Extract Imported Class Files from an Agent

If you have lost the source code for a Java agent which has only class files stored in it use the following code to extract the class files:

Dim sess As New NotesSession
Dim db As New NotesDatabase(“myserver”, “mydatabase.nsf”)
Dim agent As NotesAgent
Dim doc As NotesDocument
Dim strUNID As String

Set agent = db.GetAgent(“MyAgent”)
strUNID = Left$(Right$(agent.NotesURL, 42), 32)
Set doc = db.GetDocumentByUNID(strUNID)
Call doc.Send(False, sess.EffectiveUserName)

You will receive a mail from yourself which contains each of the class files as an attachment. These can then be detached to your hard disk and a Java Decompiler used to extract the source code from them. I would recommend the DJ Java Decompiler (http://members.fortunecity.com/neshkov/dj.html).

Convert Double to BigDecimal

We have been doing a bit of Web Services integration between Domino and .Net. In our situation, the .Net application was interested in receiving numbers as BigDecimal objects. To this end I did a bit of investigation and found that this is the best way to convert from Double (my preferred format) in Java:

import java.math.BigDecimal;
/**
* A set of useful static methods to do with numbers
*/
public class Numbers
{
  /**
  * Converts a Double to BigDecimal in the most efficient and accurate manner
  * BigDecimal is the preferred format for .Net
  * @param number
  * @return
  */
  public static BigDecimal getBigDecimalFromDouble(Double number)
  {
    String strNumber = number.toString();
    BigDecimal bdReturn = new BigDecimal(strNumber);
    return bdReturn;
  }
}

Lotusphere Buildup begins in earnest

With Christmas each year comes the last few weeks before Lotusphere. Earlier than usual this time we have heard that the Wednesday night party will be at Islands of Adventure which I know will make the rest of my family jealous. It also looks as though the number of spherians will be up on this year as a lot of the hotels have even closed their waitlists.

It’s such a well timed event as it gives us something to look forward to during the otherwise bleak month of January. Just got to hope that the weather is better than 2004, I mean what’s the point in flying thousands of miles only to have to wear a coat in the evening?

As ever the best place for information is the Totally Unofficial Gonzo Lotusphere site.

Finally Released

Our much delayed and buggered about with release happened with no problems this morning. We can begin the wind down to Christmas now as we are definitely not going to be allowed any more releases until the new year.

Now to sit back and watch the political fall-out from the last few days games. For once we seem to be pretty much in the clear. This is when it pays to be a contractor with no vested interests to fight for.

Google AdSense

You’ll notice that I have turned on Adsense at the top of the page again. I hope it doesn’t cause you too much offense but now that this site is hosted at home the cost of running it have increased slightly so hopefully this will offset that.

It seems to be a fairly black art getting a good return. Looking around I found a good article here though. Generally the tips seem to be common sense – increase your reader base, get better keyword hits etc. One interesting point is that the URL seems to get scanned as well so I don’t suppose my noteid structure is going to help me much, maybe I need to revisit that and change it to an article title structure.

Sore Heads All Round

It was the “splinter cell” Christmas party, an unofficial gathering of current and ex colleagues who like to get together once in a while. We thought we’d try something different from the usual heavy drinking followed by a curry so went to The Gaucho Grill which, I think we are all agreed, serves about the best steaks we have had in the UK. Not cheap but well worth the money.

A few people are yet to show their faces this morning and when they do I imagine they’ll complete the compliment of sore heads all round. But a good night was had.

Pulled release

The planned release got cancelled by our users at 5 o’clock yesterday. Cue rushing around trying to get hold of our administrators to stop them putting out the new designs. We seem to have managed that OK but now we have to try and negotiate with them when we can re-release the templates. To make things harder the end of year code freeze comes in at the end of the week so we need to try and beat that otherwise we may end up waiting until next year which would not go down well with anyone.

Release Fun & Games

We have a fairly major release to perform tomorrow morning so, as ever today is a bit of a panic. Not because we’re not ready, but because our users have decided to not give us go ahead to send designs off to the administrators. We have warned them for weeks that they needed to sign off by midday today but at 14:00 they were still umming and ahhing. Finally sorted that out and then started to look at the config data that they were also late sending. A quite staggering error rate in the data of 25% has shown up so now they are having a mad panic about what to do with that.

Oh what fun releases are!

Improvement by Evolution

A new beta version of Google is the Google Suggest page which makes suggestions as you type.

Rather bizarrely this is something which of the team I am working on has been developing over the last weeks for a Domino application. We can’t even begin to compete with Google but they do offer some interesting ideas about where the time is spent doing the work.

I think it’s going to take off in a big way.