by Niklas Heidloff 

Accessing Bluemix Services from Client-side Web Applications  

By Niklas Heidloff | 8/7/17 6:45 AM | - | Added by Oliver Busse

Bluemix is IBM’s cloud platform to build and host applications which can leverage more than 100 services, for example databases and cognitive services. The services provide APIs which require credentials. Applications which are hosted on Bluemix as Cloud Foundry apps or Docker containers can access these credentials from environment variables. This article describes how to invoke Bluemix services from client-side web applications.

Introducing the Conversation Inspector for IBM Watson  

By Niklas Heidloff | 7/31/17 9:01 AM | - | Added by Oliver Busse

My colleague Ansgar Schmidt and I have developed a new tool for developers to simplify building conversational user experiences with IBM Watson Conversation. The tool displays JSON data of REST API requests that is sent between applications and the Watson Conversation service and it allows developers to modify outgoing JSON messages.

GitLab now available in Bluemix  

By Niklas Heidloff | 5/31/17 8:08 AM | - | Added by Kenio Carvalho

I’m still catching up on all the new functionality that has been added to IBM Bluemix over the last year. One new capability is to use GitLab for source control and lightweight project management.

Deploying Angular 2 Apps to Bluemix  

By Niklas Heidloff | 4/11/17 8:12 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger

Over the last months I’ve done quite a lot of Angular 2 development (now Angular 4). Below is a description how to create a new Angular app and deploy it as Docker container to Bluemix in just a few minutes. There are several ways to deploy Angular apps to Bluemix. For example you can build a simple Node.js web server to host the files. Or you can leverage existing HTTP servers like nginx.

Quick Update  

By Niklas Heidloff | 9/1/16 6:05 AM | - | Added by Oliver Busse

Some people have asked why I haven’t blogged since June. Here is why … Almost two years ago I started to work for IBM Emerging Technologies. I wanted to work in this group for multiple reasons. One reason was because some of the people in that group worked as developer evangelists for Bluemix which is what I wanted to do as well.

Pictures from Bluemix at DNUG  

By Niklas Heidloff | 6/4/16 9:10 AM | - | Added by Oliver Busse

This week I attended DNUG in Hamburg/Germany. DNUG is the German user group for IBM Collaboration Solutions. In the app dev track several sessions covered Bluemix.

My Thoughts on the Next Generation of IBM Domino App Dev  

By Niklas Heidloff | 4/5/16 5:48 AM | - | Added by Oliver Busse

Before I started to work on Bluemix I had worked 15 years in the IBM Collaboration Solutions space, especially on application development. Below are my personal thoughts on how app dev in IBM Domino could evolve, both on-premises and in the cloud.

How to build Line of Business Applications with Bluemix  

By Niklas Heidloff | 3/23/16 2:14 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger

Tomorrow I’ll give a session at EngageUG with the title “Live on the Edge of Innovation with IBM Bluemix”. Bluemix is IBM’s innovation platform which supports developers to write new applications and functionality easily and fast without having to worry about infrastructure.

One Year of Bluemix.info  

By Niklas Heidloff | 12/1/15 5:53 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger

One year ago I launched Bluemix.info, a news aggregator for Bluemix developers. Over the last year I’ve published 1004 links to Bluemix related articles written by 279 people. Many Bluemix developers read Bluemix.info frequently, I’ve received a lot of positive feedback.

Visually develop REST APIs in Node and monitor them on Bluemix  

By Niklas Heidloff | 10/7/15 4:27 PM | - | Added by Oliver Busse

Last month IBM acquired StrongLoop, a company that provides functionality to power the API economy via Node in enterprises. Specifically StrongLoop provides capabilities to develop REST APIs in Node.js, access them easily from various clients including mobile apps and manage and monitor them in enterprises. Below is a high level description and some resources how you can use these features on IBM Bluemix.

IBM Bluemix for Administrators with Focus on XPages  

By Niklas Heidloff | 9/22/15 7:35 PM | - | Added by Oliver Busse

Yesterday I attended AdminCamp which is a yearly conference for IBM Domino and IBM Connections administrators. I gave the opening session about IBM Bluemix administration with a focus on XPages. Here are the slides.

Invoking the Insights for Twitter Service in Bluemix from Swift  

By Niklas Heidloff | 9/9/15 2:43 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger

"Hear the Buzz" is a sample iPhone app which finds tweets with positive or negative sentiments for certain topics via the IBM Insights for Twitter service in IBM Bluemix. Below is a short description how this service is used from Swift. As a starting point I used the sample app from my colleague Frederic Lavigne.

Hear the Buzz - iOS App using Twitter and Watson Services from IBM Bluemix  

By Niklas Heidloff | 9/8/15 2:29 AM | - | Added by Oliver Busse

"Hear the Buzz" is a sample iPhone app which finds tweets with positive or negative sentiments for topics which users enter manually or via iOS speech recognition. The discovered list of tweets can be read or users can listen to them.

IBM MobileFirst Platform Server available as Trial on Bluemix  

By Niklas Heidloff | 8/26/15 3:23 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger

IBM Bluemix provides several services to build backend functionality for mobile iOS, Android and hybrid apps. There are mobile services to store data server and client side, to handle authentication, to send notifications, to monitor particular apps, ways for users to provide feedback and more.

Accessing Bluemix Services from Liberty Java Applications in Docker Containers  

By Niklas Heidloff | 8/25/15 3:43 PM | - | Added by John Oldenburger

IBM Bluemix allows developers to host their Docker images and to run their Docker containers in the cloud. In addition to hosting Docker in the cloud, Bluemix also provides more than 100 services that developers can use to build applications.

Deploying Docker Containers via Bluemix DevOps Pipelines  

By Niklas Heidloff | 8/20/15 1:03 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger

In addition to the Docker and IBM Containers CLIs (command line interfaces) you can also use IBM Bluemix DevOps pipelines to build images and run containers on the server. DevOps pipelines have multiple stages. Usually in the first step you build your application code, for example via Maven for Java applications.

Deploying Web Applications generated by Yeoman on Bluemix  

By Niklas Heidloff | 8/18/15 7:17 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger

My colleague Ryan Baxter pointed me to a nice tool to set up new web applications. The tool is called Yeoman, the "web's scaffolding tool for modern webapps". The tool helps especially developers who often create prototypes and first iterations of new projects.

Accessing On-Premises Data from XPages Applications on Bluemix  

By Niklas Heidloff | 8/17/15 3:12 PM | - | Added by Oliver Busse

When building new applications on the cloud, enterprises often need to access existing data that resides on-premises. Below is a high level description how to access data in on-premises XPages NoSQL databases from XPages applications running on IBM Bluemix.

Get started with Apache Spark on Bluemix  

By Niklas Heidloff | 8/12/15 6:36 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger

Recently IBM has added a beta version of the new Apache Spark service to IBM Bluemix. Apache Spark is a fast and general engine for large-scale data processing. Performance benchmarks have shown that it can be up to 100 times faster than Hadoop.

Running Java Applications from Eclipse IDEs in Docker Liberty Containers  

By Niklas Heidloff | 8/11/15 6:40 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger

Before my vacation I blogged about the Docker tooling in Eclipse to build Liberty based images for Bluemix. This tooling helps to create images and containers including the applications which is the end result of what developers produce.

Docker Tooling in Eclipse to build Liberty based Images for Bluemix  

By Niklas Heidloff | 7/22/15 8:23 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger

While some developers prefer command line tools, I often use graphical tools if available since I cannot memorize all the different commands. That's why I tried the relative new Docker Tooling for Eclipse. The plugin is relative new and there is certainly room for improvements but it helps with managing images.

Maven Plugin to install Web Resources in Bluemix Java Projects via Bower  

By Niklas Heidloff | 7/21/15 2:55 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger

Similarly to the dependency managers mvn, npm, cocoapods, etc. Bower is a nice dependency manager for web resources to pull down JavaScript, CSS and other files. This makes it easy for developers to find and install certain libraries. Plus the same functionality can be integrated in the build process.

Accessing On-Premises Data from XPages Applications on Bluemix  

By Niklas Heidloff | 7/20/15 1:03 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger

When building new applications on the cloud, enterprises often need to access existing data that resides on-premises. Below is a high level description how to access data in on-premises XPages NoSQL databases from XPages applications running on IBM Bluemix.

Bluemix Selfie Drone now available as Open Source  

By Niklas Heidloff | 7/16/15 4:46 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger

The Bluemix Selfie Drone is now available as open source. Get the code from GitHub. The project contains an application to take selfies via a Parrot AR Drone 2.0. Via navigation buttons in a web application the drone can be steered and a series of pictures can be taken.

Cloud Foundry Maven Plugin to build and deploy Bluemix Applications  

By Niklas Heidloff | 7/15/15 9:34 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger

For some people this is old news, but I just used for the first time the Cloud Foundry Maven Plugin to build and deploy a Bluemix application and it made the deployment really easy. Below are some of the key concepts I used. I built a Java application that leverages the AlchemyAPI service.

Having Fun with the Bluemix Selfie Drone  

By Niklas Heidloff | 7/14/15 4:51 AM | - | Added by Oliver Busse

Recently I had some time to build another IBM Bluemix demonstration which showcases the Internet of Things functionality and cognitive Watson services. With the "Bluemix Selfie Drone" application you can take selfies via a Parrot AR Drone 2.0 drone and tweet the portraits on the pictures.

WebSocket Support in Java Applications on Bluemix via the Liberty Runtime  

By Niklas Heidloff | 7/9/15 1:44 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger

Since Liberty profile 8.5.5.4 you can use web sockets in your Java applications. This allows sending events from the server to web clients without having to poll the server. The blog describes this core functionality pretty well and comes with a short video and a sample application.

Visualize Sensor Data from IoT Devices in Bluemix  

By Niklas Heidloff | 7/8/15 2:05 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger

Recently I learned about a nice application to visualize data from sensors (and events) of your Internet of Things devices that you've registered with the IoT Foundation in IBM Bluemix. This can be useful to see live changes of your data and it's also possible to see historical data.

Usage of Cloudant NoSQL Databases in XPages Applications  

By Niklas Heidloff | 7/7/15 6:00 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger

IBM Bluemix provides various database services, one of them is the Cloudant NoSQL DB. Cloudant provides a REST API and many client libraries to access the service. In the past I've used the Java API Ektorp for other projects. Today I tried how to use this API from XPages which is a JSF based runtime running on IBM Domino.

Getting started with Internet of Things in Bluemix with Texas Instruments Boards  

By Niklas Heidloff | 6/24/15 5:03 AM | - | Added by John Oldenburger

Last week at the hackathon at Devoxx we handed out some SimpleLink Wi-Fi CC3200 LaunchPads that developers could use for their hacks. These devices are rather cheap (around 40 Euro), have a built in Wifi and provide various sensors: temperature, accelerometer, buttons, network quality.