Rational Team Concert 2.0.0.1 Released

Yes, I know, its hard to get excited about a point release, however, there are some features worth mentioning. In particular is the change in the licensing model for RTC Express-C. It now includes not 3 but 10 (ten) free developer/contributor licenses. It is now also supported on all the databases that are supported by the Express/Standard/Enterprise version, including these free ones:

• DB-2 Express-C 9.7
• SQL Server 2005 Edition
• SQL Server 2008 Edition

There is new support for WebSphere 7, and the licensing includes equivalent licensing for a WAS 7 environment (Websphere App Server base for Express/Standard, and Websphere Network Deployment for a clustered high availability RTC Enterprise environment). The additional features of WAS7 make it more scalable and more secure as WAS 7 is built on the Java 6 JDK has the ability to quiesce containers that it may not be using (i.e. the EJB container), thus reducing the memory and CPU resources needed to run it.

https://jazz.net/downloads/rational-team-concert/releases/2.0.0.1?p=news

If you have not heard of the product, it is THE best team development environment out there. Dare I say, I am "jazzed" about it? Check out my prior posts for more information on the product. This blog, and the surrounding website have been developed using RTC on linux, and it is absolutely the bomb. Deployment is a sure fire snap, and the iteration planning have been tremendously helpful as we pull together new ideas for content, navigation, and UI features. Continuous build, automated testing, and one-click deployment help ensure we always have a rock solid web site with each release.

RTCi Webinar Material

For those who missed the webinar this morning, I have posted a couple of presentations on SlideShare.

Rational Team Concert For IBM System i - Executive Overview V2

View more documents from Strongback Consulting.

Since we did not have an available connection to the Sandbox, here is also a scenario demonstrating the usage of RTCi.

RTCi Demo Scenario

View more documents from Strongback Consulting.

For a real life demo, you can go to the EM Sandbox on the IBM Developerworks site, and spin up one of the Citrix enabled Sandboxes. Another option is to download the RTCi software from Jazz.net and run the software for the 60 day trial period.

If you would like a guided on site demonstration, please give us a call and we'll be happy to setup a proof of concept with you.

DAOS Technical Overview

Lotus Domino 8.5 introduced a new feature call DAOS. This tool is designed to reduce attachment duplication by externalizing the attachment and leaving a pointer in the Notes application or mail file. This presentation is courtesy of the NELotus user group . Its yet another reason to upgrade to the latest version!

Daos Technical Overview Ne Lotus

View more documents from Strongback Consulting.

Rational Team Concert for System i Webinar - September 23 11am

Project Management with IBM Rational Team Concert for System i

Join us for a Webinar on September 23 Space is limited. Reserve your Webinar seat now at: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/730096923 Looking to have your software developer teams to more effectively collaborate in developing and delivering quality software on time & on budget? Join us on Wednesday Sept 23, 2009 to see how. This demonstration will cover the how IBM Rational Team Concert can assist with collaboration & project management. Title: Project Management with IBM Rational Team Concert for System i Date: Wednesday, September 23, 2009 Time: 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM EDT After registering you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the Webinar. System Requirements PC-based attendees Required: Windows® 2000, XP Home, XP Pro, 2003 Server, Vista Macintosh®-based attendees Required: Mac OS® X 10.4 (Tiger®) or newer

Blog update

For those who have not updated their links, this blog is now located at http://blog.strongbackconsulting.com. If you are used to getting it via RSS/ATOM feed, then you can use my the FeedBurner address http://feeds.feedburner.com/StrongbackConsulting. The old URL of "thejavablues.blogspot.com" should be redirecting you.

Case Study: Enterprise Architecture

I'd like to announce that one of my customers has added some more client's of their own. Their business is growing well in this down economy. Its another example of how entrepreneurs can thrive in a recession.

They are an Internet startup focused on the green movement. I've listed them as one of our case studies at Strongback Consulting. They offer electronic receipt management to retailers and electronic receipt organization for retail customers.

Retail customers receive their receipts via email rather than printed out thus saving paper, ink and all the energy required to generate the paper and ink. The company is TransactionTree™ and their site is http://www.nomopaper.com

This site is a great study in how good UI design makes other features go so much better. The site is built in Java using Apache Struts2, Spring 2, and Apache Tiles. The presentation is entirely abstracted out from the content giving the following benefits:

• The branding of the site can easily be swapped out with out having to change out the content. This ideal in the case of Internet startups which often either change the branding to better match the evolving audience (i.e. Facebook, CNN.com, etc), or they are acquired or they acquire a competitor.
  
• The content can be written and delivered without worrying about markup, making content generation much easier for the authors.
  
• Smaller content means web browsers that turn off CSS can read and navigate the entire site without additional work (think older Blackberries, Windows Mobile, etc.).

Another feature of this site is that we use many CSS features that are supported by the latest browsers, but for browser that do not support them, the content is rendered in a less flashy, but appealing way. This is called graceful degradation (or gradual enhancement depending up on how you look at it). On all the JSP's we use XHTML strict DTD's. In this day and age there is no reason to be sloppy. The XHTML also means that the content is fully XML compliant which also means it can be used in other applications as content.

If you have a moment check out their site. Its something we are quite proud of. Enjoy.

EGL Community Edition now availalble

IBM has released a community edition of its EGL language. This edition is geared for entry level learning such as for colleges and universities. This is a great language that is a natural successor to COBOL. Applications can be created and deployed to mainframes as batch applications, or to Java web applications servers running on Linux, Windows or Unix.



The commercial product is Rational Business Developer, of which EGL CE is a subset of. Rational Business Developer itself is the successor to Visual Age Generator for Java and Cobol.


Check it out. http://www-949.ibm.com/software/rational/cafe/docs/DOC-3216

Blackberry Desktop for the Mac now available

Blackberry desktop has long been awaited for those Mac users, including my wife who runs on an iMac (and is very happy with it).

I would one day like a Mac myself, but there are still so much software that I need from day to day that is restricted (chained) to Windows.

For those using Lotus Connections, there is also a new Blackberry application that has been released for version 2.5 of connections.

RTCi webinar coming September 23rd.

We will be doing a webinar on Rational Team Concert for System i coming up September 23rd at 11am. In the meantime, here is a video that gives a nice high level over view of RTC.

WebSphere XD Virtual Enterprise 6.1.1 Announced

IBM Announced XD 6.1.1 last week. This is a refresh pack rather than a fix pack (note the 3rd digit change). You need to be at WAS 6.1.0.25 or 7.0.0.5 before upgrading. The FTP site for the refresh pack CIM is here.


New features include:

• AIX Micro-partitioning uncapped shared processor support enables Virtual Enterprise to operate in virtualized AIX server environments running AIX 5.3 and AIX 6.1 on POWER5 and POWER6 architectures. Virtual Enterprise recognizes the use of shared processor partitions, as well as the dynamic capacity of the shared processor pool on the physical hardware, to enable intelligent routing, prioritization, and application infrastructure virtualization in such AIX environments. For more information, see Virtualization and WebSphere Virtual Enterprise.
  
  
• A new bulletin board service overlay network (BBSON) separates Virtual Enterprise from high availability manager core groups. By enabling BBSON, you can run the product in new cells without having to configure and manage core groups and bridges. Note: All nodes must run at a version level of 6.1.1.0 or higher, and must be explicitly enabled with the useWVEBB.py script. See BBSON bulletin board for more information.

WebSphere Extended Deployment Compute Grid Version 6.1.1 includes the following new features:

• Quick parallelization with the built-in parameterizer allows you to parallelize batch jobs declaratively through the job definition (xJCL) without implementing the parallel job manager (PJM) System Programming Interface (SPI) set.
  
  
• A new SPI deployment model enables multiple parallel applications to share the same parallel batch infrastructure easily. The PJM SPI implementation can be packaged with the parallel batch application and deployed as a shared library.
  
  
• With subjob submission pacing, you can now throttle the capacity consumed by individual parallel jobs. Use this feature to ensure a very large parallel job does not consume all the capacity of its jobclass, so that it can run with smaller parallel jobs of the same jobclass.
  
  
• Integration with IBM Tivoli Composite Application Manager enables more efficient monitoring of batch applications, jobs, and job infrastructure.
  
  
• The high-speed native connector for external schedulers allows you to easily integrate with external workload schedulers and significantly reduces memory consumption.

Happy upgrading! If you are not using the Centralized Installation Manager (CIM) to roll this out, you are NOT getting your money's worth!

Lotus Notes dev tip: Open or Copy Hidden Views

A very old trick that us old-hats know. If you want to see the contents of a view that is hidden in Lotus Notes, hold down CTRL+SHIFT and select "View - Go To". The list of available views will show all the hidden ones (denoted by parentheses). You can also do this with creating views.

Rather than doing a cut/paste of an existing view, you can copy the design of an existing view whilst in the "new view" wizard (first image).


Simply hold down the CTRL+SHIFT and click the "Copy From" button.

Voila! now you can copy the design from an existing view.

Enterprise Collaboration

This is a funny video on collaboration. I swear the guy is channeling some of my past experiences.

Licensing changes to WebSphere Development Studio Client (WDSC)

In April of last year, IBM ceased marketing and selling of the WDSC product. The strategy was to separate out the compilers from the development environment. If you are currently running WDSC and are looking to move forward with it, here is what you need to know:

If you purchased WDSC Advanced, you will be entitiled to an equivalent quantity of the following:
For each license of WDSC Advanced Edition the customer will now have:

• 1 license RDi (Rational Developer for IBM i)
• 1 license RBD (Rational Business Developer)
• 1 license for the HATS for 5250 Applications toolkit
• 1 license for RAD (Rational Application Developer)

If you have let maintenance on the product lapse, you'll have to purchase new licenses for RDi or RDi for SOA.

Here is a document summarizes the WDSC licensing and pricing structure. If you are currently on maintenance and need help give me a shout.