Greetings!
I was invited to contribute to this wiki, and was given permission to post a whole series of entries that link back to articles on my blog.
Each wiki entry will be an abstract of the topic, with a link to the full blog posting. This is the first one, let's see how it goes!
Today's topic: Have you ever written a Java agent in Domino Designer? Have you ever wished that you could debug it in-place, within either the Notes Client or the Domino Server? Well, that was impossible (until very recently), since Designer only acquired any kind of Java debugger in version 8.5.
To work around this problem, I created a coding pattern for Java agents that I've been calling the "2-Headed Beast". Your Java class has 2 "heads": One is the usual NotesMain() entry point, which gets called by the Agent infrastructure in Notes/Domino to start you agent code. The other "head" is a "public static void main(String[] argv)" entry point, which you need to run the agent as a standalone Java program (you do this part so that Eclipse can run and therefore debut the program).
Both entry points call a single function in the class which mplements the "business logic" of the agent, so that most of the code is common to both "heads" thread of execution. It works!
Want to learn more? Head over to my blog post at:
http://www.bobzblog.com/tuxedoguy.nsf/dx/the-2-headed-beast-debugging-domino-java-agents-with-eclipse
You'll find a more complete description, plus downloads (a PDF with a complete slideshow on this topic, plus a couple of sample Java code files).
Enjoy!