What's New with Languages in Rnext

1
What's New with Languages in Rnext

• Gary Devendorf
• Product Manager
• Lotus Development Corp.

2
Agenda

• Programming Languages in Notes/Domino
• What's new in
• Formula Language
• LotusScript
• JavaScript
• Java

3
Introduction

• Notes provides a rich application development
  environment.
• It includes 4 different programming languages
• Formula language (aka _at_functions)
• LotusScript
• JavaScript
• Java
• COM, CORBA, OLE are technologies

4
Formula Language

• The oldest language for Notes and part of the
  Notes core
• A lot of operations cannot be done without it.
• Frequently, the simplest and fastest way to
  accomplish things

5
Quiz What's wrong with this formula snippet?

• x _at_TextToNumber( y1 )
• x x x
• _at_If( x x
• FIELD errMessage The value of y
  must not be "0" or "1"
• continue _at_True)

6
Answer

• In Rnext,
• absolutely nothing !!!

7
Assignments

• Assignments can be nested inside other
  expressions, and multiple assignments to same
  variable are allowed.
• _at_If( condition
• FIELD x "foo"
• y "bar")
• FIELD x x " hello"
• y y x

8
New string delimiter -

• Strings can be delimited with curly brackets,
  making inserting quotes inside of strings much
  easier. This also makes commenting-out code
  (REM) much easier.
• s She said "Formulas are a dream!"

9
Array syntax

• No more multiple _at_Subsets to get the nth element
  in a list!
• Before
• x _at_Subset( _at_Subset( y 5) -1)
• fileName _at_Subset(_at_DbName -1)
• Now
• x y5
• fileName _at_DbName2

10
Looping!

• _at_While(conditional ...body...)
• _at_DoWhile(...body... conditional)
• _at_For( init conditional increment...body...)
• up 0
• down 100
• _at_For(i1 i ! 100 ii1
• up up i
• down down (100 - i))

11
The result

• A new engine which is 2 - 4X faster.
• faster view updates and builds
• faster form loading and freshes
• Internal 64K limit is removed.
• Many new _at_functions and features.

12
Some of the new _at_functions

• _at_BusinessDays
• _at_Compare
• _at_FloatEq
• _at_GetField
• _at_IfError
• _at_ReplicaID

• _at_Sort
• _at_StatusBar
• _at_ThisName
• _at_ThisValue
• _at_Transform
• _at_WebDbName

13
Enhancements to existing ones

• _at_DbLookup
• FailSilent
• ReturnDocumentUniqueID
• PartialMatch
• _at_Max/_at_Min takes single arg
• _at_Text(richtext)
• _at_Now - ServerTime

14
LotusScript

• It is the 2nd major language
• Introduced in Notes 4.0
• It follows the Microsoft desktop paradigm
• compatible with VB/VBA
• OLE/COM objects
• but also cross platform

15
New Data Types

• Two new basic data types
• Byte
• 8 bit, unsigned two-complement integers
• untranslated bit information
• Dim bdata as Byte
• Boolean
• used to be a variant datatype
• true (-1) or false (0)
• Dim flag as Boolean

16
JavaConnect

• Allows LotusScript to bind to Java Classes
• create an instance of a Java object
• adapt an existing instance of Java object
• hold the reference in a variant
• Dim j as new JavaSession
• Dim myFavorite as JavaClass
• Set myFavorite j.GetClass("myFavorite")
• Set myFavoriteObj myFavorite.CreateObject

17
Mapping between LotusScript and Java Data

• Primitive types
• BYTE - byte
• INTEGER - short
• LONG - int
• BOOLEAN - boolean
• FLOAT - float
• DOUBLE - double
• STRING - java/lang/String, char array

18
Limitations

• Only support single dimension arrays
• Pass only simple data types or JavaObject
  references to Java only
• No equivalent concepts of threads in LotusScript

19
New built in functions

• Split
• Join
• StrToken
• Replace
• ArrayUnique

20
Remote Agent Debugging

• Currently, you debug LotusScript programs using
  the Notes designer in the Notes client.
• limit only to client environment
• limit only to Win32/MAC
• In Rnext, the Notes Designer can be used to
  directly debug agents running in Domino.
• exact environment
• cross platform

21
JavaScript 1.4

• Details about the JS1.4 release can be found in
  the Netscape developer central site
• Exception handling
• You can throw and catch exceptions using the
  throw and try...catch statements
• New operators in and instanceof
• The in operator returns true if the specified
  properties is in the specified object.
• The instanceof operator returns true if the
  specified object is of the specified object type.

22
JavaScript library

• Support for JavaScript Library
• different from LotusScript and Java Libraries
• create via the IDE
• create the linkage directly in the JavaScript code

23
Java

• Java is the language from Sun
• General purpose, concurrent, class-based,
  object-oriented, cross platform
• Java is in Notes since 4.5
• 4.5 - Java Applets (JDK 1.0.2)
• 4.6 - Java Agents, Servlets (JRE 1.1.2)
• 5.0 - Java Libraries (JRE 1.1.8)

24
In Rnext

• JRE 1.3
• http//java.sun.com/j2se/sdk/1.3/docs/
• relnotes/features.html
• A lot of extensions to existing pkgs
• security API enhancements
• reflection enhancements
• object serialization enhancements
• ...

25
JVM is internal to Notes

• A complete JRE is embedded within Notes
• Stored in the jvm directory in Notes
• It is not intended to be user upgradeable
• No modification to CLASSPATH required

26
New Programming Model

• JSP
• Server pages translate into Java Servlets

27
Summary

• Continuous improvements to all languages.
• Only saw the major additions
• A lot of minor changes also happen
• Always looking for new technologies in the
  future...

28
Q A Resources

• www.lotus.com
• www.notes.net
• www.dominopro.com/garyspage
• www.searchDomino.com