RAD / RSA performance - tip

If you think other Java IDEs are snappier then either RAD or RSA, you might be right. This was my impression as well after recently starting to use Rational Eclipse tools on a daily basis.

However, just as I was posting an article on the internal IBM's blogging network asking for help, I ran into this article which gave me an idea to try. Right, afterall Eclipse is the foundation of RAD / RSA / RMC and whatever Rational products :)

So I did. On windows, in the tool's installation directory, you'd find the eclipse.exe / eclipse.ini pairs. What I did was to change following parameters in eclipse.ini:

-Xms1024m
-Xmx1024m

-XX:PermSize=512M
-XX:MaxPermSize=512M

In my install -XX:PermSize was not there, but looking at above article I added it.

What this does is to set the min / max size of JVM's heap the same, so that the effort to resize the heap is no longer necessary.

Guess what, my RSA install really looks snappier. I'll be working with the tool, hopefully these small complaints are gone now.

the reason I don't tweet

here's why : an fellow IBMer responds on Twitter to some query about some sensitive project, read the story here

I have no details on the story itself. I only see that an IBMer gets in a mess because he allows itself to say the word 'ridiculous'.

So, be carefully what you write, when you write and who's your audience.

This is why you won't see me on Twitter. I don't fancy this real-time kind of information exchange, to throw things out in the air, without second or third rethink about my writings.

Notes 8.5 widgets catalog out in the air

Continuing my last night saga, I wanted to get back some widgets I had with some Notes 8.5 themes. Looking into the internal widget database, drag'n drop a widget, and briefly saw it's connecting to www.noteswidgets.com

I said: WOW ! They released the IBM internal widget catalog to the public !! Cool stuff. But when did I missed the announcement ? I think this should have been marketed a little bit more, because it really contains useful stuff for the Notes 8.x users / customers.

For instance: there's a CSS Inspector Tool which allows one former power Domino user like me to change the Notes 8 theme on the fly, in the Lotus 8.x Client.

I'm not much of a fan for widgets connecting from the Lotus Client to different web sites. For instance, I don't need Gmail in my Lotus Client, which is business oriented. But this CSS Inspector Tool made my life easier. Because I no longer need mocking the notes.css file, as seen in the previous post.

recover from Notes 8.5 Eclipse breakdown

Don't do what I did. If it works, don't break it. And if you happen to not read this and you broke it, then you might find this tip useful. You might have a chance by deleting / renaming the \workspace folder. When you next 'reboot' your Notes client, it just might work.

And here is my story: I was not happy with the looks of my Notes 8.5 eclipse client. Since I already new about the com.ibm.notes.branding.xxx.jar file, together with its notes.css file, I started to mock with it. Because I was bored, like I didn't had anything else better to do ... Guess what, the Notes Eclipse client didn't started they way it used to, at some point. I was presented with an almost empty window of Lotus Expeditor stuff, throwing Java exceptions.

On the other side, the Notes basic client (good old Notes C instance, always reliable) was flawlessly working.

After about two hours of wasted time trying to get the Notes Eclipse back on its feet, the answer came in the form of the comments of Matt White, at this URL. So, Matt, if you're reading this, many thanks :)

The other things I learned today (as an retired Domino developer, please excuse the old news):

- It figures. Eclipse is working with workspaces. Folders on disk where you store projects. Notes-Eclipse client cannot be without it. Its default location is \workspace. Makes sense.
- Widgets. You know, composite applications, portal, and all this Notes-Eclipse stuff. When you add / install an widget, all data will go in the same workspace location.
- Finally, I also found the easier way to mock the notes.css file. The method is based on the Java jar utility, described here. Yes, I know, any decent Java developer knows about it. But I didn't, and I am not an Java developer. And all the other Domino addicted are not necessary Java developers.

Fine. Now let's get some sleep.

free MS utilities - today, sysinternals

It must have passed about 5 years (or maybe more) since I discovered the ProcessExplorer.exe utility built by Mark Russinovich at sysinternals.com (at the time).

Now they've been bought by MS (good for them), and I sincerely hope MS will include Mark's utilities in their future OS (if they didn't already done so), and Mark would become a multi-millionaire, because it deserves it :)

I hope I'll never run my future OS on MS, since Ubuntu and Fedora come closer and closer to my ideal desktop. As a matter of fact, I've decided to wait for my next business laptop to make the replacement from XP to either Ubuntu or Fedora, since I cannot afford the waste the timeframe required to set everything up. But that's another story.

Every now and then I ran into "Windows experts", you now, those fellows with attitude, born with the MS OS in their arms, thinking they know everything ... and I ask: you're running ProcessExplorer.exe to kill that damn process which default Task Manager forbid you from killing, right ? And the answer is invariable the same: What is ProcessExplorer ?

So, if you read this blog or accidentally came on this article, or recognize yourself in above description, do yourself a favor and get the sysinternals suite, a 10MB download you'll never regret, if you claim the 'expert' keyword on your CV:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/0e18b180-9b7a-4c49-8120-c47c5a693683.aspx

There are more useful utilities in the suite, it just happens I use procexp.exe all the time, and I don't claim I'm a Win expert ...

Next time we'll run into each other, you'll have no excuse for not knowing what ProcessExplorer is :)