Author: Ulrich Krause

tmpProposedStartTime_Actual – Wrong datatype

Got a phone call from one of my users. He told me that he is not able to accept an ivitation for a meeting. Instead the following error message occurs when he tries to open the document from his inbox.

I searched the KnowledgeBase but could not find any hint, how to solve the problem. If you google for “tmpProposedStartTime_Actual” you only get two hits.

tmpProposedStartTime_Actual is a computed for display field on the (Notice) form.

The field formula references to some fields starting with “new”. I opened the document with ScanEZ and found that none of these fields contain any value ( for whatever reason ).

I deleted the fields from the document and the user was able to open the invitation.


Entwicklercamp 2010 – Day 3

As usual, the conference started at 8:30 with SpeedAgendaing and a short briefing.

I had to go and setup my environment for my presentation about “C/C++ API for Beginners” before all the speakers had shown their slides to give the audience an impression, what the session is about.

My session went well and I finished talking one minute before time. I got good response from the audience. I must admit that I totally forgot to do the demoes on the Linux client to show that the code would not only work on Windooze. Sorry for that …

After my session I attended Tim Pistor‘s presentation about Webservices. It was Tim’s first appearence as a speaker. He was a bit nervous and went thru the slides and demo code like a whirlwind.

Do you know that you even can brew coffee with Notes??  Tim and his “assistant” Werner Motzet had pimped a “Senseo” to show how you can get a cup of coffee or two using Lotus Notes and webservices. Great job, guys.

After lunch, Niklas Heidloff was on stage for the CGS. He demonstrated 20 projects, widgets and gadgets from OpenNTF in 60 minutes. Did you already watch the video he has taken during the conference asking for a statement about OpenNTF?

It was a great conference and crowded like never before. The team around Rudi again did a professional job running the conference. And so did the hotel staff.

Julian Buss wrapped up his impressions here ( in german ).


Entwicklercamp 2010 – Day 2

The day started at 8:30 with Rudi’s briefing for the day, followed by the daily speed agendaing. Some speakers had not provided their slides as requested and submitted them via mail during the speed agendaing, which made it a bit confusing for the audience.

With a delay of about 10 minutes the first session started at 9:10 am. Bernd Hort presented “Dojo and Notes” . Easy examples but great effects with only a few lines of code.

After lunch, Niklas Heidloff presented “OpenNTF projects and Dojo”. After a short introduction to OpenNTF he showed how Steve Castledine and Niklas modified the old discussin template where they used all possible techniques from Notes and Domino 8.5.x to improve the user expierience. The room was crowded and Niklas had some problems to put all the exiting stuff into 90 minutes. .

At the moment I’m attending Julian Buss talking about X-Pages in the client.Room is also crowded and it seems to get interesting. Have to stop now to concentrate on Julians’s presentation.


Entwicklercamp 2010 – Day 1

Day 1 of Entwicklercamp 2010 is over. 212 attendees from Germany, Austria, Liechtenstein, Swiss.

Prominent speakers from the US ( Andrew Pollack, Rocky Oliver … ) .

Maureen Leeland opened the conference with a keynote on Lotus Notes Designer 8.5.1 and beyond.

After lunch I attended Bob Balaban’s session on using COM from C++, VB.net and C#. Good tipp on how to get the h files from .tlb, Bob.

Matthias Bierl did a great session on how to create server addin tasks with JAVA.  In the evening there was a razzle and the usual “Questions and answers” hour. I was surprised to hear a lot of questions regarding WebServices. Had expected more on XPages.

5 parallel tracks ( including a hands-on session ) Great content, great speakers. The hotel staff is doing a great job, too.  Tomorrow we will have a full day with 4 sessions in 5 tracks.


Modify Header / Footer items via Lotusscript ( and API )

Header / Footer items are of type Richtext and you cannot modify them directly using standard LotusScript.

I’ ve put together all the necessary code and wrapped the API calls into a class to achive the goal. The class works on Windows and Linux. Mac support is possible but I have no Mac to test with.

In addition the application contains code to get the size ( and other properties ) of embedded images in a richtext item. Another code snippet provides functionality to test if a richtext item is empty.

The code is an example to show how to access Notes RichText items on the CD Record level using LS2CAPI techniques.

The application is used as a sample database for EntwicklerCamp 2010, 10-Mar-2010, Gelsenkirchen, Germany.

OpenNTF: Download sample application

A word of warning: If you really not understand how the code works, DO NOT USE IT !!


I’ll be speaking at BLUG

Yesterady I received a mail from the organizers of the BLUG event on March, 30th in Brussels, Belgium that my session on DAOS has been approved.

Here is the session abstract:

Are your servers running out of disk space? Do you have more than one bit like attachment stored in your databases? Does a standard task like fixup lasts for ages or does your backup still runs during working hours? Do you have quota enabled and your users are asking for more space?
If you can answer one or more of these questions with YES, than this session is for you.
Maximize the disk space savings provided by Domino Attachment and Object Service (DAOS) and ensure that your environment is properly configured for best performance with this feature. Save more space by simply enable design and document compression. Make sure that your attachments use best compression too. Reduce network bandwidth when replicating databases between servers and enhance the quota but not use more disk space.
Target audience is administrators or decision makers who want to know more about some older but not yet used space savers and especially about DAOS.

The event is a FREE one day event.

Jump over to the BLUG website for more information about speakers and sessions.

The venue is near the airport and hotels are available at reasonable rates. Register today!!

Did I already mention that it is F R E E ?


OpenNTF – Medusa and Bildr

There a two new projects on OpenNTF. The first one is called Medusa. Stephan Wissel mentioned it in his LCTY session in Düsseldorf. Now it is available for download on OpenNTF.

If you’re developing Xpages, you need Medusa. You need it bad. Trust me.

Bildr, by Patrick Kwinten, is another XPages application to distribute images over your Domino network. The application allows automatic resizing of images.


LCTY – Cologne

Had the chance to attend another LCTY in Cologne yesterday. The event was held by ebf, an IBM Premier Business Partner. It was free of charge and therefore,  to be honest, my expectations were not to high.

But I was positively surprised. All session had a high standard. Traveler, Sametime 8.5, Connections & Quickr, LotusLive. Except one session held by an ebf consultant and anther one by a RIM representative , all others were presented by IBM staff .

The content was a good addition to the previous LCTY in Düsseldorf where I was not able to attend sessions on this topics.

Once again, Ed Brill opened the event with an one hour keynote speech. He answered questions from the audience at the end of his speech.

After 7 sessions in 7 hours including short coffee breaks and a fantastic lunch, I spent another 2 hours in the car to get home thru heavy traffic.


LCTY Rheinland – Review

I attended LCTY Rheinland at the Swissotel Düsseldorf / Neuss yesterday. The event was run by TimeToAct and Bit Bücker. The location was a good choice. There was plenty of room to run  25 sessions in 5 parallel tracks. The session content was well choosen and so were the speakers.

The event started at 9:00 am with a short overview and some pictures by LS2010 attendees. Then Felix Binsack from TimeToAct handed over the microphone to IBM Vice President Brent Peters. Brent started his speech in German(!).  The next 90 minutes were filled up with all the news announced at LS2010. Ron Sebastian did a fantastic job doing live demos. He said that at LS he had 13 servers in the background and is sorry for being limited to “a few VMs on two notebooks” at the moment. Despite of this he was able to do a multi-point audio conference with Samantha and even a video conference using a RADVISON video conferencing system located in Oregon(?) via his sametime client.

We also had a quick glimpse on project Vulcan. Looks really great.

The breakout sessions I attended started with an overview of “What is new in DOmino Designer”.The session speaker was Angela Blasberg from TimeToAct. She seemed a bit nervous in the beginning and had to fight with the fact to put the content of a 1 hour session into 45 minutes.

After lunch, Ed Brill entered the stage. His “Oral History of IBM Lotus Notes – The first twenty years” was fun and easy listening.

Stephan Wissel ( XPages ) was the next in row. He obviously had a lot of fun giving his presentation. I guess, the only reason why he did not continue to talk more about xPages in deep was the fact that he needed some coffee and wanted to attend Daniel Nashed’s session “CSI Domino – Diagnostic Collection and Analysis”

Daniel provided the audience with loads of useful information. You need to read his session slides once again, because you will not be able to store all this information in your brain during the session.

Again, all speakers had to struggle with the 45 minutes limitation. So it became obvious that the schedule ran out of control a leittle bit.

The last session I attended was about “DXL Roundtrip”. Angela Blasberg showed how she uses DXL to create multi language databases and how to transfershared actions from one database to another without breaking the IDs using DXL. Very valuable information.

All the speakers did a fantastic job and the sessions were high quality.

The (offical) event ended at 6:30 pm and we were invited for dinner in the hotel restaurant. We had the chance to use a cart simulator. Great idea and from what I saw, it was great fun for all who tried to keep the cart on track.

For me it was the second LCTY in the Rhine area. I can strongly recommend this event to all who were not able to go to LS. Felix, Timo and all the people behind the scene making this event possible: Job well done!!


Book Review: jQuery 1.4 Reference Guide

If you are a web developer who wants a broad, organized view of all that jQuery library has to offer or a quick reference on your desk to refer to for particular details, Packt’s jQuery 1.4 Reference Guide by Karl Swedberg and Jonathan Chaffer is the book for you.

As the title implies, jQuery 1.4 Reference Guide is not a tutorial. You should be familiar with jQuery to leverage the content of the book.

Knowledge of HTML and CSS is required and you should be comfortable with the syntax of JavaScript.

As far as I can say, the book outlines on 300 pages the complete jQuery API. Reading is not much exiting; don’t forget: it’s a reference guide!

Build your own opinion reading Chapter No 4 : ‘DOM Manipulation Methods’ prior to order your copy.


Header/Footer Direction

I played with header / footer settings on a per document basis and saw a setting, I have never seen before. Perhaps it was there all the time but I did not recognize it.

The option sets the header / footer  to the left or right side of the page.  The strange thing about is, that the option only appears on Windows 7 and Linux but not on XP.

When you set the direction to “right2left”, a new field ($HFFlags)  is created in the document. The field value is set to “R”.  When setting the direction to “left2right” the field is removed.

The $HFFlags field also controls the “Print header and footer on first page” option.


Another Review: IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.1 – Upgrader’s Guide

At the beginning of 2010, the community was exited about the news, that Packt Publishing was about to release a new book covering Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.1.
A lot of people were asked to write a review and so was I. It took a while for the book to make it to my desk. Not sure what causes the delay. Geeta Sanganee kindly sent me an electronic copy in addition to the printed copy.

The book is written by Tim Speed, Barry Rosen, Joseph Anderson, David Byrd, Brad Schauf, Bennie Gibson and Dick McCarrick.

The main content is written on 250 pages devided  into 10 chapters. That’s only 25 pages for each chapter. The rest of the  335 pages is used for the index, appendix, preface, an “About the authors” and a chapter that covers “Third party products”.

The contents of the “About the authors” pages reminds my of an Acadamy Award night where the actors say thank you to loads of people or an end title that is sometimes longer than the actual movie.

“Third party products” ? Well, it is good to know that there are products that will add features to Lotus Notes and Donino that are not included in the core product. But I would not expect to find the contents of vendor flyers in a book I have to pay money for. They simply do not belong there and the wasted space should have been used to provide more useful information about the core product.

The book pretends to be written for

… Lotus Notes power users, administrators and developers working with any version of Lotus Notes / Domino who want to upgrade to Lotus Notes /Domino 8.5.1.

I doubt that the targeted audience will be totally satisfied. I did not find any tipps or hints that have not been discussed in forums, wikis, technical articles and presentations from national or international conferences.

IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.1 – Upgrader’s guide … The upgrade process itself  is desribed in chapter 6 which goes from page 115 – 133. This is way to little to discuss all the aspects of a successful upgrade from “any version of Lotus Notes / Domino”.

I would not recommend this book to an experienced administrator or geeky developer.

Administrators will not find version specific information when upgrading from version 6.5 to 8.5.1 for example. Developers would expect code. Code is not provides with this book, except the “DCT Export sample” on page 127 and some lines of LotusScript and Java code fragments on page 278 and 279-281.

If you want to get a comprehensive enumeration of new and improved features of release 8.5.1 and do not want to search for this information on the internet, than this book is the right choice for you.


Enabling DAOS on a database – new recommendation

Almost one year ago, I wrote about “How To Wast Space” when enabling DAOS on an application. And I assumed that it might not be sure that the compact task will always do the recompress BEFORE the attachments are moved to the DAOS repository.

The recommended way to enable DAOS on an application and recompress attachments was:

  1. load compact  mail\example.nsf  -c -ZU -DAOS ON

According to IBM technote #1411563, the new recommendation is to perform 2 compacts.

First, enable compression and then enable DAOS.  This is critical for customers which have upgraded from 6.5x to 8.5

  1. load compact  mail\example.nsf -c -ZU
  2. load compact  mail\example.nsf -c -DAOS ON

If you want to get the most out of DAOS, this is the way to do it.

btw. the IBM technote obviously has a typo. See the mistake?


Next Event: LCTY – Rheinland 25-Feb-2010

On Thursday, 25-Feb-2010, I will attend LCTY in the Swissotel in Neuss, Germany.

I expect one day full of information from this years Lotusphere. TimeToAct and Bit Bücker have invited well known speakers like Ed Brill, Daniel Nashed, “Lotus Legend” Stephan Wissel and others.

The demoes are presented by Mr. Ron Sebastian. Looking forward to attending the “DXL Roundtrip” session.

Although I have already planned the sessions to attend, I hope that the agenda will change. Not very clever to have Daniel Nashed and Stephan Wissel speaking at the same time.

If you not yet have registered for LCTY- Rheinland, you can do it here. See you there. If you spot me at the conference, say “Hi”. I won’t bite …


I’ll be speaking at EntwicklerCamp 2010

Lotusphere is over and other events are just around the corner. This year’s EntwicklerCamp will start at 08-March-2010 in Gelsenkirchen, Germany.

The event is run by the crew around Dutchman Rudi Knegt. Every year they do a fantastic job running the conference.

The agenda seems to be completed now and you can see that not only speakers from Germany are presenting their sessions but also international speakers find their way to the venue. Bob Balaban, Rocky Oliver, Maureen Leeland, Ben Langhinrichs, to name only a few of them.

Rene Winkelmeyer, winner of Lotus Awards category ‘Best Open Source Contribution by an Individual’, will show how to build plugins for the Domino Designer. Don’t miss Werner Motzet talking about Project Management. You have questions about OpenNTF? Come and ask Niklas Heidloff.

Oh, before I forget; I’ ll be presenting on ‘C/ C++ API for beginners’. I will show, how to setup a development environment that can be used to develop API programs for both Windows and Linux. We will catch a glimpse of LSX ( Lotus eXtension Toolkit ) and retrieve information about an embedded picture in a RichText item parsing CDRecords with (pure) LotusScript. OK, we have to use LS2CAPI …


Debug AutoPop process

The auto-populated groups feature in Domino 8.5.x is great, but when you run into problems an error message like:

“Search for auto-populated group members failed for group TEST.: Error looking up name on LDAP Server; See server log for further details.”

is not very helpful, because there is no more info in the server log.

Add debug_autopop=2 to the server’s notes.ini and the next time, the autopop process will be more verbose.

restart task update
01/26/2010 08:32:54.59 [0AA8:0005-0A04] AutoPop>  …Shutting down
01/26/2010 08:32:54   Index update process shutdown
01/26/2010 08:32:55.73 [0E40:0002-06F0] AutoPop>  Admin server is CN=MyServer/O=foo/C=de
01/26/2010 08:32:55.73 [0E40:0002-06F0] AutoPop>  Current server is CN=MyServer/O=foo/C=de
01/26/2010 08:32:55.73 [0E40:0002-06F0] AutoPop>  Starting the Auto Populated Groups thread…
01/26/2010 08:32:55.73 [0E40:0002-06F0] AutoPop>  Started the Auto Populated Groups thread.
01/26/2010 08:32:55.74 [0E40:0005-0218] AutoPop>  Starting up…
01/26/2010 08:32:55.82 [0E40:0005-0218] AutoPop>  Found [1] Name and Address Book(s), opening first [names.nsf].
01/26/2010 08:32:55.82 [0E40:0005-0218] AutoPop>  Member update interval 30
01/26/2010 08:32:55.82 [0E40:0005-0218] AutoPop>  Domain = foo
01/26/2010 08:32:55   Index update process started:
01/26/2010 08:32:56.82 [0E40:0005-0218] AutoPop>  Time to perform Member updates for all groups: 01/26/2010 08:32:55
01/26/2010 08:32:56.82 [0E40:0005-0218] AutoPop>  Next Member update time: 01/26/2010 09:02:56
01/26/2010 08:32:56.82 [0E40:0005-0218] AutoPop>  Looking for autopopulated groups
01/26/2010 08:32:56.96 [0E40:0005-0218] AutoPop>  Found 1 auto-populated groups to process.
01/26/2010 08:32:57.96 [0E40:0005-0218] AutoPop>  Starting to work on group = TEST
01/26/2010 08:32:57.96 [0E40:0005-0218] AutoPop>  Selection Criteria is= [(&(ObjectClass=person)(mailserver=CN=MyServer/O=foo/C=de))], size = 56
01/26/2010 08:32:58.10 [0E40:0005-0218] AutoPop>  Failed applying selection criteria = Error looking up name on LDAP Server; See server log for further details., (&(ObjectClass=person)(mailserver=CN=MyServer/O=foo/C=de))
01/26/2010 08:32:58.10 [0E40:0005-0218] AutoPop>  Finished work on group = TEST
01/26/2010 08:32:58.10 [0E40:0005-0218] AutoPop>  Finished Member updates for all auto-populated groups
01/26/2010 08:32:58   Search for auto-populated group members failed for group TEST.: Error looking up name on LDAP Server; See server log for further details.


Chapter No.8 – ‘What’s New In Notes/Domino 8.5 Development’

Read and/ or download  Chapter No.8 – ‘What’s New In Notes/Domino 8.5 Development’ for free.

The chapter is taken from the new released book “IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.1” published by Packt Publishing.

I will review the book as soon as I receive my copy. If you do not want to wait for the review, you can order your copy here. Other reviewers so far are Roy Rumaner and PlanetLotus “Blogger of the year” Chris Toohey.


Customize DAOSEST file attachment size

The daoest by default has a large gap in attachment size evaluation between 64k and 1 MB. You may wish to understand the value of setting the object size between these parameters

Set the Notes.ini parameter DAOSEST_BUCKETS to customize the size shown in the report.

For example:
DAOSEST_BUCKETS=16,64,128,256,512,768,1024,2048,3072,4096
The above line sets to 16K, 64K, 128K, 256K, 512K, 768K, 1MB, 2MB, 3MB and 4MB.

It can be set to any set of 10 values in kilobytes.

Source: Lotus Software KnowledgeBase #1418102