WebSphere Portlet Factory v6.0.2.2 - The Fixpack ....

is here.

Web Application Integrator for IBM WebSphere Portal

I've just had a quick "play" with the Web Application Integrator (WAI), as per the following screenshot ( my blog delivered through a normal portal page ).

The WAI documentation is pretty good, and seems quite simple ( for me, which is important ). I downloaded it from here.

Once I'd deployed the WAI code onto my portal server, I merely needed to: -

a) Create a new URL within my page hierarchy, pointing at the external URL of my blog - http://www.davehay.f2s.com
b) Use this newly created URL to generate some custom JavaScript code ( WAI does this for you at the click of a mouse )
c) Paste this JavaScript code into the <BODY> tag of my blog ( this is part of the blog template on blogger.com )
d) Navigate to the portal page

As you can see, the portal page navigation is preserved, although I lost the Launch menu and the breadcrumbs: -










I did the same thing with a much simpler HTML page, with the following effects: -










Mmmmmmmmmmmmmm, nice !

Fun with WebSphere Portlet Factory

Hit a couple of challenges with WPF today; one I was able to resolve, the other is still taxing me :-\

In the first instance, models that ran perfectly via the Run button in Designer failed with "This portlet is unavailable" when deployed to the portal page. After some digging around, it transpired that the project had been set up incorrectly in terms of deployment; in this case, the portal was running on port 10044 rather than the normal 10038 - see here.

This meant that Designer wasn't setting up the correct file paths for the Portlet WAR, as seen in this screenshot.

Note that the EAR file that's deployed to the portal server can have any old name - this system-generated name is unique, so it's nice to know where to find it ( otherwise you'll spend time digging around on the server for it ).

Once I fixed this, all worked according to plan.

The other problem relates to the use of the Excel Import - Enhanced builder when accessing an Excel spreadsheet when the target remote deployment server is based on Linux - I get a nice NPE: -

java.lang.NullPointerException at com.bowstreet.builders.webapp.methods.ExcelImportHelper.getContentSelection(ExcelImportHelper.java:106)

If I use the non-enhanced builder, all is well.

Still, better to have days with challenges than challenges without days ( does that deep, or just dumb ? ).

Lotusphere Comes To You

Well, it was a busy busy week - my colleague, Rob, and I had a bit of a road trip, and covered a lot of business miles from Staines -> Wembley -> Carlisle -> Manchester -> Hampshire.

The Mini performed admirably, even though it was drinking fuel like a thirsty Lotus geek drinks beer anything - when I got my first Mini in 2002, I could fill up for about £35ish - now it costs more than £50 :-(

LCTY in Wembley was fun, and it was good to see so many happy :-) people there. However, the long journey north was definitely on my mind, and I was glad to escape at 1430ish and hit the road.

Once Rob and I had finished our meeting oop north on Wednesday, we headed south to Manchester ( there's not many who can say that ) and met up with the team at the Rad. As we walked in the door, Chrissy handed us a bottle of beer, and the day was sorted. Had a good post-meeting celebration with Rob and Darren, and then headed off for dinner with those nice Polymorph folks, which rounded things off nicely, and I was glad to hit the sack.

LCTY was great - I was possibly slightly more chilled than I had been, and found the whole thing far more fun. I met a lot of my team, including a new recruit to Lotus, and also had a number of most excellent discussions with some of my clients, and also a few of our partners.

We hit the road at 1700ish, and I was home in time for House on C5 :-)

In closing, it was a great trip, and I met a lot of lovely people, saw a lot of cool tech and drank a lot of coffee ( no change there ). My thanks and respect go out to the team who organized this ( Chrissy and co. ) - I'm looking forward to next year already.

PS Did you see John ? Was he smiling ? I bet he was :-)

Keep it (un)zipped

Ages ago, I saw some file attribute/permission problems when I was installing a product such as WebSphere Portal or Workplace Services Express onto a Linux platform - it transpired that these problems were down to the fact that I'd used WinZIP on a host Windows 2000/XP system to extract the images that I was then attempting to deploy to Linux.

Subsequently, I made an (un)conscious decision to always use the appropriate utility on the target platform e.g. tar and unzip on Linux, WinZIP or PKZip on Windows etc.

If you see similar problems, it's definitely something you should check ......

Thanks to Stewart for reminding me to post this - glad he was able to resolve his similar problems in a similar manner :-)

Lotusphere Comes To You - Sponsored by ??

With thanks to Jordan B for the piccie

Lotusphere Comes To You - London

Well, am here at Wembley Stadium and the turnout for LCTY is awesome -
good to see so many people here.

My WebSphere Portal and WebSphere Portlet Factory demonstrations are
good to go, so bring on the masses ...