Compress Design – Use With Caution

Starting with ODS 48, Notes / Domino supports design and document compression, which can save you plenty of disk space. Today I had to learn that it is not always recommended to use these features.

Earlier this morning I received a service desk call from our front desk. The front desk staff are using a Notes database to manage our car pool. The database is a simple 1 form 5 views database that sits on our server for almost 7 years now.

For a better overview of booked cars I had build in a java applet from jnotes.de. You can simply change the booking period by rezising the bar in the grid or drag and drop an existing booking for one car to another.

So far, so good.

The front desk guy complained in his service desk call that the applet did not display any longer.

This behaviour was reproducable in Notes 7.0.3 and in 8.0.2 and 8.5 as well. Finally I found the reason.

After Domino 8.5 was released, I upgraded our production servers. In addition, I used a load compact -c  -n -v to upgrade to ODS51 and enable document- and design compression not only on mailfiles but on several directories as well, including the one that contains our car pool database.

I found out that the design compression corrupts the applet. After removing the flag from the database’s properties and replacing the applet, the database works again.

Update:

I did some testing; here are the results.

The original database has ODS43, no LZ1, No design- or datacompression enabled

I created a new copy (TEST1) on the server, ODS changed to ODS51   — Applet status: OK

I enabled data- and designcompression plus LZ1 and created a new copy ( TEST2) on the server. ODS changed to ODS51, Applet status: OK

On the server I triggered load compact -B TEST2; Applet status: OK

On the server I triggered load compact -c -ZU -n -v TEST1; Applet status: *#@@*BANG!!

UPDATE (14.01.2009)

Reproducable on 8.0.2

Knowledge Collection: Notes/Domino Roaming User Functionality

This document contains a list of related technotes based on the setup and use of the Roaming User feature.  The document also identifies potential Roaming User issues to be aware of.

Happy New Year 2009

The Earth is slowing down

A leap second will be added to atomic clocks worldwide at 23:59:60 (or near midnight) at Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) on December 31, 2008. This is the 24th leap second to be added since the first leap second was added in 1972.

Get View Column Sums With LotusScript

I surfed the web the other day and came across an entry in OpenNTF’s codebin.  Ferry Kranenburg posted a sample database that shows, how you can create graphs using RMchart from Notes Views.

In his code,  Ferry uses the NotesViewNavigator class to search a view for a given key and to return the according view column values as a string when the search returns a match.

The original function (= var_FastViewLookup ) is very static, because the columns to return are hardcoded, so it cannot be used in other applications without modifications. So I decided to rewrite the function to be more generic. Here is the result:

Function var_FastViewLookup(_
db As NotesDatabase,_
View As String,_
Key As String,_
KeyCol As Integer,_
cols As Variant) As Variant 

	On Error Goto Err_Handle
	Dim nav As NotesViewNavigator
	Dim ve As NotesViewEntry
	Dim v As NotesView
	Dim i As Integer
	Redim colVal (1) As String
	If Trim(view) = "" Then Goto Exit_Here

	Redim colVal (Ubound(cols)) As String
	Set v = db.GetView(view)

	Set nav = v.CreateViewNav
	Set ve = nav.GetFirst

	While Not ve Is Nothing
		If ve.ColumnValues(KeyCol) = Key Then
			i = 0
			Forall c In cols
				colVal(i) = ve.ColumnValues(c)
				i = i+1
			End Forall
			Set ve = Nothing
		Else
			Set ve = nav.GetNextCategory(ve)
		End If
	Wend
Exit_Here:
	var_FastViewLookup = colVal
	Exit Function
Err_Handle:
	Resume Exit_Here
End Function

Here is a sample of how to use the function:

Sub Click(Source As Button)
	Dim s As New NotesSession
	Dim db As NotesDatabase
	Set db = s.CurrentDatabase
	Dim retval As String

	Dim KeyCol  As Integer
	KeyCol = 2 ' View column containing category search key

	Dim cols (3) As Integer
	cols(0) = 7 ' all tickets ( sum )
	cols(1) = 8 ' 0 - 4h
	cols(2) = 9 ' 4 - 8h
	cols(3) = 10 ' 8h +

	retval = Join(_
        var_FastViewLookup(db , "($ddTickets_ByMonthRep)", "2008-01", KeyCol, cols), "*")

	Msgbox retval
End Sub

The sample returns the following value

Symphony Automation Database

Jens-B. Augustiny from LigoNet.ch posted a sample database to show. how you can access OpenOffice or Symphony from within LotusScript by using the COM-UNO Bridge, that comes with these two products.

The database in fact contains an application, which almost immediately with some small modifications may be used to create invoices, that will be generated through OOo/Symphony.

Undocumented: Create Empty NotesDocumentCollection

If you do not look that often into OpenNTF’s CodeBin like I do, then you might have missed this entry.  David J Montalvo discovered a yet undocumented method of the NotesDatabase class.

This method allows you to create an empty NotesDocumentCollection without doing workarounds that have beeen used for years like this one from LDD.

I searched mail8.ntf using Notes Design Searcher.

The method is used in 3 agents and one ScriptLibrary. Searching mail85.ntf returns the same result.

There is also an idea on IdeaJam which can be closed once the method is documented in either Notes 8.0.x or in the upcoming Notes 8.5 release.