and all that Jazz!

I am a long time fan of jazz, from classics like Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Charlie Mingus to more modern artists like Stefon Harris and Martin Medeski and Wood.

A new breed of Jazz that could be worth a spin is the joint venture between IBM Research and IBM Rational divisions. From the project site...

Link : The Jazz Project Home Page

What is Jazz?

Simplicity through consistency. Collaboration in context. Agility through transparency... Jazz is about helping people work together to build software more effectively, while making the software development experience more fun!

I have worked with components of the Rational suite both before and after IBM's acquisition of Rational however I don't currently use any of the Rational tooling. From a development perspective the tool I work with most is Domino Designer. That being said I think it could be great for the Domino community to get a voice within the Jazz Project.

The Domino development community has been given a wonderful framework for creating applications rapidly but has been left to cope with relatively few third party solutions and even less out of the box functionality for helping with aspects development artifact and process management. Even a feature as common as documentation generation from code comments is only possible if you implement a standard and functionality offered by the Lotus community outside of IBM. (btw thanks to Mikkel Heisterberg)

Hopefully someday Domino Developers will be gifted with a little of Rational product lines capabilities native within Domino Designer. Not the whole kit and kaboodle, but enough to help satisfy long neglected needs and expose a wider community to Rational software without giving away all the reasons to purchase components from the Rational family. Somewhat of a precedence was already set when Domino Administrators were gifted with Tivoli Analyzer for Lotus Notes with Notes/Domino 7 though the reasoning behind that decision was probably entirely different.

For those interested in the future of Domino Designer, do yourself a favor and let your thoughts be a part of the conversation on the following blogs. These are some of the people who have been tasked with making your work life as a Domino Developer better.

Link : Bob Balaban
Link : Andre Guirard
Link : Maureen Leland

Sametime 7.5 Plug In Sites

IBM announced a new resource available for Sametime users dubbed the Lotus Sametime Exchange*.

Link Lotus Sametime Exchange *

This resource is intended to be a less formal repository for unsupported free code and programming examples for Sametime Connect plug-ins. This is in contrast to the Sametime Plugin Catalog which is a more formal repository for plug-ins provided by IBM or partners that have gone through a review process.

Link Sametime Plugin Catalog

For now the only content that is available in the Exchange* is pulled directly from the samples available with the Sametime SDK. Understandable considering they just launched the resource this week.

I have a plug-in I have been working on primarily to explore the extension points involved though if I think it has any value I will submit it to the Sametime Exchange.*

One thing that I found a little odd is the lack of a packaged IDE for development in this environment. While not terribly difficult to setup Eclipse for Sametime Connect plug-in development, I feel it would have been worthwhile for IBM to package an Eclipse environment already prepared for Sametime Connect development. Not doing so is another barrier (albeit minor depending on your opinion) to broader adoption of plug-in development.

How about you? Anyone have an idea for a plugin they wish someone would write?

Anyone actively working on a plug-in they would consider placing in the Exchange?

* Being a long time Lotus Notes/Domino advocate I am not entirely comfortable with IBM's use of the profane word "Exchange". Why couldn't they have called it the Sametime Sandbox? :)