We want to grant you unparalleled access to the torrent of new technology that we have been releasing since the first quarter of this year. We have spent 3 years completely rebuilding our technology stack from the ground up and we’re ready for the whole world to have a look.

Front and center is the Infinity, the Rich Internet Application (RIA) platform that powers two of our shipping products Blackbaud Enterprise CRM and Blackbaud Direct Marketing. We think it’s so cool we have posted a link on labs.blackbaud.com so anyone out there can take it for a test drive.

Expect to see a lot more on the labs. Oh, if you are a developer — stay tuned, we’re about to knock your socks off

Have fun!

Is that Linux? Yep.

So, as we exit one of the most intense R&D cycles in the 18 years I’ve been at Blackbaud, I took some time to reflect back on our initial goals for the platform and do a little internal report card of sorts around how I think we did. I won’t bore you with the details, or maybe I will in another post, but for now I’d like to look at one place where I give the team an A+.

You didn’t think I was going to blog about the “B” grade did you?

Goal: Embrace web standards to maximize interoperability

I know, it’s a mouthful, but I can’t figure out how to put it any more succinctly. Two years ago it was obvious to the team here that we needed to be web delivered and if we were going to be web delivered we should use as many standards-based technologies as possible.

Larry’s Linux App

This was important to us particularly in the area of how we exposed our API stack. We decided on using SOAP-based web services to support our API and extensibility models. Interestingly, we have also sprinkled in REST-based access to the services as well, but in general we are a SOAP shop. It wasn’t as if we were making some visionary choice. Our core applications are built on Microsoft SQL Server 2005 and ASP.NET 2.0 using Microsoft Visual Studio — we are a Microsoft shop — and Microsoft plays real nice with SOAP. Seriously, Microsoft did a great job with their development tools plumbing SOAP into the deepest levels of the platform, safely abstracting the developer away (well only if you want to be) from the gory details of the actual XML messages, wire format, WSDL etc. Our real visionary architectural decisions were made around how Infinity exposes all of it’s data and functionality via web services, with zero compromises.

“Let’s see just how platform agnostic the API is. Let’s build something on Linux”

That’s what I said to the team. So, as is always the case with the folks on my team, a developer jumped at the challenge. I have the luxury of having a brilliant team of developers here, so it was no surprise when two days later, Larry showed up at my door with a working application. The Apache/PHP based application provides basic search an record management capabilities by using the web services APIs exposed by our Infinity platform. It really was a proud moment, one that made all the rigor and discipline that has gone into building the Infinity platform *totally* worth it. I love when a plan comes together like that.

Two worlds, two totally different flavors of Kool-Aid, one application. It was borderline heresy in the Microsoft worshiping halls of Blackbaud — and it worked great.

Grandma to the rescue

Grandma’s LAMP

Initially, we were all so clueless about Linux it was comical. Picture three nerds poking and prodding at a computer with quizzical looks, not knowing where to start. It was a true “showing fire to the natives” type of moment. So, we did what anybody would do, and typed “Linux for my grandma” into Google. Bingo! Within minutes we had a Linux VM even the Blackbaud team could use! OK, so maybe I took some creative license on how it went down, but that’s pretty much what happened. Really.

Grandma’s LAMP was the perfect tool for the job — a pre-built VMWare image with the LAMP stack, samba, Firefox etc. All there and ready to use. The fact that Larry was then able to build a super-clean PHP wrapper that made it trivial to exercise our API from PHP and then build what he did in two days was proof enough for me that the mission was accomplished.

PHP Meets Infinity

2007 is going to be a fun year. If you see me at a conference some time please ask me to boot up ole Granny and show you what I am talking about here. We’ll include it in the Infinity SDK as well. Sure, this
was an exercise and proof of concept, but maybe someday Larry’s code will help somebody solve a thorny integration problem with our systems and some other application out there in the cloud.

Thanks Grandma!

I also uploaded a sample that demonstrates how to write a simple plugin using the Raiser’s Edge 7.81 and Visual Basic .NET 2005.
You can view the project page here.
(Note this sample will only work with RE 7.81 or later, since 7.81 ships with the required .NET 2.0 support files)

Did you know that Plugins do not require an API license to create? That’s right, grab this sample, play with it, make your own plugins and contribute them to the project/community! The only restriction I am making is I am putting all code under a Creative Commons License.

I’ll be up front with you, I probably won’t have much time to field direct questions on any code I post. Also, this isn’t officially suported Blackbaud product. That said, if you are looking for a place to learn more about using our extensive APIs and plugins, I hope this community will serve as a launch pad. I’ll upload more stuff when I get free time and inspiration. What I’d most like to see is what you come up with.

Now go buy that .NET book and start coding! Be sure to let me know if you’d like to contribute code or projects, I’ll add you to the open source team. Make something really cool and we may ask you to join the Blackbaud Product Development team

Shaun