Differences between the IBM Lotus Domino 7.0.2 Blog Template and previous external versions

The Domino Blog template, which was developed and maintained for over 3 years by an external source (Steve Castledine), was acquired by IBM® and incorporated into Lotus® Notes/Domino® 7.0.2.

Therefore, some IBM customers are already familiar with the template.

When the template was brought into IBM, some changes had to be made in order to:

  • remove Open source code
  • ease support of the template
  • simplify use of the template
  • change the user interface to fit in with IBM standards
  • make Language translation easier

These changes have, therefore, resulted in some feature removals, feature alterations and a different user interface (UI), which are discussed in this technote.


USB Drive Letter Manager

USBDLM is a Windows service that gives control over Window’s drive letter assingment for USB drives. Running as service makes it independent of the logged on user’s previleges, so there is no need to give the users the previlege to change drive letters.
It automatically solves conficts between USB drives and network or subst drives of the currently logged on user.
Furthermore you can define new default letters for USB drives and much more.

[USBDLM website]


XFL – Extended Formula Language

The Extended Formula Language improves the native formula language of Lotus Notes in several important points, e.g.:

  • Real formula debugging
  • Define your own @Functions
  • XFL makes @For, @While, @Goto etc. available even for Notes R4/R5
  • Use LotusScript code within your formula code
  • Object oriented programming in formulas

There is no installation routine.

Just copy two script libraries of the example database into the database you want to use XFL programming in. If you still have Notes R4 clients copy the subform too. That’s all.

Extended Formula Language is written and provided by Bert Haessler.


OpenNTF Mail Experience – German Edition

Jens-B. Augustiny und Christian Tillmanns haben heute ein neues Projekt auf OpenNTF gestartet.

Ziel ist es, das bereits seit längerem verfügbare OpenNTF Mail Template Projekt ins Deutsche zu übersetzen. Bisher waren die nützlichen Ergänzungen der Standard Mail Schablone nur in englischer Sprache verfügbar.

Danke an Jens und Christian für dieses Projekt. Ich denke, es wird ebenso erfolgreich werden, wie das “Ur”-Projekt.

[Projektseite]


atnotes.de – the no.1 forum for Lotus Notes in Germany

atnotes, founded in december 2001 by Arne Riemann, over the past 5 years became the no.1 forum for Lotus Notes users, administrators and developers.
7500 member from mostly Germany, Austria and Swiss and about 205.000 postings in 31.253 threads made this forum a valuable resource for the Notes Community.

atnotes.de

You’ re looking for a place to get a quick answer to your urgent Lotus Notes / Domino question? Well, atnotes is the place to be. Become a member, post your question. I’ m sure you’ll get an answer or a hint within minutes.


S.I.S.C – Single Instance Space Calculator

S.I.S.C = Single Instance Space Calculator. Jo mei, wos ‘n des ??

S.I.S.C ist ein Instrument basierend auf Lotus Notes, MS SQL-Server und MS-Access zur Berechnung des Speicherverbrauchs redundanter Attachments.

Wozu braucht man das ?

Wir beschäftigen uns zur Zeit mit der Frage, wie viel Speicherplatz auf unseren NotesServern frei wird, wenn jedes Attachment nur noch ein einziges Mal vorhanden ist.
Im Moment sind ja die Attachments durch Mails an eine Gruppe oder mehrfache Weiterleitung oder Antwort n -fach in der Maildatei eines oder mehrerer User vorhanden.

Intelligente Systeme zur Auslagerung von Attachments oder Archivierung von Mails legen diese redundanten Attachments nur einmal ab und referenzieren jeweils auf diese “single instance” eines Attachments.

Die Fragen, die einem dabei im Kopf herumschwirren sind:

– Ist das mit der mehrfachen Speicherung wirklich sooooooooo dramatisch ? und
– wie zum Teufel soll ich das denn nun wieder so bauen, daÃ? es auch der oberste Oberindianer versteht ?

Herausgekommen ist S.I.S.C. Oberindianer interessieren sich wahrscheinlich nur für die rot eingerahmte Zahl.

SELECT Round ( Sum( Multiplikation.Ersparnis ) /1024000000,2 ) & " GB" AS Ersparnis_Gesamt
FROM Multiplikation;
Single Instance Space Calculator

Um die anfallenden Datenmengen zu handhaben, werkelt im Hintergrund ein SQL-Server. Bei kleineren Unternehmen kommt man wohl auch mit MS-Access als Datenspeicher aus. Ich benutze MS-Access der Einfachheit halber für die Auswertung der erfassten Daten.

Die Ermittlung der Daten erfolgt über Lotus Script in Verbindung mit einer für die Hashwertbestimmung entwickelten DLL.

Declare Function GetHash Lib "filehash" (_
Byval strFileName As String,_
Byval intAlgorithm As Integer,_
Byval intFormat As Integer,_
Byval intOperation As Integer,_
Byval intSHA2Strength As Integer)_
As String

'//  Algorithm
Const  CRC32 = 1
Const GOSTHASH = 2
Const MD2 = 3
Const MD4 = 4
Const MD5 = 5
Const SHA1 = 6
Const SHA2 = 7

'// Formatting options
Const LOWERCASE_NOSPACES = 1
Const LOWERCASE_SPACES = 2
Const UPPERCASE_NOSPACES = 3
Const UPPERCASE_SPACES = 4

'// SHA2_STRENGTH
Const SHA2_STRENGTH_128 = 128
Const SHA2_STRENGTH_256 = 256
Const SHA2_STRENGTH_512 = 512

'// Definitions of some kind
Const STRING_HASH = 1
Const  FILE_HASH = 2

...
hash = GetHash (fNAME, SHA2, UPPERCASE_NOSPACES, FILE_HASH, SHA2_STRENGTH_128)

Die Daten werden bis auf ein paar statistische Daten zu den einzelnen Datenbanken anonym erfasst. Es sind keinerlei Rückschlüsse möglich, wer denn nun welches Attachment doppelt und dreifach in seiner Maildatenbank vohält. Datenschützer dürfen also aufatmen.

Ich werde an dieser Stelle weiter über die Entwicklung dieses Projekt berichten. Da das Know How möglicherweise für Consultants im Bereich DMS nützlich sein könnte, nehme ich Abstand davon, die relevanten Teile hier in allen Einzelheiten zu beschreiben und das Gesamtprojekt zum kostenlosen Download anzubieten.

Sollte Interesse bestehen, kann man jederzeit mit mir Kontakt per mail oder auch telefonisch aufnehmen.


Happy 50th Birthday, HardDisk

Hardisk

IBM introduced the 305 RAMAC computer in 1956, which was the first computer to include a disk drive named the IBM 350 Disk File. Prior to this magnetic computer storage had consisted of core memory, tape, and drums. The magnetic disk was seen as a replacement for the magnetic drum for the same reason 78 RPM Records eventually replaced Edison cylinders- more storage with less space.

The 350 Disk File consisted of a stack of fifty 24″ discs that can be seen to the left of the operator in the above picture. The capacity of the entire disk file was 5 million 7-bit characters, which works out to about 4.4 MB in modern parlance. This is about the same capacity as the first personal computer hard drives that appeared in the early 1980’s, but was an enormous capacity for 1956. IBM leased the 350 Disk File for a $35,000 annual fee.

Today the magnetic disc is the platform of choice for the temporary storage of digital video, but it wasn’t until the late 1960’s that the magnetic disc was used for any sort of video storage. At that time the Instant Replay Deck was introduced, which permitted the storage and playback of brief segments of analog video.


Site: Domino & Web 2.0

Found an interesting site today. The site is run by Philippe GAUVIN from France and covers all about “Intégration de solutions Web 2.0 dans les applications Lotus Notes/Domino” or in english “How to integrate Web 2.0 solutions in Lotus Notes/Domino“.

Intégration de solutions Web 2.0 dans les applications Lotus Notes/Domino

The site is in french language and I have to commit that I do not understand much french. But Phillipe wrote me in an eMail that he is about to translate the content to english. But when you look at the published code, you can see that there is some valuable information on this site.


QuickTools for Lotus Domino

QuickTools for Lotus Domino offers Domino administrators the ability to create custom Java plug-ins to manipulate Domino databases. The custom plug-ins extend Dominoâ??s concept of agents such that the plug-ins can be run on any database or document selected from the applicationâ??s graphical interface. … { more }


Sametime server for Linux being announced today

… After years of being asked “where is it”, it’s coming! Later today at Linuxworld, IBM is announcing a Linux version of the Lotus Sametime server. Scheduled release: first half, 2007. Plans are to run on Red Hat and SUSE. Combine this with the already-announced plan for Lotus Sametime 7.5 client to run on Linux, and IBM becomes the first major vendor to offer a complete, extensible real-time collaboration solution (IM, chat, presence, and web conferencing) for Linux. …

[ via Ed Brill ]


The Road to Hannover

Found a new blog today. ( New to me 🙂 ) Jeff Eisen – The Road to Hannover . Jeff Eisen is the Chief Architect for Lotus Notes.

In this blog, I hope mostly to share technical information about the upcoming Hannover release as well as gather input from the blogosphere. I’m still figuring out details such as how often to post, what kind of content to cover, how much non-Hannover esoterica to include, whether to invite guest bloggers, etc. …

Jeff Eisen


Getting more characters into your SMS

smsZipper is a tool to compress SMS text messages, patented by Aalborg University (patents pending). The tool enables you to compress text messages by factors two to three depending on the content (higher compression ratios are possible, but not in the free version). Different languages are supported (English/German/Italian/Danish) and more will be added soon. By accepting the Aalborg University/smsZipper Personal License Agreement the tool can be downloaded free of charge for personal, non-commercial purposes only. The tool can be downloaded JAVA or Symbian version. Both ends, the sender and the recipient, need to install the client.


Get the template name from a database

Here is a quick LotusScript tip on how to get the name of the template that is used for a specific database. The NotesDatabase Class has a method to determine the template name. But this only works for a template file itself ( template.ntf ) As far a I could find out, there is no method to grab the template name for a database.

I found out theat the name is stored in the NotesDatabase icon. The icon can be accessed as any other Notes document. From Release 6 on there is a new class called NotesNoteCollection class . The NotesNoteCollection class represents a collection of Domino design and data elements in a database.

I did a quick debug to find the proper place to look for the template name value. Well, here is the code.

Function getTemplate( db As NotesDatabase ) As String

	Dim template As String, aux As String
	Dim nc As NotesNoteCollection
	Dim icon As notesdocument
	Dim noteid As String

	getTemplate = ""
	Set nc = db.CreateNoteCollection( False )
	nc.SelectIcon = True
	Call nc.BuildCollection

	Set icon = db.GetDocumentByID( nc.GetFirstNoteId )

	If Not icon Is Nothing Then
		getTemplate = icon.Parentdatabase.DesigntemplateName
	End If

End Function

To test the code, put the funktion together with the following code into an action button in a view of your “sandbox” database

Sub Click(Source As Button)
	Dim s As New NotesSession
	Dim db As NotesDatabase
	Set db = s.currentdatabase
	Msgbox getTemplate ( db )
End Sub

YTRIA – FREE License Keys for the Summer!

Are you still using the Limited Version of YTRIA tools? Did you ever want to use the Full Version? Now you can (for a limited-time) and at no cost! If you ever wanted to try Ytria tools, then here’s your chance…Take advantage of our limited-time summer offer and use any (or all) of our tools starting right now! This is a limited-time offer, between July 18, 2006 and August 18, 2006 so enjoy our tools and start saving time!

YTRIA - FREE License Keys for the Summer!