Heading to Impact 2008, getting started with Twitter

I am packing this afternoon to go to IBM's Impact 2008 conference in Las Vegas. After a few slow years of too much marketing hype, this year's conference is packed full of good technical content. Using the online scheduling tool, I have 3 - 4 conflicts on almost every presentation slot.

Even better, they have great keynote speakers, Drew Carey is hosting the whole week, and the B52's are playing the party as one of the first shows after their new album release.

During the conference I will be moderating the SOA JAM to help keep the online discussion rolling.

Finally, to keep myself connected, I have finally set myself up with Twitter. I am in the process of signing up to follow people. You can follow me at http://twitter.com/handly

Essentials of Test Driven Development (TDD)

Over at Object Mentor, Tim Ottinger has a great post giving a quick reference for Test Driven Development.

TDD on Three Index Cards

I'll be sure to reference this the next time I'm in coding mode.

Dan Reeves Comes to You

The Atlanta Lotusphere Comes to You Event has landed legendary NFL coach Dan Reeves as the keynote speaker!

I remember being at Lotusphere in 1999 watching the Falcons seal their trip to the Super Bowl.

Coach Reeves record speaks for itself:

• Was an All-Pro player for Dallas immortal Tom Landry.
• Led the Falcons to the playoffs (twice) and the Super Bowl, and became the NFL’s most successful coach with 167 wins.
  
• Won NFL Coach of the Year honors in 1993 (Atlanta) and 1998 (New York).
• Coached the Denver Broncos to five divisional titles and three Super Bowls.

For the keynote, he will deliver an inspiring talk on teamwork. Not only that, but he'll be on hand for photos and autographs.

Go here to see a detailed agenda and to register.

Upgrading Lotus Connections Profiles to 1.0.2, take 2

I posted previously on how to update the Lotus Connections database schema from version 1.0.1 to 1.0.2.

Over on the Lotus Connections Forums, Henry Walther posted that he found the original files in the TDI directories. For others, here is the location of the files:

C:\Program Files\IBM\TDI\V6.1\tdisol\TDI\database\db2

I did a comparison between my version and this one and the EMPLOYEE columns are the same. Interestingly, the Lotus version does not include expanding the description and experience columns in the EMP_DRAFT table:

ALTER TABLE EMPINST.EMP_DRAFT
ALTER COLUMN PROF_DESCRIPTION SET DATA TYPE VARCHAR ( 4000 )
ALTER COLUMN PROF_EXPERIENCE SET DATA TYPE VARCHAR ( 4000 );

There are a couple of other useful files in the \TDI\database\db2 directory. Look for the runstats.bat batch file, which will help DB2 run faster on the Profiles tables.

Good find Henry!

Lotusphere Comes to You, Atlanta

This year's Lotusphere included many exciting announcements from IBM and Lotus. Several years of work integrating SOA and the Eclipse platform into the Lotus products has opened up many new possibilities for delivering greater business value through social networking and composite applications (think business mashups).

If you couldn't make it to Orlando, Optimus Solutions is hosting the Atlanta Lotusphere Comes to You on March 4th at the Crown Plaza Ravinia.

Join us and you will hear:

• IBM experts delivering the Lotus Software strategy and roadmap for 2008
• The business value of Web 2.0: How IBM Lotus® solutions accelerate your organization's ability to tap into new trends in collaboration, innovation and the changing workforce
• An Optimus Solutions customer discuss their decision to implement IBM Lotus® Connections™ in their global infrastructure
• Unified communications and collaboration: the present, the future, the possibilities
• Extending your IBM Lotus investment with the Desktop of the Future, composite applications and open standards development

Go here to see a detailed agenda and to register.

Agile Atlanta on Feb 12th: Lightning Talks

Wow, it has been a great month for Agile in Atlanta! We have heard great presentations from both Mike Cohn and Mary Poppendieck and next week, we get to hear from yet more great speakers!

Meeting details:

Lightning Talks
Speaker: You!
Date: February 12th, 6:45 PM
Location: IBM (6303 Barfield Rd NE, Atlanta, Georgia 30328)

What are Lightning Talks?
Lighting Talks are quick presentations, usually 5 minutes, but we'll probably be fine with anything from 1 - 10 minutes. Basically, you have time to make one point, show a quick demo, or even ask a question to the group.

Examples might include:
- A picture of your team's story wall or big visible charts
- A demonstration of the tools your team uses for Agile
- A question on how to implement "impending doom" (one of Mike Cohn's change agents)
- Sharing a best practice you have learned
- An observation about your experience with Agile

Why would you want to come hear lightning talks?
This will be a great way to share our experiences and to learn from what others in your community are doing. If one talk doesn't interest you, just wait a few minutes and we will be on to the next one!

Logistics:
We will have a projector available for anyone with quick demos or slides. Remember that you only have about 5 minutes, so keep it to just a couple of slides. Once the meeting gets started, we can schedule the non-presentation talks around people who need to set up with the projector.

Other resources:
What are Lightning Talks? http://perl.plover.com/lightning-talks.html
Giving Lightning Talks http://www.perl.com/pub/a/2004/07/30/lightningtalk.html
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lightning_Talk

Upgrading Lotus Connections Profiles to 1.0.2

Update: We found the original update files!

In the last week, I've been upgrading several Lotus Connections 1.0.1 installations to version 1.0.2.

As part of this process, there is a missing sql script needed to upgrade the Profiles database to include a few column changes and updates. The only script that is provided by the update is peopledb.db2, which is used to create a whole new Profiles schema using create table and related statements. This script will not work to update existing data tables since you would have to drop your tables before running peopledb.db2.

I resolved this issue by comparing the new table definitions in peopledb.db2 to the existing Lotus Connections 1.0.1 tables.

I have listed below a simple version of my script. The full upgrade102.sql also includes the index and other updates to the EMPLOYEE and EMP_DRAFT tables to make sure we get anything added in 1.0.2.

CONNECT TO PEOPLEDB;

SET INTEGRITY FOR EMPINST.EMPLOYEE OFF;

ALTER TABLE EMPINST.EMPLOYEE
ADD COLUMN PROF_UID_LOWER VARCHAR (36) GENERATED ALWAYS AS (LOWER(PROF_UID))
ALTER COLUMN PROF_DESCRIPTION SET DATA TYPE VARCHAR ( 4000 )
ALTER COLUMN PROF_EXPERIENCE SET DATA TYPE VARCHAR ( 4000 )
ADD COLUMN PROF_GW_EMAIL_LOWER VARCHAR (128) GENERATED ALWAYS AS (LOWER(PROF_GROUPWARE_EMAIL))
ADD COLUMN PROF_LOGIN VARCHAR (36)
ADD COLUMN PROF_LOGIN_LOWER VARCHAR (36) GENERATED ALWAYS AS (LOWER(PROF_LOGIN))
ADD COLUMN PROF_GIVEN_NAME VARCHAR (128) ADD COLUMN PROF_SURNAME VARCHAR (128) ;

SET INTEGRITY FOR EMPINST.EMPLOYEE IMMEDIATE CHECKED FORCE GENERATED;

ALTER TABLE EMPINST.EMP_DRAFT
ALTER COLUMN PROF_DESCRIPTION SET DATA TYPE VARCHAR ( 4000 )
ALTER COLUMN PROF_EXPERIENCE SET DATA TYPE VARCHAR ( 4000 );

COMMIT WORK;

CONNECT RESET;

TERMINATE;