Extending LiveCycle ES 2.5 for Java Developers

The full courseware that Scott MacDonald, Gary Gilchrist and I delivered during MAX 2010 is now available online.  Anyone may use this material as a self-paced tutorial to understand how Java Developers can extend the native capabilities of Adobe LiveCycle ES.

The course is available as a ZIP file here (right-click and then select Save target as ...")

http://www.web2open.org/courses/LCES4JavaDevs-CourseArchive.zip

This course covers the following topics:

Extending LiveCycle ES for Java Developers

TABLE OF CONTENTS
OVERVIEW
EXERCISE 1: UNDERSTANDING CUSTOM COMPONENTS

EXERCISE 2: DEVELOPING THE CUSTOM COMPONENT .
Task 2‐1: Start Eclipse and create a new project
Task 2‐2: Add the required Java library files
Task 2‐3: Defining the service interface
Task 2‐4: Defining the service implementation
Task 2‐5: Defining the component XML file

EXERCISE 3: DEPLOYING YOUR COMPONENT
Task 3‐1: Package your component into a JAR file
Task 3‐2: Importing the component using Workbench ES2

EXERCISE 4: USING THE COMPONENT WITHIN A PROCESS
Task 4‐1: Create the EncryptManyDocuments/EncryptManyDocuments process and invoke it from
Workbench.
Task 4‐2: Programmatically invoking the EncryptManyDocuments process.

Solution code is provided as well as extra notes on the code for the programmatic invocation: 

Build a LiveCycle ES Encryption Process using Watched Folders

This video tutorial shows how anyone can use LiveCycle ES Workbench to build a simple process with watched folders as endpoints to encrypt PDF documents. The watched folder configuration was done as it was suggested on the Google Livecycle Developers list.

If you want to seriously geek out on this and try it, you can download LiveCycle ES from http://www.adobe.com/products/livecycle/.

Build a Livecycle Encryption Process using Watched Folders from Technoracle on Vimeo.

Three great LiveCycle@MAX picks

For the LiveCycle@MAX pick of the week for Oct 11, I am going to break tradition and highlight three separate sessions instead of one.  The links lead directly to the formal descriptions and registration. 

This first is a case study based on repeatable patterns.  I am a huge fan of case studies as they give attendees the opportunity to not only learn what went right, but also to learn what could have gone better and avoid making the same choices.  The session entitled “Delivering Repeatable Solutions with Deloitte Consulting and Adobe Enterprise Solutions" is bang on with a deep dive into real world experiences. In this session, attendees will learn how the $26B company drives the success of its customers using Adobe LiveCycle, the Adobe Flash Platform and more.  Deloitte has a long history of working with Adobe in the enterprise, specifically around LiveCycle ES, and their expertise is something we can all learn from. 

The second case study is more specific to an individual enterprise. “Transforming the Value of IT for Government through Modernization” will give attendees insights into the experiences of the South African Revenue Service and learn how this historically rich country leveraged Adobe LiveCycle and the Adobe Flash Platform to implement one of the first and largest Adobe AIR applications ever delivered.  

The third case study is entitled “Improving the User Experience: Contract Servicing Improvements at Northwestern Mutual”.  This one I want to attend myself to learn how this $21B company is transforming how it does business with its independent brokers using Adobe LiveCycle. 

Speaking of LiveCycle, the LiveCycle@MAX tracks are over half sold out.  The word seems to be getting out that LiveCycle developers are in ultra high demand and MAX is the one place per year where a complete LiveCycle training program is available for developers.  See you there!

LiveCycle ES Pick of the week for Adobe MAX 2010

Continuing the weekly series of LiveCycle@MAX picks of the week, this week we selected a track for developers and community members to learn more about where to find special interest content related to Adobe LiveCycle ES. For those who do not know Dan or Marc, they are major forces within the LiveCycle community. Dan is putting together the core LiveCycle@MAX content for Adobe MAX 2010. Marc Eaman is the guru behind the Adobe Enterprise Cafe. Adobe Enterprise Café helps you stay in touch with the enterprise community, receive news, find information, and aggregate content related to Adobe LiveCycle ES (Enterprise Suite), Acrobat, Connect, ColdFusion, and the Adobe Flash Platform in a timely and customized fashion. Targeted at developers and technical staff, Café is the one tool you need to search across the entire community knowledge base and stay in touch with the Adobe teams. Technoracle encourages you to download and install the Adobe Enterprise Cafe from this URL.

Here is Technoracle's Adobe MAX pick of the week:

Hidden Gems for the LiveCycle Community
Hear from Adobe insiders and learn about the hidden gems and community resources that can help you build, share, and leverage the LiveCycle Enterprise Suite developer ecosystem. This session will review the Adobe Developer Connection program, the latest Adobe forums, and the developer website and include demonstrations of tools including Enterprise Cafe, Tour de LiveCycle, and Developer Express.

Tracks: Develop
Audience: Architect, Creative Designer, Partner Decision Maker, Web Designer, IS/IT, Web Developer, Application Developer, Business Decision Maker
Skill Level: General Audience
Product: LiveCycle ES
Speakers: Marc Eaman, Daniel Heick
Times:
Tuesday, October, 26th, 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Wednesday, October, 27th, 9:30 am - 10:30 am

These will fill up fast so register here now!  See you at MAX!

Form Design 2008 Courseware Online

At the last three MAXs, I have given a talk on form design called "Forms Gone Wild". Despite the talk's title seemingly indicating that a bunch of forms went down to party in Florida for spring break, it does contain some great tips and thoughts for form designers. Every year I update this talk based on really bad forms. If you come across any bad forms that might be candidates for the talk in 2009, please send them to me at dnickull at adobe dot com.

http://tv.adobe.com/MAX-2008-Design/Forms-Gone-Wild-(2008)-by-Duane-Nickull.html#vi+f15383v1076

LiveCycle 8.2 Pre-release program

For cutting edge LiveCycle developers, Adobe is inviting a select group to test the latest build (8.2) prior to the official release. You can register here:

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/livecycle/

Here are the new features:

• Improved development and authoring tools, including process record and playback, and validation of process definitions
• Improved end-user experience including 508-Compliance, single sign-on support, and many LiveCycle Designer enhancements
• Improved process management tools such as business calendars, out-of-office support, and customized e-mail notifications
• Improved installation with two turnkey options (JBOSS and WebLogic) as well as command-line installation
• Improved administration and platform maturity with improved backup and recovery support (hot backup), expanded platform, database, and JVM support
• Improved Web Service support within XFA-based forms
• PDF/A Support

Greg Wilson has posted a great introductory video here.

Dr. Dobb's loves LiveCycle ES!!!

Dr. Dobb's (one of my favorite software publications) named 98 finalists for this year's Jolt Product Excellence Awards (read here). These were all selected by an esteemed team of industry insiders, columnists, and technology leaders.

Dr. Dobb's panel of judges have selected the best product known to enterprise architecture circles - Adobe LiveCycle ES. It is the first product listed under the category of Enterprise Tools.

Other Adobe awards were given for ColdFusion 8, RoboHelp, Device Central and Captivate 3.
For anyone wanting to try LiveCycle ES, I have a box of 34 DVDs left with developer licenses. These licenses allow you to install the full suite and use it for testing, development purposes. If you want one, please ping me at dnickull at adobe dot com.

About the awards:

"For the past 17 years, the Dr. Dobb's Jolt Product Excellence Awards have
been presented annually to showcase products that have "jolted" the industry
with their significance and made the task of creating software faster, easier,
and more efficient. Jolt Cola, the fabled soft drink quaffed by software
developers for sustenance during project development marathons, sponsors the
awards presentation."

LiveCycle ES: We're all in!!

LiveCycle ES had a great year in 2007 and every indication is that 2008 will be even better. 2007 marked the year Adobe is now recognized as a formidable enterprise software vendor. In poker terms, we're all in. Our customers are quickly realizing that the service oriented approach to integration (inherent in LiveCycle ES architecture) has many advantages, and have embraced it as their preferred solution for Enterprise 2.0. To clarify, Enterprise 2.0 is an adoption of the Web 2.0 design patterns and architectural patterns by large enterprises. The fact is that LiveCycle ES has now started being used by these enterprises who have decided to embrace the Web 2.0 patterns and required the services tier to power their new web applications and RIAs. Hey - don't just believe me, check out our customer list.

So why are Bruce Chizen (Adobe's past CEO) and I so happy in this picture? I can only speak for myself but after celebrating Adobe's 25th anniversary with a great performance by Skateboarders, BMX guys and other stunts, supplemented with food, drinks and a great performance by Smash Mouth, I am left with a realization that Adobe is just a really awesome company. Not only is it a great corporate culture, but from a business standpoint, all the years of careful architecture, planning and (most importantly) listening to what our customers need in their infrastructures has paid off. LiveCycle is growing. We now have a special developers license available and if you want a free DVD to try it out, contact me and I'll personally send it to you (dnickull at adobe dot com).

The guy on the right above, along with our current CEO Shantanu, deserve a lot of credit for fostering a vision to move Adobe from the desktop to the enterprise. Enterprises might want to pay attention to this direction to understand how to deliver Web 2.0 patterns to their customers.

How cool is LiveCycle BAM ES?

LiveCycle Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) ES is so cool, rockers everywhere are wearing the shirts and singing about it!

Actually, this image is from our 25th Anniversary party last month in San Jose, CA. The band Smash Mouth played (including some Van Halen covers) and that is only part of why Adobe is the coolest company in the world to work for.

Nevertheless, BAM is really amazing. Many people who want SOA governance should really be looking at LiveCycle BAM. SOA brings business functionality (capabilities) and business clients (needs) together via services. Monitoring the state of business processes that use services is a very valuable part of any mature SOA infrastructure. It blows people away that Adobe has this SOA component dialed but we've had tons of smart guys like Arun, Alex, and Kumar all working hard on this stuff for years.

LiveCycle BAM administrators and process participants can quickly identify bottlenecks, check progress, and view other process information to provide a 360-degree view of a business transaction.

LiveCycle BAM ES includes three major components:

Performance dashboard

Provides continuous visibility into all of your critical business information through an easy-to-use interface for customizing metrics, setting alerts, and drilling down to detailed data.

BAM Workbench

Allows system administrators to quickly and easily set up data integration, analytic models, and end-user dashboards to present current corporate information, historical data, or aggregated views.

Analytics server

A streaming data store for continuous data integration, as well as engines for multidimensional analysis, dynamic modeling, business rules execution, and exception and alert reporting.

LiveCycle ES SOA platform rated 8.2 of 10 (Infoworld)

After years of not being recognized for having a full featured enterprise server story, Adobe has finally received great recognition from Infoworld's Test Center. In fact, reviewer Mike Heck rated LiveCycle ES an overall score of “very good 8.2” out of 10: with ease of use and scalability rated at 9.0; features, integration, and administration rated at 8.0.

This doesn't surprise me as Mike is a well-known guy and has been very pragmatic in his past analysis of enterprise software. If you take a look at the kind of depth he goes into when testing Attensa Feed Server 1.1.7, you can easily see he isn't a writer for hire. He is pragmatic and speaks the truth about both good and bad aspects of software as he explores and experiences it. In other tests, he actually points out both weakness as well as strengths of Adobe Software.

IMO - the LiveCycle ES ranking is correct. We still can make it better but it really is an 8.2 out of 10 today. But hey - don't take my word for it. Grab a DVD or download it and try it yourself. If you need help, there are lots of lists and experienced people around to get you started. The best are:

http://www.adobe.com/devnet/livecycle/
http://groups.google.com/group/livecycle

LiveCycle's new face?

Charlton Barreto and I have been working hard on some new collateral for LiveCycle in the context of SOA and enterprise architecture.

The work has been stressful and resulted in some behavior patterns most often associated with those who still think COBOL is cool. Nevertheless, stay tuned for some really new stuff on SOA.

Photo courtesy of Andre Charland (Nitobi).

How to install and run Adobe LiveCycle Data Services ES 2.5.1 on Mac OS X

This post outlines step-by-step instructions to get the latest Adobe LiveCycle Data Services ES (formerly Flex Data Services) running natively on a Mac. Okay – before you get excited, Adobe does not support this but I did some tinkering around with JBoss 4.2.1 GA and Adobe LiveCycle Data Services ES 2.5.1 and got it running natively on Mac OS X. Below is the screenshot in Safari.



Before you read how to do this, please understand a few things. First, Adobe LiveCycle Data Services ES is not supported on Mac OS X. In fact, we do not even release it (but don’t worry, it is not hard to install). If you do not know what LiveCycle Data Services ES is, it used to be called Flex Data Services. It is now part of the LiveCycle Service platform and has lots of great features. It has a really cool server component that can do wicked messaging stuff to round trip between a J2EE environment and Adobe Flex, AIR, HTML or AJAX applications.

Why? I ported this over and posted this as a result of Adobe MAX 2007 in Barcelona. Macs were everywhere. At JavaOne and MAX, I suspect that about 50-60% of the developers are now using Macs. We used Macs in our hands-on training rooms and they got taken up first.

Here are the full instructions for getting LiveCycle Data Services ES running on a Mac. Please don’t complain if it doesn’t work. We don’t support it (currently -- but if you’re interested tell me and I’ll work on product management to see if we can get it supported) and we’re on our own for now. Here are the steps:

1. Go to JBoss.org and download the JBoss 4.2.1GA release. Unzip it somewhere (I put it on my desktop).

2. Grab a terminal and navigate to the /bin and enter “sh ./run.sh” as shown below. Note – you must run it with sufficient privileges. If you have trouble try entering “sudo sh ./run.sh” and you will be prompted for the SU password.



3. Grab Safari and go to http://localhost:8080 to verify it works. You should see a screen welcoming you to JBoss app server.

4. If it worked, stop the application server by going to the /bin and typing “sh ./shutdown.sh”, then hit enter. Or, you can simply put the cursor in the shell and hit “Control-C”. The latter is not recommended but it works.

5. Go to http://www.adobe.com/products/livecycle/dataservices/ and follow the steps to download LiveCycle Data Services ES version 2.5.1. Make sure you select the AIX version. When you finish downloading it, click the file and install it. (note: it does install even though Adobe does not claim it installs). It will create a directory on the Mac at /Adobe/ as shown below.



6. Now the important part. Expand the LiveCycle Data Services ES 2.5.1/resources/security/tomcat/ directory then copy the <lcds_install_root>/resources/security/tomcat/flex-tomcat-common.jar and <lcds_install_root>/resources/security/tomcat/flex-tomcat-server.jar into the jboss_root/server/default/lib folder of your JBoss install. This will allow custom authentication to work.

7. From the same location, copy <lcds_install_root>/resources/security/tomcat/context.xml to your JBoss under the WEB-INF directory or adjust an existing context.xml to add the <valve>. You’ll have to open the context.xml files to compare them. Copying works best if you have a fresh install of JBoss.

8. Expand your <lcds_install_directory> and copy the following files:
flex-admin.war flex.war samples.war

9. Paste those samples in the <jboss_install_directory>/server/default/deploy directory.

10. Restart JBoss as described above (Step 2). Get your browser and go to http://localhost:8080/samples and you should see this:



Now try the samples. If they work you have succeeded! Congratulations.

Running it on a Mac, I noticed several advantages. First, the start up time is really fast -- it started in 28 seconds. For contrast, at MAX 2007 in Barcelona, the same software on a PC with 2 GB RAM took about 1:35 to start. I have 4 GB of RAM on an Intel Core 2 Duo machine so it gives it a small advantage.

Enjoy! Let me know if you thought this was cool.

Adobe Acrobat 8: One upgrade you won't want to skip!!

Acrobat will release yet another version this year bring the number of major releases to 8. Many people, including myself, start to wonder “what can be done in version 8 to warrant another major release?” with great skepticism. After all, don’t most people just use acrobat for making PDF’s? Well hold on to your seats! This release is major. Acrobat 8 is by far the largest single functional gain I have ever seen in any product release from one version to the next.



For starters – take a look at the welcome screen. The first two, “Create PDF” and “Combine Files” are not that compelling and have been done before, but the other six are very noteworthy. First – being able to “start a meeting” is something that seems foreign to Acrobat, but makes as much sense here as it does in Mac OS/X and Win 32. Think about it. You write documents to capture thoughts and share them with others. Why not have a live meeting (aka video phones of the future) to go over the ideas? When you click “Start meeting”, the menus give you options to connect to another group of people. You can screen share documents and presentations, set up a virtual meeting URL to communicate anytime, anywhere, set up a conference on the fly and much more with no software downloads for other participants. The meeting is given via a complimentary 90 day trial to Acrobat Connect (formerly the software known as Macromedia Breeze). Note – be sure to register your trial of purchased copy of Acrobat 8. You will get an email that provides free services as part of the package.



Another immensely cool thing is how Acrobat 8 integrates with Adobe LiveCycle Policy Server. Adobe has fully embraced the Software as a Service (SaaS) model (very web 2.0-ish). The hosted policy server allows you to place default policies on all documents you create. This gives you great control over the documents. You can revoke a document after distribution (Policy Server works with a new model of “persistent policy protection”). You can also audit and track who has read your document. No more “suspecting” your colleagues haven’t read your important documents – now you can tell for sure.

Another really cool feature is the ability to make any document into an electronic PDF form. This is far easier than in previous versions of Acrobat. There are automated wizards to help you make a form based on an existing form, existing document or from scratch.

Long and short – this is a killer upgrade. If you skipped 6 or 7, you will want to go right to Acrobat 8 Pro. It established Adobe as a serious player in the whole “web 2.0” movement (note that we still don’t know what “web 2.0” really means, but think it is cool).

Johnny Rotten, Artificial Intelligence and LiveCycle

My new photo, taken by Matt Mackenzie, has caused a stir in the tech community, but in my own true fashion, I really don’t care. So What!! The concern seems to be that I have a striking similarity to Johnny Lydon a.k.a. Johnny Rotten of Sex Pistols and P.I.L. fame. Of course - as a punk musician, the Pistols were one of my all time favorite bands and a major influence. In fact, my new band, F.L.U., is heavily influenced by a sound created by the Pistols. I also find that P.I.L was imenseley more musically interesting than the Pistols. Therefore, I find any comparison to Johnny a major compliment and there are some similarities:

1. Neither of us is complacent. If something is broken - do something about it.
2. Both of us are musicians who write and perform politically driven music.
3. We both push the boundaries. No society advances without someone constantly provoking it. People hate it but it needs to be done.
4. I guess there may be a slight resemblance between my picture and some from his site but you judge. I personally thought I was more like Billy Idol from Gen-X. Met the guy once - we do look alike.



Do we look alike? !!! Or do I look more like this:



So what the hell does this have to do with artificial intelligence and Adobe LiveCycle. Artificial Intelligence is a huge waste of time and will never work. What is promising is the concept of Computational Intelligence or getting computers to aspects of mimic intelligence based on our expectations. There are two very important and almost always neglected aspects of CI. One is the lack of context. Context is everything, especially for inference. Look at the Sex Pistols putting out Never Mind the Bullocks made a lot of people at the time very upset for a number of reasons. It was insulting to the queen of England and talked about real things we all think. Keep in mind this perspective, the Queen of England once hated Rock and Roll, but has since knighted several rock musicians. In the context of rock’s invention, it was not accepted however over time, it became an acceptable art form (WFT that really means). Looking back now, the Pistols got an entire generation to sit up and say "something’s not working here and were pissed". In the right context, I would nominate Johnny and the boys for giving an entire generation the message that they better think for themselves and things can be changed. It changed my life. When I had the chance to work for the United Nations and be disruptive and tell people who were full of crap that they were full of crap. I did it and I am proud of that.

The point is that Context is everything and most approaches to artificial intelligence seem to be rather static than dynamic. Most of the AI research to date in the field of Ontologies and semantics seems to take a hard coded approach. This is not how humans think.

To add to the problem, there is one other important thing that humans do well that computers cannot do as well. This is excellently summed up in David Luckham who I consider a genius in every sense of the word. Definitely on par with Johnny. Simply stated, it is the ability to detect two events, recognize the context in which they occur and understand the causality relationship between them For example, if you came home and saw that your spouses car was gone, that is one event. If you then saw a guy carrying a TV around the corner, that in itself is another event. Now put the two events together and the causality may point to a situation where they are stealing your TV because the house is empty and they helped themselves. Easy for a human, not so easy for a programmer to capture this model in a generalized sense so it can be reused over multiple examples.

To make Computational Intelligence work, one would require a model for Complex Event Programing, an inference engine using something like the Blackboard patterns with a hypothesis limiter on it to negate the exponential hypothesis problem, a context ontology to layer over top of whatever semantic reasoning one might employ, and a large enough source of events that be used to feed it all. The latter is very important since event isolation would lead to an incomplete set of events to mine for the inference component and probably miss key things.

This is where Adobe LiveCycle enters. LiveCycle, as a platform, has several key places where events are captured and stored in a manner that they can be audited later. The next generation of the LiveCycle platform and the blades that plug into it carry a much more complex series of audit trails than the last version.

Here is a hypothetical situation where a phishing attack is starting. A mass email goes out and tells customers of a bank to use their forms to change their password because of a security breach. If you use LiveCycle Forms, served from a LiveCycle Form Manager, you will generate an auditable event each time one of your customers grabs the form. If your customers account is then accesses and a transfer form is filled out, that will also generate a second event. You now have two events that have a relationship to one thing - the unique account. This should be a relatively easy pattern to catch if you are using LiveCycle as a platform over your IT infrastructure. If you were to use multiple disparate technologies, it could also be caught however this may take more hard work to account for different Document models and mine the events at the same level of granularity.

LiveCycle Policy Server will be able to make events accessible in the LC 8 release and via the SDK, some events are available now. This should be useful to companies who are serious about thwarting criminal behaviour linked to people using their IT infrastructure.

Back to Johnny Rotten now. Things have to change in the world. The pistols and PIL changed me and now I am feeding back change into the world. People need to start thinking about this stuff and start finding ways to fix it. Come to think of it, I guess I am not too changed from my previous punk days. The picture on the left was taken in July of 2006 ;-)