AD114 -- Beyond the Mobile Browser? Building Rich Mobile Applications for IBM Lotus Domino

Beyond the Mobile Browser – Building Rich
Mobile Applications for IBM Lotus® Domino®
John M. Wargo | Director, Industry Solutions Practice
AT&T Mobility

Agenda
●
Introduction
●
Deciding: Browser vs. Rich client?
●
Understanding the power of IBM Domino Web Services for mobile
devices
● Building the XML Web Service
● Building a BlackBerry client
● Building a Windows Mobile client
●
Building the RESTful Web Service
●
Wrap-up

2

About this Session
● Explore the differences between rich client and browser-based applications
for mobile devices
● Learn how to use Lotus Domino Web Services to deliver data to mobile
applications
● Learn how to build rich mobile applications to access your Domino
databases
▬ BlackBerry© JavaTM application
▬ Microsoft Windows Mobile© application
▬ Others (possibly Google Android© Application)
● Targeted at Domino Developers

3

About Me
● Director, Industry Solutions Practice for AT&T Mobility focusing on
Emerging Mobility Solutions
● Developer, worked for Research In Motion for 2.5 years
● Certified Notes developer since Notes 2.0 (before buttons) all the way
through Notes 8
● Creator of award winning Automated Deployment
Toolkit and ConfigSave for Lotus Notes
● Responsible for two IBM Beacon Awards
▬ Biggest Business Impact in 1997
▬ Best Tool/Utility 2001
● Author of BlackBerry Development Fundamentals
(www.bbdevfundamentals.com)
●Home: www.johnwargo.com

Twitter: @johnwargo

4

Agenda
●
Introduction
●
●
Understanding the power of Domino Web Services for mobile
devices
●
●
Wrap-up

5

Deciding on the Right Client
● Depends on your audience
▬ Are there a limited number of client platforms you need to
build for?
▬ The browser is a great common denominator for most all mobile devices
● Will your mobile users need to interact with the data locally?
▬ Can’t really do that with a browser application unless you use something like Google
Gears
▬ Browser application wouldn’t “run” when the radio is off (airplane mode) or when the
device is out of coverage
● Will your application need to interact with other device applications
(calendar, tasks, email)?
● Will the application need to function in areas with limited cellular coverage?

6

Strengths of the Mobile Browser
● Uses standards-based technologies
▬ HTML, XHTML, CSS*, JavaScript*, AJAX*
● Allows you to build once and run many places
▬ Pretty much every network-connected mobile device has a browser
● Leverage your core skills as a Domino/Web developer
● Most of your work has already been done if the application is already
browser-enabled
▬ If so, your users could use your application in the same client (browser) only on different
machines
● No application to deploy

7

Weaknesses of the Mobile Browser
● Slow!
● Both data and layout information delivered over the air (OTA)
● Limited in capabilities (it’s only a browser after all)
● Limited interaction with other applications on the device
(and their data too)
● Limited ability to keep its data local without resorting to third-party tools
● Complicated business logic runs on the server

8

Browser Limitations
● If you haven’t Web-enabled your application yet, you’ve got a lot of work to
do
▬ It’s easier if your business logic is in libraries rather than coded into forms or views
● Read only Document Object Model (DOM) on many devices
▬ Means you may not be able to mimic rich client capabilities in the browser
(hide div's, change content on the fly and so on)
● Can’t code to the latest version of the browser
▬ Not all of your devices will be running the latest version of the OS/handheld code
● Not all mobile devices support Adobe Flash

9

Strengths of the Rich Client Platform
● Fast!
● Can do just about anything it wants on the device
▬ Easily store and manipulate data locally
▬ Easily interact with other device applications and application data
▬ Can create contacts, calendar appointments, tasks and more...
▬ Interact with hardware components (camera, Bluetooth scanner, etc.)
● Complicated business logic runs in the client
● Did I mention it’s fast?

10

Weaknesses of the Rich Client Platform
● May require a different set of skills than the typical Domino developer has
● Rich client applications can be much harder to create than browser
applications
● May not run on multiple device platforms
▬ Depends on which technologies you used to build the application
▬ Java?
▬ .NET
▬ It would be great if there was a single cross platform option, but it’s actually
getting worse with iPhone and Android

11

Agenda
●
Introduction
●
●
devices
●
●
Wrap-up

12

The Power of Domino Web Services for Mobile
Devices
● Web Services are really easy to build in Notes Designer 7.x and 8.x
▬ Especially if you’ve already separated your business logic from the application
▬ We'll discuss two types: XML-Based Web Services and RESTful Web Services
● Allows multiple clients to easily access your business logic and data
▬ Build the business logic once into a Web Service then add client after client (including
Notes) until you’re done
● Easily facilitates application to application communication – even across
servers

13

Multiple Client Options

14

Agenda
●
Introduction
●
●
devices
●
●
Wrap-up

15

Domino Directory Lookup
● The sample application performs a simple lookup against the Domino
Directory
▬ Every Domino shop has at least one extra Domino Directory they maintain (right?)
● How it works
▬ Requester passes in a partial last name
▬ Service returns a list of names that match the search string
▬ Requester selects name
▬ Service returns some of the fields from that contact’s Person Document in the database
● The two operations of the service are connected

16

Web Service Shell

17

SOAP Message Format
To consume from a Java application, the Web service must use Doc/Literal
SOAP message format

18

The Code: Defining Variables
'Some Notes objects we'll need
Dim db As NotesDatabase
Dim s As NotesSession

19

The Code: Two Classes
'The following class defines an array of strings
'that will be returned by the function GetUserList
Class UserList
Public users() As String
End Class

'the following class defines the user details
'that we will be returning for a detailed lookup
Class UserInfo
Public FirstName As String
Public LastName As String
Public FullName As String
Public EmailAddress As String
Public OfficePhone As String
Public MobilePhone As String
End Class

20

The Code: Defining the Main Class
Class DomDirLookup
Sub New
//Initialization Code goes in here
End Sub

Function GetUserList(searchStr As String) As UserList
//Code goes in here
End Function

Function GetUserDetails(searchStr As String) As UserInfo
//Code goes in here
End Function
End Class

21

Agenda
●
Introduction
●
●
devices
●
●
Wrap-up

23

Building a BlackBerry Java Client
1) Generate the web services stub classes
2) Create a new BlackBerry Java project
3) Import the stub classes
4) Write your code

24

Generating the Web Services Consumer Stub
1) Download (and install) the Sun Java Wireless Toolkit
(http://java.sun.com/products/sjwtoolkit/)
2) Run the Stub Generator to create the stub classes you’ll call from your Java
application

25

Generating the Web Services Consumer Stub

26

The Stub Classes

27

DomDirLookup Class
// This class was generated by 172 StubGenerator.
// Contents subject to change without notice.
// @generated
package com.johnwargo.domdirlookup;
public interface DomDirLookup extends java.rmi.Remote {
public java.lang.String[] GETUSERLIST(java.lang.String
SEARCHSTR) throws java.rmi.RemoteException;
public com.johnwargo.domdirlookup.USERINFO
GETUSERDETAILS(java.lang.String SEARCHSTR) throws
java.rmi.RemoteException;
}

28

Building the BlackBerry Java client
1) Create a new Java project
2) Import the stub classes
3) Write your code

29

Building the BlackBerry Java client

30

Obtaining the Complete Instructions
● I wrote a series of documents describing this process at johnwargo.com:
▬ http://www.johnwargo.com/index.php/Domino/dbja1.html
▬ http://www.johnwargo.com/index.php/BlackBerry/dbja2.html
▬ http://www.johnwargo.com/index.php/Miscellaneous/bbdja25.html
▬ http://www.johnwargo.com/index.php/BlackBerry/bbdja3.html

31

Agenda
●
Introduction
●
●
devices
●
●
Wrap-up

32

Building a Windows Mobile Client
1) Create a new Project
2) Add a Web Reference to the project
3) Write your code

33

Building a Windows Mobile Client

34

Agenda
●
Introduction
●
●
devices
●
●
Wrap-up

35

Building a RESTful Web Service
● Some mobile platforms do not support XML-based Web Services directly
● You can hand craft the SOAP Request and Response, but that's really
painful
● You could use kSOAP (for Java applications) or other open source libraries
to provide the needed support, but that can get ugly (and difficult to
support/troubleshoot)
● You can use Representative State Transfer (REST) as a useful alternative
to XML-based Web Services

36

About REST
● Request Parameters are included in the HTTP request URL
● Service results are included in the body of a HTTP response
(using JSON for example - www.json.org)
● Request Examples:
▬ http://servername/dbname.nsf/agentname?openagent&searchstr=war
▬ http://servername/dbname.nsf/agentname?openagent&searchstr=john%20wargo
● Response Example:
▬ [“Anna Wargo”, “John Wargo”]
▬ {“FirstName”:”John”,“LastName”:”Wargo”,“Email”:”jwargo@somedomain.com”,
“OfficePhone”:”123.456.7890”,“MobilePhone”:”987.654.3210”,
“HomePhone”:”456.789.1230”}

37

RESTifying the Domino Directory Lookup
Service
● Two Options:
▬ Split the existing Web Service into two agents

▬ Migrate Web Service into a single agent that parses the URL command

line then calls separate functions in the agent
● Use the same logic, just a different access method and output format for the
data (JSON for example vs. XML/SOAP)
● You could but the logic in a script library then create two wrappers around it
(XML-based Web Service and RESTful Web Service)
● Could use the JSONWriter LotusScript classes in your application to output
the JSON (http://preview.tinyurl.com/ykdnmx3)

38

RESTifying the Domino Directory Lookup
Service

39

Agenda
●
Introduction
●
●
devices
●
●
Wrap-up

40

Wrap-Up
● Read the articles on how to build the Domino XML Web Service and
BlackBerry Java Application
▬ http://www.johnwargo.com/index.php/Domino/dbja1.html
▬ http://www.johnwargo.com/index.php/BlackBerry/dbja2.html
▬ http://www.johnwargo.com/index.php/Miscellaneous/bbdja25.html
▬ http://www.johnwargo.com/index.php/BlackBerry/bbdja3.html
● Download the sample Domino database from the articles or from
http://www.johnwargo.com/files/ls2010-ad114.zip
● Download the sample BlackBerry Java application from the articles or from
http://www.johnwargo.com/files/ls2010-ad114-bb.zip
● Download the sample Windows Mobile application from
http://www.johnwargo.com/files/ls2010-ad114-winmo.zip

41

Wrap-Up
● Be sure to fill out your session evaluations!
● Want More? Repeat of BP212: Delivering IBM Lotus Domino to Mobile
Devices: Top 10 Mobile Browser Dev Tricks - and More!
(with Rob Wunderlich) at 1:30 PM Today!

42

Legal Disclaimer
© IBM Corporation 2010. All Rights Reserved.
The information contained in this publication is provided for informational purposes only. While efforts were
made to verify the completeness and accuracy of the information contained in this publication, it is provided
AS IS without warranty of any kind, express or implied. In addition, this information is based on IBM’s current
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Nothing contained in this publication is intended to, nor shall have the effect of, creating any warranties or
representations from IBM or its suppliers or licensors, or altering the terms and conditions of the applicable
license agreement governing the use of IBM software.
References in this presentation to IBM products, programs, or services do not imply that they will be
available in all countries in which IBM operates. Product release dates and/or capabilities referenced in this
presentation may change at any time at IBM’s sole discretion based on market opportunities or other factors,
and are not intended to be a commitment to future product or feature availability in any way. Nothing
contained in these materials is intended to, nor shall have the effect of, stating or implying that any activities
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Java and all Java-based trademarks are trademarks of Sun Microsystems, Inc. in the United States, other
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Microsoft and Windows are trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States, other countries, or
both.

44

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