August 2015 – NotesIn9

The XPages and IBM Bluemix showstopper, for me at least

Ok I’ll admit it.. I’ve not really been paying much attention to IBM’s Platform as a Service offering called “Bluemix”. For the longest time there was no XPages component. Of course I’d love to play with all the other technologies that it offers, and there are a lot, but as primarily an XPages Developer at the moment I just don’t have good time or practical ideas for anything else.

Then they finally put XPages and the “XPages NoSQL” database into Bluemix. Experimental for now, but it’s in there. Now it has my attention. I could run XPages in Bluemix and maybe hook into all the Watson goodness and all the other bells and whistles that they offer.

As soon as the XPages Experimental went live I saw several posts by Marky Roden and others and I’m thinking cool, now I can get started.

Then I went to MWLug and learned something really REALLY unexpected.

Because the Domino server is NOT “Multi-Tenant” it means that the “XPages NoSQL” database is really just a semi-isolated slice of I guess an actual Domino server. I’m not sure of the plumbing. But it specifically means that this “XPages NoSQL” database should NEVER EVER be used for PRODUCTION data. If one customer caused a crash it would take down multiple customers. The “XPages NoSQL” database on Bluemix has only ever been intended to be a “developers playground”.

My current understanding is that if you actually do want to use XPages on Bluemix for a production app then you must host the data either on IBM’s Softlayer service or “On premises” with your own copy of Domino.

So I guess that you need to subscribe to Bluemix for the “app” but then also pay for the data either in a Softlayer subscription or via Domino licensing.

This really REALLY disappoints me and assuming I’m understanding this correctly, I’m not sure I see the point in anyone doing much with XPages and Bluemix unless maybe you just HAD to access some Bluemix specific resource from an XPages application. Maybe there are use cases for this but none that really jump out at me.

If I’m wrong on any of this please let me know.

MWLug Wrap up and NotesIn9

I just got back from a GREAT MWLug conference in Atlanta. I’ve been to several MWLug’s and they just keep getting better. It was an amazing conference full of friends, fun, food, drink and information. I learned a lot from the many sessions and came home with ideas of things I definitely want to try. This conference had so many great sessions I had to make some very painful decisions on which ones I attended. I think they’re going to have to start doing repeats soon if this keeps up.

Regarding NotesIn9, I was just blown away this year. Of course it was great to see all my friends and co-conspirators. 🙂 But this year I met just a TON of new people which was awesome. Some I’ve only ever talked to via the email / internet, and some were just brand new all together. Simply brilliant! I think more people came up to me this year to talk about NotesIn9 then the last three conferences that I’ve been to combined. It was great to get feedback and hear that the show has been of value to so many people.

I’ve been taking a break from live speaking lately and this was the first time in a while I regretted not attempting to speak myself. Not that I would have made it with this bunch of speakers but would have been fun to try.

I was also very excited to see many of the speakers were previous NotesIn9 contributors. That’s always fun for me to see people from the show speak live.

The other big benefit I get from conferences is just the feeling of clarity. It’s great to get away for a couple days and think. It feels like it reboots my brain and I come back refreshed and ready to get back to it.

So what about NotesIn9? I’ve certainly been slacking in that department for a while. I think it’s time to reboot that as well. No big announcements or promises. I’d much rather do then talk about doing. 🙂

I want to give big thanks to all the organizers and sponsors of MWLug. It’s a super event and I’m already looking forward to that next year in Austin, Texas!