Jeff Tujetsch

Have you ever tried to duplicate the navigation method that Domino uses within the Domino Help databases? It is not fully dependent upon the design of the database, but also what the name of the Category is within the Database properties. If you enter NotesHelp as the Category of a Domino database, you will get the navigation methodology that the Help databases use. This will provide you with the < and > view buttons that simulate a browser's navigation.

If you already have the icon on your Domino Workspace (I hate Bookmarks!), you will need to delete the icon and then re-add it. That will allow for the proper navigation to be used.

When needing to create a Domino directory link for subfolders, you need to be sure to not try to accomplish the task all in one step. For instance, if you want to create a folder structure for a directory link that includes a subfolder, you cannot simply add a '\' (slash) to the directory link name (e.g. folder1\folder2.dir). Though Domino (for some reason) allows you to name the directory link with a slash, it is not used when you attempt to reference it, but instead uses the right-most folder name as the directory link name. So in my example, of 'folder1\folder2.dir', Domino will 'rename' the link to be folder2.dir instead.

If you need multiple folder levels represented by a directory link, simply do the following:

1. Create a 'hard' folder within the Domino server data structure (e.g. folder1).

2. Within the newly created folder, create a directory link to the subfolder (e.g. folder2.dir).

Now when accessing the server, you will have the desired folder structure and a viable directory link. So if I do a Ctrl-O (Application open), I would see a folder named 'folder1' and when I double-click that folder, I would see a folder2 subfolder within it.

Note: You might need to restart your server after creating the directory link in order for the Domino server to recognize it.

I'm sure most of you know that the Domino Directory Link functionality is a very useful feature on the Domino servers. It allows Domino to connect to a device other than its own hard drives. Since I have multiple versions of both Domino clients and servers on my laptop (we support multiple Domino versions with our products and I know that IBM does NOT recommend or support this), there is a need to share the databases from customers on all of my clients. I have created the same Directory Link within each of my Domino clients. Within this folder structure, I then create a folder for every customer, which then allows me to access every database from every client. So now (and no mocking allowed), I can access my entire customer folder structure from within my 6.x, 6.5x, 7.x and 8.x Domino clients (I still have a 4.x and 5.x client as well, in case I need them).

Keep in mind that if a database was created using Domino 8.x, that your Domino 6.x client won't be able to open it, but this provides a lot of power when needing to easily access the databases regardless of the Domino client in use.

For those of you who don't know, there is a great new column feature for numerical values within views. The 'Bytes (K/M/G)' type automatically displays a 'k', 'm' or 'g' depending upon the value within each document's column.

However, we recently created a view on an R8 server and then copied the view to R7. In R7, the column displayed properly, because we simulate the K/M/G value by dividing the amount accordingly. However, if viewed in R8, the value was not displaying properly. What we found was the property that we assigned in R8 was still recognized once the view was copied from R7 to R8. To remedy this, we had to open the view in Designer in R7 and select 'Decimal' and made sure the view was changed and saved. Once we did, the view displayed properly in R8.

Hiding the design of a Domino database offers some interesting issues, especially when you have shared actions within forms/views, that are using LotusScript code. The problem is that sometimes the actions will cause 'Use LSX' errors when attempting to open the form/view after the hide process.

What we have done to combat this issue is to move the code to a Script Library and NOT share the actions. So inside the action is two statements; 1). a 'Use' statement for the Script Library and 2). a call to the routine within the Script Library.

Yes, this can create a bit more work (e.g. if the subroutine or Script Library is renamed), but it's worth it to not have to deal with the intermittent 'Use LSX' errors.

For those of you who are ISVs and hide design of your Domino databases to protect your investment, we have found something this morning and I thought I'd share not only problem (and irony), but the also the solution.

We hide all of source code for our products. When performing the productization process this morning (which includes the hiding of the design), we encountered a problem. When trying to create a new document using a form with its design hidden, we received the error 'Formula is hidden'. We have hidden our code for 10+ years and have never encountered this error. We then placed the source code of the form in the productized (hidden) database and we were able to create a new document without issue. So, that meant there was something wrong with the form. We looked through all of the actions, form events, etc., and could not find anything unusual. Then suddenly, there it was, a field of type 'Formula' (which is necessary for one of our products). We removed the field from the form, reproductized and were able to successfully create a new document. So the problem definitely is the 'Formula' field. So what we determined was happening is during the process of hiding the design, the formula within the 'Formula' field was also hidden and was unable to be used. How ironic!

So, now the question was, what can we do about it. It appeared to us we had two choices:

1. Don't use a 'Formula' field type in the product - This is required, so this option is not viable.

2. Hide the design of the form and once complete, copy the source field only into the hidden form - Voila! This worked without any problem. The only 'issue' is that the formula for the field is displayed, but the value is simply another field's name, so nothing of consequence is visible.

In response to: Re: Subforms within forms causing Domino 8.x server crashes

Dave, It might be the fact that we are storing the form in the document when sending. We can consistently crash the server every time. I haven't been able to consistently crash a server this intentionally since setting up alarms for undeliverable email to be sent to an undeliverable email address, which produces a 'deadly embrace'.

If you have ever tried to use profile documents as a means to pass data from one agent to another within the same database, you know that it can be a very frustrating process. We have a need to use the NotesAgent.RunOnServer method from an action. What we do is initiate an action in Database A, that in turn creates a profile document within Database B. The action then issues the RunOnServer method for an agent in Database B and the agent that is called performs some necessary functions that must run at the server level. However, we need to report back to the action of the results. So the agent updates the profile document within Database B and once the agent completes, the action reinstantiates the profile document within Database B and receives the results.

This process could work five times in a row and then fail five times ina row. It was completely unpredictable. Using the Sleep command made no difference in helping the inconsistency, nor did any other attempt to reinstantiate the variable.

What we found was that once the agent saved the profile document, we needed to delete the instantiated variable for the profile document (Delete ProfileDocument). Once we did that, the profile document consistently contained the results from the agent. Apparently, the 'Delete' command must fully commit the changes to the profile document to allow it to be used by a subsequent action/agent.

I hope this helps those of you who have had to suffer through the same problems as we did.

We have products that use subforms quite extensively and have successfully since subforms were available. Obviously, subforms allow easy code reuse, but we have identified an issue when using them. If you have a form using a subform and you then attempt to use the 'Send' method (LotusScript) for a document that is using the form, the Domino 8.x server will crash when the 'Send' command is issued. We were able to easily reproduce this and have received notification from IBM that this issue is being addressed.

There really is no work-around and we simply recommended to our customers that they do not select the option to send the document, but instead review it inside the database where it was created.

If you have ever tried to replace the design of a database and do not see your template in the list of available templates, most likely the problem is that the template was specified to display within the 'Advanced' templates. However, what I have seen a few times is my template is displaying within the 'Advanced' templates, but I did NOT mark the template as an advanced template. Oddly enough I had to adjust the template settings (which were correct) by doing the following:

1. Within the Database properties for my template, I selected the 'Database file is a master template' option (if it is not already one).

2. Entered a value within the 'Template name' field (if the there was not a replace already present).

3. Selected that the template was an 'Advanced' template.

4. Deselect the template as an 'Advanced' template.

5. Removed the value from the 'Template name' field (if applicable).

6. Deselected the 'Database file is a master template' option (if applicable).

This sounds crazy, but that then updates my template so that it appears within the list of templates, not the list of 'Advanced' templates.

In response to: Domino 8.x

There is now a report of a possible hot fix to address the problem I described. It is supposed to allow Fixup to repair bad (future) timestamps in folders. which causes the folder to permanently index the folder. This in turn prevents the navigation of the view using any LotusScript method.

In response to: Better than Good Enough

Well stated, Grant. None of us are perfect, but we can certainly strive for perfection, without being disappointed by not achieving the 'perfection' goal.

Trying to locate a soft deletion in LotusScript can be very tricky. Before soft deletions, it was easy to navigate the $Trash folder and find the deletions. However, soft deletions add another level of complexity. If you have the UNID of a message and try to access it when it has been soft-deleted, an error will be thrown that states that the UNID was invalid. This is actually the same error you would receive if the message was hard-deleted and no longer existed.

Since the UNID is not viable for finding a soft-deleted message, is there any way to locate the soft-deleted message? The answer is...YES! The NoteID property remains accessible for both soft-deleted messages and those messages that are hard-deleted, but whose deletion stub still exists (typically, for 120 days after the message is hard-deleted). So with that said, what you can do is use the 'GetDocumentByID' method within the NotesDatabase class and use the NoteID to locate the message. If the 4270 error is thrown, neither the message, soft-deletion or deletion stub exists. If an error is not thrown, that doesn't mean that you have all of the information that you need. You still have more work to do. Here are the four scenarios.

1. If the NotesDocument is properly instantiated, then you need to check the IsDeleted property. If the IsDeleted property returns False, you have located an 'active' message. If the IsDeleted property returns True, you have located a soft-deleted message.

2. If the NotesDocument is not instantiated (Doc is Nothing), you have located the deletion stub for the message.

3. If the 4270 error is thrown, the message and its deletion stub, no longer exist.

If have included the code to display the four possible scenarios below:

 On Error Goto TrapError
 
 Dim CurrentDB As NotesDatabase
 Dim Doc As NotesDocument
 Dim InvalidNoteID As Integer
 Dim Session As New NotesSession
 
 Set CurrentDB = Session.CurrentDatabase
 
 InvalidNoteID = 0
 
 Set Doc = CurrentDB.GetDocumentByID ("xxxxxxxx" ) 

 If InvalidNoteID = 0 Then
   If Doc Is Nothing Then
      Print "Deletion stub"
   Elseif Doc.IsDeleted Then
      Print "Soft deletion"
   Else
      Print "Active message"
   End If
 Else
   Print "No message"
 End If
 
 Exit Sub
 
 TrapError:
 
 Select Case Err
 Case 4270
   InvalidNoteID = 1
   Resume Next
 Case Else
   Print Error + " (" + Cstr (Err) + " )  at line " + Cstr (Erl)
   End
 End Select

I hope that this helps with understanding how to access soft-deletions and deletion stubs.

Did anyone catch the Nadal vs. Verdasco semi-final match this morning? It was one of the best matches that I have seen in a very long time. It was right up there with the Nadal vs. Federer final at Wimbledon last year. The match lasted over 5 hours (on hardcourt), yet both guys seemed as fresh at the end as they were when they started. Thank goodness the match started at 7:30 PM (Austrailia time), because even for these guys, the heat would have been too much for that long. Verdasco was starting to suffer from leg cramps starting in the 4th set. The truly remarkable stat was that Verdasco had close to 100 winners, which is unheard of, especially for someone who lost.

I don't possibly see how the final on Sunday (3;30 AM Eastern) can rival this match.

We are finding all sorts of problems with Domino 8.x, both internally (servers crashing) and externally (customers). There appear to be major issues with dates/times within messages and folder/view indexes being properly created.

Has anyone seen these symptoms and if so, any work-arounds and/or Domino versions/hot-fixes that address them?