BP204 Integration of OpenOffice.org and IBM Lotus Notes and Domino

1. BP204 Integration of OpenOffice.org and IBM Lotus Notes and Domino

Alan Bell

John D. Head

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Who are we?

What is OpenOffice.org

EXAMPLE 1 thru 3 The Hello World examples

EXAMPLE 4 Hello World using Java

EXAMPLE 5 Mail Merge

EXAMPLE 6 Fun with Spreadsheets

EXAMPLE 7 A Real World Notes Application

EXAMPLE 8 Impress with Impress

Notes 8 Productivity Editors

Alan Bell

Dominux Consulting

Penumbra Group

The Open Learning Centre

John D. Head

Offering and Development Manager for frameworks at PSC Group, LLC

Involved in Lotus technology since 1993

Speaker

Over 22 sessions at Lotusphere since 1996

Speaker at Advisor conferences

Author

Advisor Magazine and other publications on Office and SmartSuite integration with Notes

LotusUserGroup.org contributing Author and Forum moderator

www.johndavidhead.com

IBM Premium Business Partner for 15+ Years

Microsoft Gold Partner

Host of OpenNTF.org

Winner of 2007 Lotus Award!

Host of the following blogs:

Ed Brills( www.edbrill.com )

Alan Lepofskys Notes Tips( www.alanlepofsky.net )

Alan Gartenberg - Sametime( www.adamgartenberg.com )

Jeff Eisen Hannover ( www.jeffeisen.com )

Domino Server Team (www.dominoblog.com)

Who is using

Office 97 and earlier

Office 2000

Office XP

Office 2003

OpenOffice / StarOffice

Star Division Star Office written in the mid 80s

Bought by Sun Microsystems in 1999

Sun Star Office released in August 1999

Source code released October 2000

OpenOffice.org 1.0 released May 2002

OpenOffice.org 2.0 released October 2005

OpenDocument format becomes international standard ISO/IEC 26300 November 2006

IBM Lotus Workplace Productivity Editors released 2005

Based on OpenOffice 1.1

Notes 8 to include IBM Productivity Editors

From the website: free office suite - OpenOffice.org is a multiplatform and multilingual office suite and an open-source project. Compatible with all other major office suites, the product is free to download, use, and distribute. To help build the community, join us.

And the mission statement: To create, as a community, the leading international office suite that will run on all major platforms and provide access to all functionality and data through open-component based APIs and an XML-based file format.

Getting past the marketing speak

OpenOffice is an alternative to Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint which isFREE

Provides the following applications

Writer Document Editor

Impress Presentation Program

Math Math Function Creator

Draw Vector Drawing Tool

Calc - Spreadsheet

Base - Database

Only office suite that supports Open Document Format (ODF) 100%

A free alternative to Microsoft Office

Runs on 3 platforms

Windows

Saves to PDF Natively

OpenOffice is the basis of the IBM Productivity Tools included with IBM Lotus Notes 8

Licensing

LGPL the GNU Lesser General Public License

Lesser means that non-free code can use integration with OpenOffice.org (roughly speaking)

Is it really Free?

Will it always be Free?

StarOffice is Suns packaged version of OpenOffice

Sun adds other software, services, and support

For development purposes, you can write code that runs in both

The OpenOffice Development effort is designed on an interface-based component model called UNO ( Universal Network Objects)

UNO Definition: UNO offers interoperability between different programming languages, different object models, different machine architectures and different processes; either in a local network or even via the Internet. UNO components can be implemented in and accessed from any programming language for which a UNO language binding exists.

The ServiceManager is kind of like the NotesSession class, it is a factory class that gets you to other places

Set SM=CreateObject("com.sun.star.ServiceManager")

You can think of the ServiceManager as a back end class, and we want the front end, (like NotesUIWorkspace)

Set Desktop=SM.createInstance("com.sun.star.frame.Desktop")

So far we have an OpenOffice.Org window, but it doesn't yet know what application it will be, so we have to tell it.

Dim args()

Set WriterApplication=Desktop.loadComponentFromURL ("private:factory/swriter","_blank",0,args)

Args is a variant array, we don't want to pass any parameters, but it must be an array.

The s in swriter stands for Star

Now we have a word processor up and running

First we need to get a handle to the text part of the document

Set WriterText=WriterApplication.getText()

And we need a cursor position where we can insert some text

Set Cursor=WriterText.createTextCursor()

Finally we can make the traditional greeting

Call WriterText.insertString(Cursor,"Hello World!",False)

Sub Click(Source As Button)

Dim args()

Set WriterApplication=Desktop.loadComponentFromURL_

("private:factory/swriter","_blank",0,args)

Set WriterText=WriterApplication.getText()

Set Cursor=WriterText.createTextCursor()

Call WriterText.insertString(Cursor,"Hello World!",False)

End Sub

Sub Click(Source As Button)

Dim args()

Set CalcApplication=Desktop.loadComponentFromURL_

("private:factory/scalc","_blank",0,args)

Set Worksheet=CalcApplication.Sheets.getByName("Sheet1")

Set cell=Worksheet.getCellByPosition(3,6)

Call cell.setString("Hello World!")

End Sub

We have set the string in a cell, but which cell is it?

Impress and Draw are almost the same application

Pages contain shapes

Shapes can contain Text

Text is handled just like it is in Writer

Sub Click

Dim args()

Set ImpressApplication=Desktop.loadComponentFromURL_

("private:factory/simpress","_blank",0,args)

Set Presentation=ImpressApplication.getDrawPages()

Set Slide=Presentation.getByIndex(0)

Slide.layout=1 'this layout has a title and an outline

Set title=Slide.getbyindex(0) 'the first shape is the title

Set TitleText=title.getText() 'this bit is like talking to writer

Set Cursor=TitleText.createTextCursor()

Call TitleText.insertString(Cursor,"Hello World!",False)

End Sub

Objects

Interfaces collections of properties

In LotusScript you can use methods and properties from any interface

In Java and C you have to specify which interface you want to use.

The examples in the help files are typically in Java

You have to specify the interface you want to use on an object

So far, we have shown you the basics

How to connect to OpenOffice.org from Notes

LotusScript and Java examples

Now, let's show you some real-world, useful demos

Same concepts as Word Mail Merge

User selects data

Generate data file

Detach template

Launch Writer

Execute Mail Merge

Produce End Document

Two steps today

How would you like your spreadsheet to work?

Something like this?

Dim ss as new spreadsheet

ss.setcell(3,6,Hello World!)

ss.underline(3,6)

ss.rotate(3,6,45)

print ss.findrow(3,Hello World!)

Demo Time

Class Spreadsheet

public cols list as Column

End Class

Class Column

public rows list as Cell

End Class

Class Cell

'all the hard work happens here

End Class

Lists are cool

Lists of lists are very cool

Demo Time

How do they relate to OpenOffice.org?

How similar is the API?

Who are we?

What is OpenOffice.org

The Hello World examples

Hello World using Java

Mail Merge

Fun with Spreadsheets

A Real World Notes Application

Impress with Impress

Notes 8 Productivity Editors

8 Examples you can take home with you!

LDD Discussions (Notes.Net) http://www-130.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus

OpenOffice.orghttp://www.openoffice.org

OpenOffice Developers Guide http://api.openoffice.org/DevelopersGuide/DevelopersGuide.html

Programming OpenOffice with Visual Basic http://www.kalitech.fr/clients/doc/VB_APIOOo_en.html

Alan Bell's blog http://www.dominux.co.uk/dominuxblog.nsf

John Heads blog http://www.johndavidhead.com

Slides and content available from http://www.johndavidhead.com http://www.dominux.co.uk

BP204 Integration of OpenOffice.org and IBM Lotus Notes and Domino

Technology

office xp office

microsoft office

free office suite

earlier office

ibm lotus notes

multilingual office

major office suites

impress notes