How to use IBM SBT in background LotusScript code

1
votes

Goal: We want our workflow engine written entirely in LotusScript to send events to Activity stream of IBM Connections server.

Question: How to call IBM SBT API from LotusScript?

Constraints:

  • LS background agent code runs as dedicated user (ID for template signing), user can not be prompted for username/password, and SSO is not possible. Thus I expect to use form based auth with dedicated system account to IC;
  • SBT installs at OSGi level, so Java agent would require either JARs to be put to agent body (know issue with memory leaks) or to be deployed to server's jvm/lib/ext directory (duplicated deployment). So solution not involving Java agent is preferred;
  • Calls to web service in LotusScript should be secure (SSL, no password in url) and not OS dependent (for example this approach is not usable).
3
osgixpageslotusscriptibm-sbt
How much Lotusscript are you really talking about here? - Nathan T. Freeman
@NathanT.Freeman A lot. There is no chance to rewrite it to Java, so I am looking for simple LS "plugin" to add which will connect to SBT. I expect up to 100 lines of LS will do. Not counting the Java part, that will be rather simple. - Frantisek Kossuth
"A lot" is not a helpful answer. Are you talking about 1000 lines? 10000? 100000? More? BASIC is not a good language for modern applications. - Nathan T. Freeman
Rough guess is 15k+ lines. Pretty complex agent to process many things: WF states, access (RN/AN), batch processing of response documents, sending notifications (mail and database similar to Activity stream in IC), invoking custom application code and so on. That was our first app that hit 64k limit of script library :-) - Frantisek Kossuth
@NathanT.Freeman " BASIC is not a good language for modern applications." TRUE, unfortunately it was core (most powerful) language of Notes since R4, so expect people made "a lot" of applications in LotusScript. Are you telling to partners to migrate all their apps to Java? That would kill them. - Frantisek Kossuth

3 Answers

1
votes

LotusScript has no native capacity to issue network requests, so you'd have to use either LS2J (so you're writing Java anyway, without the benefits of a Java IDE) or call a platform-specific API (i.e. Windows DLLs).

Furthermore, LotusScript is a legacy language. It is supported for backward compatibility with existing applications, but going forward it is unlikely to ever receive significant updates. If you're writing this code from scratch, you'd be better served using a language that is going to be maintained long term rather than introduce additional LotusScript code into your environment. To that end, I recommend creating a DOTS tasklet, which is basically the same as an agent without the performance problems of an agent. Since the O in DOTS stands for OSGi, tasklets are deployment siblings to the SBT, and are likely to be the future of scheduled / triggered tasks for the Domino platform.

1
votes

Looking at your questions I would suggest that you use LS2J for the things that you cannot do from LotusScript. I have used LS2J to bring webservices into Notes/Domino since version 6.5 - and it has been remarkably stable and well performing...

You should create a LotusScript "wrapper" class that will handle the LS2J specific calls and error handlling - turning any errors from the Java layer into normal LS errors. This will make it easy to use in your LS-libraries.

You should be able to use the built-in Webservice-support from LotusScript... - if not, consider LS2J for that as well. In this case you will probably need to add a number JAR-files to the classpath for Java to use. You should put these JAR-files in the jvm/lib/ext library - do NOT attach them to Script libraries or agents since there is a memory leak in the code that internally detach jar files prior to using them. It WILL kill your server at some future point.

Having said the above, I also agree with everybody else - Java is the way to go forward, and OSGi is very interesting in that perspective...

/John

0
votes

LS2J is working quite well in our Legacy code. It is quite stable and wonderful performance. We even make 500k calls and have no memory issues using db2 jars(on server) and Java EE code for web services.

The java class can be written in Eclipse a real IDE outside Lotus. A simple LotusScript class for the wrapper code with error handling and you are off.