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We are excited to share that HCL Domino has been selected as a leader in several G2 categories in their Winter 2023 report! G2 is a global peer review site that scores products based on reviews gathered from nearly 2M users.

• Top 50 Best Development Products of 2023 – This recognition is earned based on the analysis of HCL Domino’s product Satisfaction and Market Presence scores within its category.
  
• Momentum Leader Application Development Platform – Products in the Leader Tier in the Momentum Grid rank in the top 25% of their category’s product by their users.
• Rapid Application Development Leader – Products in the Leader quadrant in the Grid® Report are rated highly by G2 users and have substantial Satisfaction and Market Presence scores.
• Low-code Development Platform Leader – Products in the Leader quadrant in the Grid® Report are rated highly by G2 users and have substantial Satisfaction and Market Presence scores

Here are some G2 customer quotes from 2023 reviews for Domino:

• “Domino is most secure and easy to use”
• “…an underrated piece of software with exceptional ROI…”
• “From CRM to BigData, it solved most of our business challenges!”
• “Hands down, still the best low code collaborative system”
• “The most integrated, easiest to use collab solution. Absolute portability, clustering, security, low code development in one integrated solution.”
• “You can create complex applications in a very fast way which leaves the competition far behind. The Domino server is very performant and doesn’t need many resources, even when 1000s of users connect at the same time. Thanks to the backward compatibility, upgrading a piece of cake. And then I’m not even mentioning the power of replication.”

Leave a HCL Domino G2 Review:
Learn more about what other users have to say (or leave your own review of HCL Domino) on G2’s HCL Domino review page! To all our customers who gave reviews…thank you! These reviews help us evaluate our products, and we look forward to building on the experience that earned us these badges.

Organizations are driven to adopt citizen development due to the increased demand for software and the need for more skilled developers. Through citizen development programs, non-technical employees can develop unique software applications for themselves or their teams with little to no coding experience.

The most common citizen development areas are customer service, finance, operations, and HR. This framework increases the number of developers available to your business and adds knowledge and an original perspective to the software development process.

 

What is Citizen Development?

When non-IT-trained staff members use low-code/no-code (LCNC) platforms to create business-critical applications, this approach is known as “citizen development.” It approves applications made using citizen development techniques.

This separates the meaning of citizen development from that of shadow IT. Non-IT experts, known as citizen developers, look for low-code or no-code solutions to solve their problems.

As digital agility develops, more employees become citizen developers and produce their applications. Citizen developers can be found in many organizations’ human resources, R&D, finance, and customer service divisions.

 

Who is a Citizen Developer?

A citizen developer is an employee who uses low-code or no-code platforms to build software applications for their team or others without the help of IT. Rather than being a role, a citizen developer is a personality. They use development techniques that IT has approved and sanctioned while they create programs in runtime environments.

Each citizen programmer possesses unique skills and expertise in specialized domains but needs more coding experience. They are change-driven problem solvers with a basic understanding of technology. Drag-and-drop interfaces are used by the users of no-code and low-code platforms to implement their ideas.

 

The Need for a Citizen Development Platform

Efficiency and productivity have increased for companies that invest time and money in the citizen development community. Earlier, businesses used to waste time waiting for IT specialists to fix a problem, but nowadays, citizen development platforms have become a regular procedure in many application development organizations.

Also, any employee who learns and understands the use of LCNC platforms can create software or teach a fellow employee, expanding the community of citizen developers. Any business process becomes more efficient in both situations.

 

Benefits of Citizen development

Citizen development helps build business agility and enhances sustainability. Some of the major benefits of citizen development in an organization are:

Enhanced Agility
Citizen developers may create solutions in a fraction of the time required by conventional software development techniques, responding promptly to changing business needs. Companies can stay one step ahead of the competition and quickly change directions to take on new challenges.

Affordable Solutions
Citizen developers can build solutions faster and inexpensively with low-code and no-code platforms than with conventional software development techniques. Because of this, it is simpler for businesses to keep within their budgets and maximize their investment.

Efficiency and New Ideas
The field of application development is expanding every day. A business that wants to stay current must frequently produce new applications. Organizations can create apps that respond to changing requirements and market demands due to LCNC and citizen development. To build apps that adapt to new needs and market demands much faster than before. Citizen application development motivates innovation and fosters creative thinking.

Speed
The time it takes to release new apps is reduced by citizen development. For example, app users can provide immediate feedback to citizen developers who are developing it. They are capable of making corrections on their own if something needs mending. Since non-IT experts are more familiar with business requirements and difficulties, their solutions typically provide better problem-solving and improved customer experiences.

Better user experience
Citizen developers can develop solutions specifically targeted to end customers’ needs due to their distinctive perspective. As a result, users have a better experience using the products, and adoption rates are higher.

Greater Innovation
Companies can access a fresh source of innovation and creativity by enabling citizen developers. This results in increased innovation and the development of unique solutions that can drive growth and competitiveness.

Improved Alignment with Business Goals
Citizen developers can develop solutions per the organization’s goals because they thoroughly understand the business and its objectives. Better results and more effective resource use are the results of this.

Businesses that invest in citizen developers stand to gain significantly from cost savings, enhanced agility, an improved user experience, increased innovation, and better alignment with corporate objectives. For businesses of all sizes, the advent of the citizen developer movement heralds a new era in software development. Accept this modification and benefit from a more productive and efficient development process.

 

HCL Domino – An Ideal Platform for Citizen Developers

HCL Domino, a rapid application development platform, continues evolving to meet the needs of the modern business — it’s collaborative, low-code, mobile, and web-ready.

The latest release of Domino, v12.0.2, makes it easy to develop robust, secure, and enterprise-grade workflow-based applications.

HCL Domino empowers you to become a citizen developer by providing a low-code platform that enables you to create custom business applications, automate processes, and streamline collaboration without requiring extensive technical skills.  And helping citizen developers across verticals build applications up to 60-70% faster to automate their manual processes and drive efficiency, productivity, and transparency. Click here for a demo.

Shoptalk US is just around the corner! We invite YOU to join us for this exciting three-day conference from March 26th to March 29th in Las Vegas. With over 8,000 attendees, 500+ speakers, and 300+ exhibitors, Shoptalk US is the retail industry’s premier event of the year. By attending, you’ll learn from industry leaders, gain new ideas, and network with peers to stay ahead of the game in retail.

The dedicated HCL Customer Experience team will be there, and we are offering YOU the chance to sign up in advance for 1-1 meetings with the team! We look forward to sharing insights with you on how to transform your digital commerce strategy and drive growth in today’s rapidly evolving marketplace.

Our expertise in the retail industry has already helped some of the biggest brands unlock growth with our commerce solutions. We’re excited that several of our HCL Commerce customers, including Abercrombie & Fitch, Lowe’s, Boots/Walgreen Alliance, and IKEA, will be keynote speakers at the event.

And that’s not all: We have a special treat in store! Visit our coffee cart for a FREE cup of coffee!

Don’t miss out on this incredible opportunity to learn, connect, and grow your business! Let’s grab a cup of coffee together, and let’s discuss how HCL Commerce can help you transform your digital commerce strategy and drive growth.

Send an email to David Lebowitz, Steven Drane or Sierra Bhatia and let’s pre-book a 1-1 meeting at Shoptalk US!

Learn more about Shoptalk here.

Load balancing refers to efficiently distributing incoming network traffic across a group of backend servers, also known as a “server farm” or “server pool.”

A load balancer acts as the “traffic cop” sitting in front of your servers and routing client requests across all servers capable of fulfilling those requests in a manner that maximizes speed and capacity utilization and ensures that no one server is overworked, which could degrade performance. If a single server goes down, the load balancer redirects traffic to the remaining online servers. When a new server is added to the server group, the load balancer automatically starts to send requests to it.

In this manner, a load balancer performs the following functions:

• Distributes client requests or network load efficiently across multiple servers
• Ensures high availability and reliability by sending requests only to servers that are online
• Provides the flexibility to add or subtract servers as demand dictates

HCL Compass also offers the capability to configure load balancing, to distribute the client requests across all available Compass Web (CQWeb) servers.

This blog discusses about how to load balance two Compass web servers using an IBM HTTP Server 9.0.0.11 that is using the WebSphere plugin.

Host details:

Host-1: ending with number 26921

OS: Windows Standard 2019 64Bit

Host-2: ending with number 35411

OS: Windows Standard 2019 64Bit

Environment details:

HCL Compass version: 2.2.0

WAS/IHS version: 9.0.0.11

Prerequisites:

* The following applications installed and configured on both hosts;

WAS-9.0.0.11 and IHS-9.0.0.11

Compass – 2.2.0

* Compass Web server profiles created and configured on both hosts

Important Note: We have considered the first Compass Web Server Host-1 itself as the load balancer host. You can consider a third host for configuring load balancing, in addition to the number of Compass web servers you include as a part of load balancing.

Procedure for configuring load balancing begins from here:

1. Setup Session Affinity:

Session affinity directs requests from a given client to a specific application server. The application state maintained in the HTTP session is accessed in the HTTP session cache, which is local to the application server. Session affinity provides higher performance than database persistence of the session object, alone. Without session affinity, session requests must be obtained from the database if they are sent to a server that does not have the session object in the local cache. To configure a unique HTTP session clone ID using the WebSphere Integrated Solutions Console (ISC), complete the following steps for each WebSphere application server on Host-1 and Host-2.

On Host-1 launch the WebSphere ISC Console: Go to Start -> All Programs -> IBM WebSphere -> IBM WebSphere Application Server V9.0 -> Profiles -> cqwebprofile -> Administrative console

Login as admin

Go To Servers > Server Types > WebSphere Application Servers > server1

Click on Configuration > Web Container Settings > Web container

Then click on Customer properties:

Under Preferences, click and click “New…”.

In the Name field enter “HttpSessionCloneId”.

In the Value field enter a unique value for the server (cqw26921). The unique value must be 8 to 9 alphanumeric characters.

In the optional Description field enter “ClearQuest web server 26921”.

Click on OK.

Click Save to save the configuration changes directly to the master configuration.

2.. Repeat the same steps on Host-2:

Note: Make sure the value of HttpSessionCloneId is 8 characters – cqw26921 & cqw35411 , as per documentation – https://www.ibm.com/docs/en/was/8.5.5?topic=iwspi-configuring-simple-load-balancing-across-multiple-application-server-profiles

3. Restart the WebSphere Application servers 26921 and 35411.

4. Generate the plugin-cfg.xml file for each application server (HOST-1 & HOST-2) using the WebSphere Integrated Solution console.

Launch the WebSphere ISC on Host-1:

Login as user “admin”

Go to Servers -> Server Types and click on “Web servers”.

Check the box beside “webserver1”

Click “Generate Plug-in” and a plugin-cfg.xml file will be created.

Note: A plugin-cfg.xml file was created. Please note its location in the messages section near the top of ISC.

Stop the IHS service on this server if it already started.

Copy this generated plugin-cfg.xml file located at

C:\Program Files\HCL\Compass\cqweb\cqwebprofile\config\cells\dfltCell\nodes\HOST-1-node\servers\webserver1\plugin-cfg.xml

To

C:\Program Files\IBM\WebSphere\Plugins\config\webserver1\ HOST-1-plugin-cfg.xml

Then rename the file C:\Program Files\HCL\Compass\cqweb\cqwebprofile\config\cells\dfltCell\nodes\HOST-1 -node\servers\webserver1\plugin-cfg.xml to something else , ex. plugin-cfg-original.xml

Repeat the same steps to generate a plugin-cfg.xml file on server Host-2

Then move a copy of this file HOST-2-plugin-cfg.xml to the first host HOST-1 under the folder

C:\Program Files\IBM\WebSphere\Plugins\config\webserver1\

Then rename the file C:\Program Files\HCL\Compass\cqweb\cqwebprofile\config\cells\dfltCell\nodes\HOST-1-node\servers\webserver1\plugin-cfg.xml to something else, ex. plugin-cfg-original.xml

5. Edit both HOST-1-plugin-cfg.xml and HOST-2-plugin-cfg.xml located in C:\Program Files (x86)\IBM\WebSphere\Plugins\config\webserver1 .

Change “localhost” to the target server’s actual IP address or its Full Qualified Domain name.

5.1. In the file – HOST-2-plugin-cfg.xml ;

Change this:

<Server CloneID=”cqw26921″ ConnectTimeout=”5″ ExtendedHandshake=”false” MaxConnections=”-1″ Name=”dfltNode_server1″ ServerIOTimeout=”900″ WaitForContinue=”false”>

<Transport ConnectionTTL=”28″ Hostname=”localhost” Port=”12080″ Protocol=”http”/>

<Transport ConnectionTTL=”28″ Hostname=”localhost” Port=”12443″ Protocol=”https”>

<Property Name=”keyring” Value=”C:\Program Files\ibm\WebSphere\Plugins/config/webserver1/plugin-key.kdb”/>

<Property Name=”stashfile” Value=”C:\Program Files\ibm\WebSphere\Plugins/config/webserver1/plugin-key.sth”/>

</Transport>

</Server>

To this:

<Server CloneID=”cqw26921″ ConnectTimeout=”5″ ExtendedHandshake=”false” MaxConnections=”-1″ Name=”dfltNode_server1″ ServerIOTimeout=”900″ WaitForContinue=”false”>

<Transport ConnectionTTL=”28″ Hostname=”<host-2 ip address>” Port=”12080″ Protocol=”http”/>

<Transport ConnectionTTL=”28″ Hostname=”=”<host-2 ip address>” Port=”12443″ Protocol=”https”>

<Property Name=”keyring” Value=”C:\Program Files\ibm\WebSphere\Plugins/config/webserver1/plugin-key.kdb”/>

<Property Name=”stashfile” Value=”C:\Program Files\ibm\WebSphere\Plugins/config/webserver1/plugin-key.sth”/>

</Transport>

</Server>

5.2. (If the HOST-1 server’s IP address was <host-1 ip address> then for HOST-1-plugin-cfg.xml)

Change this:

<Server CloneID=”cqw35411″ ConnectTimeout=”5″ ExtendedHandshake=”false” MaxConnections=”-1″ Name=”dfltNode_server1″ ServerIOTimeout=”900″ WaitForContinue=”false”>

<Transport ConnectionTTL=”28″ Hostname=”localhost” Port=”12080″ Protocol=”http”/>

<Transport ConnectionTTL=”28″ Hostname=”localhost” Port=”12443″ Protocol=”https”>

<Property Name=”keyring” Value=”C:\Program Files\ibm\WebSphere\Plugins/config/webserver1/plugin-key.kdb”/>

<Property Name=”stashfile” Value=”C:\Program Files\ibm\WebSphere\Plugins/config/webserver1/plugin-key.sth”/>

</Transport>

</Server>

To this:

<Server CloneID=”cqw35411″ ConnectTimeout=”5″ ExtendedHandshake=”false” MaxConnections=”-1″ Name=”dfltNode_server1″ ServerIOTimeout=”900″ WaitForContinue=”false”>

<Transport ConnectionTTL=”28″ Hostname=”<host-1 ip address>” Port=”12080″ Protocol=”http”/>

<Transport ConnectionTTL=”28″ Hostname=”<host-1 ip address>” Port=”12443″ Protocol=”https”>

<Property Name=”keyring” Value=”C:\Program Files (x86)\IBM\WebSphere\Plugins/config/webserver1/plugin-key.kdb”/>

<Property Name=”stashfile” Value=”C:\Program Files (x86)\IBM\WebSphere\Plugins/config/webserver1/plugin-key.sth”/>

</Transport>

</Server>

Save the files.

6. On HOST-1 if C:\Program Files\IBM\WebSphere\Plugins\config\webserver1\plugin-cfg.xml exists then rename it (plugin-cfg.xml.original) or move it to a non-working directory.

7. We need to merge the two plugin files: HOST-1-plugin-cfg.xml and HOST-2-plugin-cfg.xml

Use the pluginCfgMerge tool to combine the plugin-cfg.xml files. Open a DOS command window on the NJMYCLDDW95811 server and go to C:\Program Files (x86)\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\bin and enter the command:

C:\Program Files\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\bin>pluginCfgMerge.bat “C:\Program Files\IBM\WebSphere\Plugins\config\webserver1\HOST-1-plugin-cfg.xml” “C:\Program Files\IBM\WebSphere\Plugins\config\webserver1\HOST-2-plugin-cfg.xml” plugin-cfg.xml

Merging:

Found file C:\Program Files\IBM\WebSphere\Plugins\config\webserver1\HOST-1-plugin-cfg.xml: true

Merging a non-ODC generated plugin-cfg.xml

Found file C:\Program Files\IBM\WebSphere\Plugins\config\webserver1\HOST-2-plugin-cfg.xml: true

Merged plugin config file written to plugin-cfg.xml

Merge Complete

C:\Program Files\IBM\WebSphere\AppServer\bin>

Move the resulting plugin-cfg.xml file to C:\Program Files\IBM\WebSphere\Plugins\config\webserver1

8. Copy the key database file, plugin-key.kdb and the sth file plugin-key.sth located at

C:\Program Files\HCL\Compass\cqweb\cqwebprofile\config\cells\dfltCell\nodes\HOST-1-node\servers\webserver1

on the HOST-1 server to:

C:\Program Files\IBM\WebSphere\Plugins\config\webserver1 on the HOST-1.

Note: Before you copy these files, you will see that the same files are already existing in the folder C:\Program Files\IBM\WebSphere\Plugins\config\webserver1. You will need to first rename these files to something else, ex. Plugin-key-original.kdb and plugin-key-original.sth

Copy the key database file, plugin-key.kdb located at

C:\Program Files\HCL\Compass\cqweb\cqwebprofile\config\cells\dfltCell\nodes\HOST-2.NONPROD.HCLPNP.COM-node\servers\webserver1

on the server HOST-2 to a temporary location on the server HOST-1.

On the HOST-1 open the IBM Key Management utility.

Click on Key Database File > Open, then click on Browse and explore to the path where you have saved the kdb file copied from Host-2:

Enter the password that you had set while creating this database file on Host-2:

It will now show you the kdb file you imported in the ‘Filename’ field and ‘default’ under the ‘Personal Certificates’ field, as shown below:

Select ‘Signer Certificates’ option from the drop down and click on ‘Extract’, as shown below:

Add the recently created arm file to the database file:

Start the IHS service on Host-1 that was stopped earlier.

This completes the configuration of load balancer on Compass web servers.

To test the load balancing, you need to logon to the Compass Web URL on both hosts , i.e. https://Host-1/cqweb/ and https://<Host-2>/cqweb/ , and for both these URLs it shows the same process ID, as mentioned below:

Cqrpc process is running on Host-2, and the process id is 17608 as seen in the below screen:

When you access the CQWeb URL – https://Host-1/cqweb/ as Compass admin user, and it shows the process id of cqrpc.exe process running on Host-2, i.e. 17608 as seen below:

Note: Go to CQWeb Site Administration > Monitoring, to see these details

You can now access the CQWeb URL on Host-2 i.e., https://Host-2/cqweb/ and it also shows the same process id 17608 running on host-2, as seen in the below screen:

Reference:

https://help.hcltechsw.com/compass/2.2.0/com.hcl.compass.doc/webhelp/oxy_ex-1/com.ibm.rational.clearquest.webadmin.doc/topics/c_cqwsvr_load_balance_config.html