Author: Christopher Bucchere

Categories
Plumtree • BEA AquaLogic Interaction • Oracle WebCenter Interaction

Presenting at the DC BUG (BEA dev2dev User Group)

I’m very pleased to announce that I will be the featured speaker at the Washington DC BEA dev2dev User Group on May 11th. You can read the official invite, but here are the basics:

BEA AquaLogic User Interaction Development, Demo & Roadmap

Date: May 11 2006

Time: 6:30pm – 9:00pm

Location:

Tenleytown Ballroom
Embassy Suites Hotel at the Chevy Chase Pavilion
4300 Military Road N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20015 (map)
Metro Red Line – Friendship Heights (take the hotel exit)

Description:

Back in October of last year, BEA purchased the market-leading pure-play portal vendor Plumtree Software to provide a user interface to their AquaLogic product line. Hear former Plumtree employee and 10-year portal industry veteran Chris Bucchere explain how Plumtree fits into the AquaLogic framework, how to configure and develop for this revolutionary new platform, and what the future holds for ALUI, including integration with BEA Workshop and the WL Portal. See a demo, do some real-time ALUI portlet development, and get your technical questions answered.

Categories
Plumtree • BEA AquaLogic Interaction • Oracle WebCenter Interaction

Watch for deprecated methods in the G6 server API

We’re doing a G6 upgrade at one of our customer sites and we noticed that one of our PEIs (that used to set a user preference) was dying due to our use of APIs that worked in 5.0.4 but no longer work in G6.

(Just for the record, I guess I have a different idea of the meaning of deprecated when it comes to APIs. I thought that if you deprecate an API it means “please don’t use this as it might be removed in future versions of the API.” For BEA AquaLogic, I guess it means “this method just doesn’t work any more.”)

Here’s an example: AddPersonalSetting has been replaced by AddPreference.

public Redirect OnAfterLogin(Object userSession, ApplicationData applicationData)
{
IPTSession session = ((IPTSession)userSession);
session.GetMyPages().OpenPage(0 - userId)
.AddPersonalSetting("UserSettingName", "UserSettingValue");
}

Here’s the new G6 way to do this:

public Redirect OnAfterLogin(Object userSession, ApplicationData applicationData)
{
IPTSession session = ((IPTSession)userSession);
session.GetSessionInfo()
.AddPreference("UserSettingName", "UserSettingValue", 0);
}

Categories
bdg Plumtree • BEA AquaLogic Interaction • Oracle WebCenter Interaction

Mingle posted on the BEA/Plumtree Code Share

I’m very pleased to announce that Mingle, a prototype of a BEA/Plumtree Web 2.0 social networking application, has been posted on the BEA/Plumtree Code Share!

Mingle was bdg’s winning entry in Odyssey 2005’s Booth of Pain competition.

Mingle features a set of adaptive portlets that work together to help people find one another and form social networks based on personal interests, physical proximity, etc. The portlets consist of:

Adaptive User Search (JSP): each keystroke issues an EDK/PRC search API call to help people find other people quickly and easily. Clicking on a person re-focuses the Network Browser, causing the browser to center on that person’s network.

Network Browser (Java/JSP): built as a Java applet leveraging an opensource hyperbolic graphing project (HyperGraph), this portlet shows the physical connections between people and allows you to browse the network.

Featured Person Profile (JSP): when a person double-clicks on another person in the Network Browser, this portlet shows that person’s complete user profile, include all the EOD attached to that user (Name, Address, Hobbies, etc.).

Del.icio.us Hobby Links (C#.NET): when a person clicks on the featured person’s hobby of choice, this portlet makes an adaptive request to del.icio.us to download social bookmarks relevant to the hobby.

Google Map Locator (HTML/Javascript): when a person clicks on the feature person’s address, this portlet makes an adaptive request to a free geocoder and then to Google Maps to display an interactive map of the person’s address in the portal.

Mingle is bdg’s second open source offering to the BEA/Plumtree community. You can download the source and install it on your own BEA/Plumtree deployment.

Have fun, and if you run into problems, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

Categories
Podcasts

Episode 4: Escape from New York

This fourth episode tells the story of how Papa Len “escaped from life in New York city” and began his career as a sales representative for the Lightolier company. He packed up “what was soon to become a broken down Plymouth” and embarked on a Westward journey with Lea Burnbaum, an unmarried woman whom he had been courting for past two-and-a-half years. (Although “the tongues would be wagging” about this, Lea and Leonard silenced the rumor mill by tying the knot several years later.)

This episode vividly describes an encounter with anti-semitism, a theme to be revisited in later episodes. Papa Len also reminisces about a visit to Mt. Rushmore, which he later recalled fondly when watching the cinematic classic North by Northwest.

Also in this episode, Leonard talks about Grant Wood, both before and after the seminal American Gothic.

You’ll also hear how Papa Len made a career for himself selling lighting fixtures in the Midwest as part of the Rural Electrification Administration.

Download and listen to “Escape from New York.”

Categories
Podcasts

Episode 3: The Shrinkage of Time

This third episode describes another historic flight of 1936. Papa Len tells the story of his first flight cover that traveled aboard this flight and how it would have been destroyed on the Hindenburg had the flight not been delayed and re-routed from Frankfurt to Amsterdam.

Download and listen to “The Shrinkage of Time.”

Categories
bdg Plumtree • BEA AquaLogic Interaction • Oracle WebCenter Interaction

Podcast Episode 3: Plumtree Washed Away by AquaLogic

bdg-podcastI just cut the third episode of the bdg Plumtree Podcast. I’m very happy to say that I’ve worked out a glitch in the connection between the mixer and my laptop which eliminates that awful high-pitched hum you hear in the first two episodes.

In Episode 3, I talk about the name changes that resulted from the merger between Plumtree and BEA Systems and the impact of these changes on the portal market.

I also talk about a thought-provoking podcast I heard yesterday given by Medsphere Systems Corporation’s CEO Larry Augustine. You can read more about the podcast or check it out on iTunes.

As always, we end with a trivia question.

I’m interested to hear your feedback — please send your comments to [email protected].

Categories
bdg Plumtree • BEA AquaLogic Interaction • Oracle WebCenter Interaction

Benefits of an open source model

I rode public transit today (always good for the soul) and had a chance to listen to some of the many podcasts that I’ve downloaded to my iPod. One I found particularly interesting was a recording of Larry Augustine’s talk at the Open Source Business Conference held in San Francisco in April of 2005.

If you want to hear the podcast yourself, you can check it out in iTunes — it’s Episode 12.

Basically, Larry argued two things — one is that large applications (CRM, ERP, etc.) are the “next wave” of open source development and the other is that the open source business model can actually lead to more profits than the traditional “broken” model of selling enterprise software for large license fees.

bdg already offers one product as open source — the PHP EDK, but this podcast made me start to rethink our model. Perhaps all of our products should be free and we should continue to make our money off services, maintenance and support.

bdg-podcastI ruminate (publicly) on this topic in the third episode of the bdg Plumtree Podcast, which also covers the Plumtree->AquaLogic name changes.

I’m interested to hear your thoughts as well.

Categories
Plumtree • BEA AquaLogic Interaction • Oracle WebCenter Interaction

Same old products, fancy new names

With the acquisition of Plumtree by BEA in the books, all of the Plumtree products we know and love have received new monikers.

Here’s a cheat sheet to help you map the old names to the new ones:

Portal/Foundation –> AquaLogic Interaction
Collaboration –> AquaLogic Interaction Collaboration
Studio –> AquaLogic Interaction Studio
Process –> AquaLogic Interaction Process
Content/Publisher –> AquaLogic Interaction Publisher
Analytics –> AquaLogic Interaction Analytics
AWS/PWS/CWS/SWS, Portlets & EDK Extensions –> AquaLogic Interaction Packaged Integration Services

I also heard (from someone on the inside) that no new releases of the newly branded AquaLogic family are planned until 2007.

Categories
Podcasts

Episode 2: The Graf Zeppelin

This episode takes you back to 1929 and the historic flight in which the Graf Zeppelin circumnavigated the globe. Papa Len sent a letter around the world on this flight and later had it autographed by Sir George Hubert Wilkins, a journalist and a passenger on the German dirigible.

Download and listen to “The Graf Zeppelin.”

Categories
bdg

Podcast Episode 2: What is Plumtree?

bdg-podcastIn today’s podcast (Episode 2: What is Plumtree?), I cover the short and long answers to the question I get asked most often: what is Plumtree? In the long answer, I give the Plumtree story from a historic perspective, talking about when and why each feature was added and what makes each feature relevant to you, the Plumtree developer or Plumtree consumer.

I also answer last week’s trivia question and ask a new question. Lastly, I hint at the subject of several future podcasts.

Enjoy the podcast and please send your feedback (and the answer to the trivia question) to [email protected].