Once upon a time there was a boy called Jack. We all know the story of how he swapped a cow for three magic beans, how his mother threw the beans out of the window and a beanstalk grew. And everyone knows how Jack climbed up the beanstalk “to bravely rid the world of a vicious ogre”, how he “liberated” an enormous fortune, “boldly lured the ogre onto the beanstalk” and “slew the terrifying monster”. Well, that’s the version Jack’s PR agent ensured was in his official biography “Small But Perfectly Formed: How I Cut An Ogre Down To Size”.
What isn’t so well known is how he frittered his wealth away on fast cars, faster women, and analytics companies. The experimental 3D movie he made of his life, with millions spent on the latest computer-generated special effects, bombed at the cinemas. And after three wives and far too many paternity suits, he was left penniless, devoid of friends and begging on the streets.
That’s when his life changed…again. A wealthy IT consultant wandered past him late one evening. “Spare some change, gov?” Jack pleaded.
“Sorry,” said the IT consultant. “No cash.”
“Come on, mate. Pleeease!”
“I said I’ve got no money,” the IT consultant retorted in an annoyed tone, kicking Jack back with his £200 shoes.
“Come on. You expect me to believe that?” Jack responded in an authoritative tone. “I was wealthy once. I know you always carry some cash on you, at least £50.”
“Ok. You want cash, tramp? Take this.” With that the IT consultant threw a USB stick at him.
“What the **** am I supposed to do with this?” Jack screamed as the IT consultant strode away.
“If you really were wealthy once, you’d know. It’ll make you rich…after a fashion. There’s a database on it. It’s got three managed beans.” He laughed and left Jack puzzling over his comments.
First he tried burying the USB stick in the ground. That was the only way he could think of getting money from beans. He woke excitedly the following morning and looked at the ground, but there was nothing there. He tried watering it, tried adding some manure. Still no joy.
In despair he dug it up, went to an internet cafe and stuck it in the PC that still had some credit left. He opened up the folder and saw a zip file and within it something called “xHelp.nsf”. After some Googling (which brought back painful memories, because when he was rich he had turned down the opportunity to buy Google back when no one knew about it), he found that this was something called a Domino application from OpenNTF developed with something called XPages.
Several weeks later, after downloading his free copy of Domino Designer thanks to XPages.info and installing the XPages Extension Library, reading through “Mastering XPages” from cover to cover, following TLCC’s courses and signing up for XPages 101, and watching every episode of Notes in 9, Jack finally understood a little about the “XPages Help Application“. Over the following days he studied it further. Opening the Package Explorer and the faces-config.xml, Jack found the three managed beans. But he was still none the wiser as to how he could become rich from it. Was there some managed beanstalk somewhere in the XSP Command Manager or the JVM? None of the documentation mentioned anything like that. If he put the application on the server, would a managed beanstalk reach out into the internet and magically transfer money into a bank account for him? That didn’t seem to work. Annoyed and dispirited, he gave up.
Months later he was begging by an underground station when he saw the IT consultant. He recognised the man and accosted him. “Oi! You said this would make me rich? But it’s nothing but a stupid database. I found your three managed beans, but how are they supposed to make me rich?”
“You looked at the application, then?” the IT consultant asked. “You did some research, learned about Domino development?”
“Yeah. So what?”
“You found PlanetLotus? Read the blogs?”
“Yeah. And?”
“Well, now you’ve seen some more advanced topics of XPages, like managed beans and using themes to set all manner of properties on your controls. Take the certification exams and you can get a job as a Domino developer. Just look for the announcements from Duffbert and start applying. You won’t make millions, but you’ll get a wealth of knowledge. And when you build your first XPages application, you now have somewhere to create your help files and make them accessible to your users.” So Jack followed the advice. He never found a managed beanstalk, didn’t make a mint, but did live happily ever after.
Well, sort of, but that’s a different story!
If you liked this story, I’ve also written a couple of short stories on my website.
Paul, you officially win the internet.
Excellent post. Thanks. You’ve just made my day.