1. Introduction to
XPages for administrators
PHL-Consult.dk
info@PHL-Consult.dk
Per Henrik Lausten
November 28, 2012 per.lausten.dk/blog/
twitter.com/perlausten

2. About Per Henrik Lausten
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Full-time developer and part-time administrator with my
own one-man company
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Chairman of NotesNet – an assocation of 25 independent
consultants
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Member of the board at OpenNTF – open source for IBM
Notes/Domino and IBM Connections
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Member of the board at DanNotes
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Mentor for XPages developers in several companies
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Experienced XPages web application developer
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startdithjerte.dk
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mediaplus.dk
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cbbpremiumpro.dk
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collaborationtoday.info
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sherlockapp.dk
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and more

3. Agenda
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Warning!
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What is XPages?
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“You”
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Maximizing performance
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Application development
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RESTful web services
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Configuration and administration
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Security
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Troubleshooting and monitoring
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Impress your developers and users
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Homework

4. Questions
How many of you run web servers?
How many of you run XPages web apps?

5. Warning!
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It's the Wild Wild Web (WWW)
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so normal rules do not apply!
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The structure and predictability of the Notes client is gone
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The web is different than the Notes client
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But don't worry! you can blame your developers - and
Internet Explorer

6. What is XPages?
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Web development platform based on JavaServer Faces (JSF) 1.2
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Uses HTML, CSS, server-side Javascript, client-side Javascript, Java,
Dojo Javascript framework
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Runs on IBM Domino 8.5+ and IBM XWork Server 8.5+
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Can use 3rd party (commercial and open source) frameworks such as:
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UI: Blueprint, Twitter bootstrap, etc.
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Mobile UI: jQuery Mobile, Dojo Mobile, Sencha Touch, etc.
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Java: Google Guava, iText, JDBC connectors, etc.
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Uses the Notes/Domino NSF for data storage (NoSQL)
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Can easily extend and modernize existing Notes applications
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It's the future!

7. Examples of XPages applications

8. More examples of XPages applications

9. “You”
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Your job as administrator is very important:
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You help developers
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You help users
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You manage the servers
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In other words: you are involved in the complete
application lifecycle
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Your developers' job: build the system

10. Maximizing performance
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Hardware and OS level
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Add lots of RAM
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64-bit OS and 64-bit IBM Domino/IBM XWork Server (only 32-bit on Linux
available)
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SSD for the Domino program files
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Adjust Java heap size: HTTPJVMMaxHeapSize=512M (appr. 25% of available
memory). Default can be very low!
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XPages server-wide performance settings via data/properties/xsp.properties
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Persistence mode (xsp.persistence.mode):
– Keep pages in memory (best performance)
– Keep pages on disk (best scalability)
– Keep only the current page in memory (scales and performs well)
Default on 8.5.2+
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Compression mode (xsp.compress.mode): gzip
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Aggregate resources (xsp.resources.aggregate): true

11. Maximizing performance (continued)
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Use Single Copy XPage Design: improve performance for apps using the same template
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Caching of application data
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DbLookup and DbColumn with cache:
http://openntf.org/s/dblookup-dbcolumn-with-cache-sort-and-unique
(to reduce hits at the "backend" database). Consider modifying it to use applicationScope
for some lookups
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Scoped beans (cached application logic and data)
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Caching of resources such as CSS, client-side JS and images (to reduce number of requests
from browser to server)
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Application Properties caching of JS, CSS, images and files (defaults to no caching, and is
set in each database)
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Internet Site rules (you do use Internet sites in your Domino Directory, right?)
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HTTP response headers, incoming URL pattern such as *.jpg, add Expires header
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XPages Resource Servlet (xsp.expires.global, default 10 days): used for /.ibmxspres
resources such as compressed CSS and compressed JS

12. Maximizing performance (continued)
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Pre-load certain XPages applications to improve startup times
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XPagesPreload=1 in notes.ini
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XpagesPreloadDB=servername!!
path/mydb.nsf/myxpage.xsp,servername!!path/anotherdb.nsf
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Test application using the Yahoo YSlow analyzer (tests 23 of the 34 rules
from the Yahoo Web Performance Best Practices and Rules document).
http://developer.yahoo.com/yslow/

13. Demo of compression and aggregation
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First load: appr. 300 KB
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Following requests: appr. 3 KB
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http://sherlockapp.dk

14. Application development
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Domino Dojo versions
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8.5.0 == Dojo 1.1.1
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8.5.1 == Dojo 1.3.2
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8.5.2 == Dojo 1.4.3
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8.5.3 == Dojo 1.6.1 (Dojo 1.5 had initial support for mobile)
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9.0 == Dojo 1.8
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OneUI versions
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8.5.0 == OneUI 1.x?
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8.5.1 == OneUI 1.6 (2.01 included for evaluation purposes only)
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8.5.2 == OneUI 2.01
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8.5.3 == OneUI 2.1
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9.0 == OneUI 3.0

15. Application development (continued)
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IBM Upgrade Pack 1 vs. the OpenNTF Extension Library
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Benefits of UP1 and Ext. Lib
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Installation
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Installing UP1 on 8.5.3 (OS installer)
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Installing Extension Library on 8.5.2
(manually or via the Plugins Deployment for Domino
project on OpenNTF)
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Installing Extension Library on 8.5.3 (using an Update
Site database to deploy it as OSGi plugins)

16. Development (continued)
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Domino releases and fix packs improve XPages a lot! So
use Domino 8.5.3 FP3 (latest as of November 2012)
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Help your developers and users: turn of the intranet
setting that forces Internet Explorer to use IE6 Standards
Mode!
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The Update Site method for OSGi installations can be
used to easily deploy Jar files, jQuery etc. that are going
to be used server wide
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Source control: use an external service such as Github
and Bitbucket, or setup your own in-house server

17. RESTful web services
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Domino Access Services (DAS): Provides a REST API that
represents Domino objects in JSON format
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Provides easy access to backend data for e.g. mobile apps
and XPages apps that needs to create, read, update and
delete (CRUD)
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How to install: http://www-
10.lotus.com/ldd/ddwiki.nsf/xpViewCategories.xsp?
lookupName=Domino%20Data%20Service
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Must be enabled on server level (internet sites documents),
database level and view level
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The DELETE HTTP method is disabled by default on internet
sites

18. RESTful web services (continued)
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Examples of GET requests:
● GET http://server/api/data
Gets information about the databases on the server
● GET http://server/path/db.nsf/api/data/collections
Gets information about the views and folders in a database
● GET http://server/path/db.nsf/api/data/collections/name/viewname?
start=0&count=3
Gets information about entries in a view of a database
● GET http://server/path/db.nsf/api/data/documents/unid/<UNID>
Get a specific document

19. Questions
How many of you use Internet Sites in
your Domino Directory?

20. Configuration and administration
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Domino Directory (names.nsf)
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Use Internet Sites
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Use substitution rules (friendly URLs)
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Use Single Server or Multiple Servers (SSO) session
authentication
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LTPA:
– set Expiration to a high number (example: 480
minutes) because LTPA sessions are not extended
even though the user is active
– Then use Idle Session Timeout and set it to a
(example: 60 minutes)

21. Configuration and administration (cont.)
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Use Domino Web Server Configuration (domcfg) to set up Sign In, Change
Password and Error & Response mappings to have login, change
password and error/response forms with a corporate UI (?login and ?
changepassword commands)
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Set HTTP_PWD_CHANGE_CACHE_HOURS=0 to remove caching of
old password
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Use Auto Login to set up “remember me” functionality (from OpenNTF)
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LTPA uses Lotus Multi-Byte Character Set (LMBCS) from IBM Lotus to
encode the LTPA tokens. You need to install the jar files icu4j-49_1.jar
and icu4j-charset-49_1.jar on the server in the jvmlibext folder. They
can be downloaded from http://site.icu-project.org/download

22. Configuration and administration (cont.)
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Set up an error page for non-nsf resources:
HTTPMultiErrorPage=/error.html
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It has to be a static HTML file. It can not be redirected to a NSF
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Use the latest ODS (CREATE_R85_DATABASES=1)
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Central control of lots of XPages properties via xsp.properties
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On the IBM Domino and IBM XWork server in data/properties there is
a xsp.properties.sample file
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XPages creates lots of temp files. You can move them to another drive
by using the xsp.persistence.dir.xspstate option in xsp.properties
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example: xsp.persistence.dir.xspstate=e:xspstate

23. Security
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XPages can use session, sessionAsSigner, and
sessionAsSignerWithFullAdminRights (!)
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Access is controlled in the server document
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Tell your developers: Use "Hide design element from:
Web browsers" for forms and views when moving an
internal Notes client app to the external web

24. Troubleshooting and monitoring
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Add an error page with corporate UI to web applications
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Use a central logging system such as OpenLog (from OpenNTF)
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Inspect log files (log.nsf, console.log, xpages log files in
IBM_TECHNICAL_SUPPORT, etc)
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Use XPages Log File Reader for easy access to log files (from
OpenNTF)
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Use XPages Toolbox for profiling, monitoring and inspection of
XPages applications (from OpenNTF)
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Use XPages Debug Toolbar for access to debug tools useful during
development (from OpenNTF)
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Using Java: watch for memory leaks on the server
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Use YourKit for profiling of JVM/memory issues

25. Impress your developers and users
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Install XPages Extension Library (from OpenNTF) or Upgrade Pack 1 (from
IBM)
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Use the XPages demo application (http://dev.openntf.org/) to see what
Extension Library and Upgrade Pack 1 offers
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Install Auto Login to have “remember me” functionality (from OpenNTF)
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Upgrade existing teamrooms and discussion databases to Teamroom XL
and Discussion XL (from Extension Library or Upgrade Pack 1)

26. Impress your developers and users (cont.)
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Install XPages Log File Reader (from OpenNTF) and send your
developers a link
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Tell your developers about XPages Debug Toolbar (from OpenNTF)
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Tell your developers about the multipage messages phase listener
(by Mark Leusink: http://linqed.eu/?p=66)
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Use a central OpenLog database
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Load commonly used code elements such as Java JAR files as OSGi
modules

27. Homework
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Read XPages Portable Command Guide

28. Questions?
Per Henrik Lausten
per@PHL-Consult.dk
PHL-Consult.dk
per.lausten.dk/blog
@perlausten