilities, including my favourite - the Summary and Drilldown builder.

I went to the software catalogue, and searched for WebSphere Dashboard Framework. This returned: -

IBM WebSphere Dashboard Framework 6.1 Multiplatform Multilingual eAssembly (CR5PMML)

which contained: -

IBM WebSphere Dashboard Framework 6.1 Multiplatform Multilingual (C13T6ML)
   
Size     477mb
Date posted     30-Jun-2008
       
IBM WebSphere Dashboard Framework 6.1 Linux Installer Multilingual (C1J1FML)

Size     197mb
Date posted     03-Jul-2008

and downloaded the latter as C1J1FML.zip.

It's worth noting that the Linux version is way smaller than its Windows counterpart, because IBM does not package Eclipse or WebSphere Application Server Community Edition with the Linux download.

Therefore, I needed to download and install Eclipse 3.3.2 before proceeding.

I made a few mistakes here; I used Synaptic Package Manager which installed a slimmed down version of Eclipse, which didn't include the necessary Java development tools.

In the end, I downloaded: -

eclipse-jee-europa-winter-linux-gtk.tar.gz

from here: -

http://www.eclipse.org/downloads/download.php?file=/technology/epp/downloads/release/europa/winter/eclipse-jee-europa-winter-linux-gtk.tar.gz&url=ftp://ftp.mirrorservice.org/sites/download.eclipse.org/eclipseMirror/technology/epp/downloads/release/europa/winter/eclipse-jee-europa-winter-linux-gtk.tar.gz&mirror_id=96

I then extracted Eclipse into /opt/eclipse: -

mkdir /opt/eclipse
cd /opt/eclipse
tar -xvzf eclipse-jee-europa-winter-linux-gtk.tar.gz

Once this was done, I extracted the WDF ZIP file into /tmp to find two files: -

WDF.bin
installer.properties

The .bin file should be an executable file - in my case, ls -al WDF.bin returns: -

-rw-r--r-- 1 hayd hayd 219263608 2008-06-22 22:59 WDF.bin

which meant that I had to change the file attributes to make it so: -

chmod +x WDF.bin

ls -al WDF.bin

-rwxr-xr-x 1 hayd hayd 219263608 2008-06-22 22:59 WDF.bin

before I could execute it: -

sudo ./WDF.bin

Preparing to install...
Extracting the JRE from the installer archive...
Unpacking the JRE...
Extracting the installation resources from the installer archive...
Configuring the installer for this system's environment...

Launching installer...

The GUI installer is pretty simple, and merely asks for two locations; one for WPF ( /opt/IBM/WebSpherePortletFactory ) and one for Eclipse ( /opt/eclipse ).

I've taken screenshots of these, and will upload them when I get some time.

Having completed the installation, I was able to use WPF/WDF to create a project, model etc.

My next challenge is to install WAS CE or similar as a J2EE runtime/test environment.

More to follow ...........

Isn't it nice when stuff just works ...

For those of you who have followed this blog over the past few months
will know that I've been moving to Linux as my primary desktop OS,
albeit on a Thinkpad.

Well, I'm finding that I'm spending more and more time in Linux, with a
corresponding decrease in the amount of time I spend using Windows.

There are still a few things that I need Windows for, but the list is
shrinking.

As of right now, I'm running Hardy Heron, and am writing this blog post
using Thunderbird 2.0.0.14. I'm connected via a Vodafone 3G card, using
their beta drivers - configuring the latter was a moment's work ( I just
needed to nab the APN username and password from my Windows boot ).

I'm also running Lotus Notes 8.0.2 (beta), connected via Lotus Mobile
Connect 6.1.1.0, to get my work mail.

I've also got the beta of VMware Workstation 6.5 for those absolutely
crucial Windows applications ( with a nice little WinXP VM ) and am also
using Skype to "phone home".

All in all, I'm a happy bunny ...

Now does this mean that I don't really need a Mac ? Probably not but
want trumps need.

What's New in IBM WebSphere Portal 6.1 ?

Not sure ? Then check out an article by my colleague, Paula Dantas,  here on Advisor.com.

It's a great article about a great product.

Enjoy !

WebSphere Portal Express 6.1 - another day, another installation

Having spent much of last week and the weekend installing the shiny new code, I spent two most excellent days with a client, helping them get up-to-speed with WebSphere Portal Express 6.1.

That was Monday/Tuesday. Here I am again on Wednesday doing the same thing, but with a different client in a different part of the country.

It's Windows Server 2003 which has, in the past, been my nemesis, but I'm not going to let it beat me. Am checking all the usual things: -

• Nothing listening on the port range 100xx ( WebSphere ) and 50000 ( DB2 UDB )
  
  Good thing I checked; Backup Exec Remote Agent for Windows Systems was running on 10000
  
  
• Signed on as a local administrator
  
  
• Data Execution Prevention (DEP) not getting in the way
  
  Again, I know that caused problems with a Lotus Quickr Services for WebSphere Portal installation in the past
  
  
• Using MSTSC /CONSOLE to start the RDP session
  
  This gives one more console-like access than the normal MSTSC interface; I know that's caused problems for others in the past
  
  
• Fully qualified hostname
  
  Belt and braces; this is what I've always done, so I'll always do it
  
  
• No need for hosts file updates
  
  
• "Real" IP address
  
  
• Password policy clearly understood
  
  I created a "dummy" account with the same password that I'm going to use for the portal installation just to check that it didn't breach the local/site password rules
  
  
• Enough RAM in the server
  
  Only have 1 GB - need 2 GB as a minimum; being fixed as I write ... I now have a different server with 2.5 GB

And off we go ....

WCM Templates in WebSphere Portal Express 6.1

In the words of Lt. Columbo, "Just one more thing" ... one of my colleagues mentioned that the WCM templates didn't appear to exist in version 6.1 - well, they do, but you've got to know where to look: -

Internet

http://localhost:10040/wps/myportal/internet



Intranet

http://localhost:10040/wps/myportal/intranet