UI java applets for domino xpages fail to load with class not found when app is deployed in bluemix

Question

I have created a very simple domino app with xpages. It's almost just a copy of the "notebook" template, with an index page and a main document page.

The app runs correctly in notes and in the local web browser.

I have installed the Extension Library from OpenNTF.org and I have configured the bluemix plugin in Domino Designer. Tested the connection and the server and the credentials are OK.

I deploy my app and everything looks good, the code is uploaded, the app appears in my bluemix dashboard, and starts OK.

The route to the app works correctly, and I can access the application on the default route.

But, the browser fails to load the user interface applets. The page just shows the empty space with a error icon that when clicked shows a java error message of "class not found".

It seems to me that the deployment process fails to install the applet files in the javapath of the server.

Is there something I am missing to do?

Answer 1

Are you referring to the old Java applets for action bars, views, etc. from the pre-XPages web renderer? Though it would be up to someone from IBM to provide a canonical example, I would expect those to not work - the Domino runtime app-side on Bluemix is very trimmed down, including the removal of things like view icons. It looks like the notebook template was never XPage-ized, and the old-style elements will default to Java.

Assuming these are indeed the Java applets you mean, it's for the best in this case anyway: even if they worked on the Bluemix runtime, they would be pointing to the ephemeral app DB, not a permanent-storage DB, and wouldn't be useful for dealing with data.

Answer 2

Speak after me: Java is great on the server. And on the server only. Support for Java applets is running out, so you need to change that anyway.

For Bluemix: it is NOT a Domino runtime. It is an XPages runtime. So anything XPages does is there, nothing from the classical web stack. So little wonders like ?OpenDocument won't work.

The use case for XPages on Bluemix are the additional services, not a wholesale migration of your on premises Domino server (use Softlayer for that).

You want to add: push notification, traffic analysis, Watson functionality, analytics etc? Bluemix is for you.

Little pro secret: you love the services, but you love your mixed mode development too? Run your XPage on Softlayer, but use services you have configured in Bluemix (you find access information in VCAP_SERVICES).