Domino Query Language (DQL) Explorer
Update - December 2021: IBM sold the Collaboration Solutions business to HCL in December 2018 (wow time flies). The content of the post below may contain product names and links to material that are no longer valid. However the code examples or link to code sample may continue to be useful to others.
Original post content
From the Domino documentation, “Domino Query Language (DQL) is a facility running in Domino core allowing for a terse shorthand syntax for finding documents according to a wide variety of complexity of terms. It leverages existing design elements without the need to write detailed code to access them.”
In mid-January, Scott Good and I started conversations with Andrew Manby (Domino Product Manager) and Luis Guirigay (World Wide Technical Leader) on a tool that would facilitate the creation of DQL queries by non-developers. After a few weeks of work, this new tool was introduced at Think 2019 as DQL Explorer.
Today we are excited to announce that we plan on making the code for this project available both on GitHub and OpenNTF.
DQL Explorer is built as a web-based UI using React on the front end and a Domino database for storage and some configuration functionality. It provides a means for non-developers to use Domino Query Language to easily search and return data from Domino databases.
Luis and Andrew introduce it at IBM Think 2019: https://youtu.be/OMjSND5cPsE
Scott also provides a great overview of the capabilities: https://youtu.be/Cfw_6Wvk8c8
How DQL Explorer was built
- React. A JavaScript library for building user interfaces. The application is built using React without bloat, i.e. no Redux.
- Office UI Fabric React components. The official front-end framework for building experiences that fit seamlessly into Office and Office 365. We used it as it is MIT licensed and allows for a seamless experience in the context of Office 365 where a lot of our Domino customers tend to work.
- Fontawesome. All icons used in the application are based on the free Fontawesome library.
- Domino. IBM Domino has always been a stable, secure, and trusted platform for developing and hosting business-focused collaboration applications. Choose from a variety of platforms and operating systems to deliver critical business applications, built for today’s world by today’s developers. Access your applications from an Apple iPad and even operate in disconnected mode on iOS. Secure to the core, IBM Domino V10 has self-healing and auto-repair, which will further reduce your risk of exposure to outage or failure. Learn how the value of IBM Domino has been extended dramatically.
How you can help
- Sharing this post article with your network, always appreciated!
- Contributing and/or testing. You can fork the repo and create pull request for any updates you make. Some suggestions on things to work on are under the Issues in the GitHub repo.