DEVELOP 4 DEVELOPERSThe power of extensibility – The Art of plugin development

CHRISTIAN GÜDEMANN

CTO @ WebGate Consulting AG

OpenNTF Chairman

The Architect

@guedeWebgate

THE STORY OF POI4XPAGES

Customer 1 is asking for an export to Excel

TSS Africa wants an import of Excel sheets

Customer 2 has to generate contracts as Word documents

And all these requests are in the pipeline for one developer

THE STORY BEHIND POI4XPAGES

Long times ago, during a coffee break:

Peter (Development Leader) asks….

We are doing always the same. Exporting datas to Excel and Word.

It's so unhandy, I don't want to give this task to other people than Developer M

Christian (somewhere spaced off)

Designing a plugin like the extension library would be cool.

THE STORY BEHIND POI4XPAGES

.. continued

Peter:

You think a plugin can handle the export of views and documents to excel and word?

Christian (back in reality)

Oh plugins can do all you can imagine!

Peter:

Oh cool, I need this fixed until end of month! Thanks for taking care!

OUCH.....

Thanks for this request …!

… time for another coffee break :)

WHEN YOU START...

Be aware of your target audience

What would you except

How should the developer use your plugin

What will you provide

Keep it simple and stupid

The adoption will be better

A good example database is much more worth than a documentation

… CAN YOU EXPLAIN THIS?

•Demo

•or a short example to show what I mean :)

HEY PETER I HAVE A PLUGIN 4 YOU

TO OPENSOURCE OR NOT?

Some Questions help to make a good decision

What can you sell and how?

Who is your target customer?

Why should your target customer buy it?

OpenSource → YES! Because....

We will make money with it (later about this)

It empowers other developers and customers

It makes XPages and the XWork Server a stronger platform

DON'T REINVENT THE WHEEL!

Google is your best friend. The most common problems are solved

License, License, License, License → Try to find a Apache License Project. It's easier to make money and to bring it to the developers

Take your real-world problem as your first test case

POI4XPAGES UNDER THE HOOD

Demo

A short round trip in the plugin project

MAKE MONEY

Your customer does not care about the effort – the customer cares about the functionality

Do the same thing in a easier way results in less error and mistakes

Reduced complexity makes it available to more internal resources

→ Production cost are lower!

GET INVOLVED!

Give POI4XPages a try

Bring your feedback to the community

Talk about the success you have

Ask for features

Use OpenNTF Essentials and stay tuned for the next Version

TIME FOR ….

Question & Answers....