Jan Schulz

Nice: Eric Mack gave me the opportunity to evaluate the eProductivity mailtemplate and blog about the experience and get a free license if I like it in the end. Thanks for that Eric! So this is kind of an introductory posting and then over the next weeks I will share how my little experiment with eProductivity proceeds.

I think my experience will be unique as I've just finished with my diploma thesis and I'm currently looking for my first job. So basically I've not a lot "professional" life to organize right now but just my private one and my point of view will (hopefully) be a little different than all the other guys who gave eProductitivity a try .

Up to now I used all kinds of tools to organize my life. My experiences vary from calendars written on paper by hand, a single email in my notes mailfile (which contained all my todos organized by priorities and estimated time), simple inbox unread marks up to several different calendar tools (including KOrganizer and Notes).  Usually the problem was, that the tool got in the way and it was much more overhead to organize or get a big picture view than to not use the tools. But in times of stress or more complicated things (even a student has that sometimes I usually got back to to one or the other: mostly paper and color coding...

I also must say that I don't have any experience in "Getting things done": my only experience with time and self management is the book "slow down speed up" by Lothar J. Seiwert (highly recomended!) and several ways, which do not work in one way or the other .

So what I'm basically looking for is an app, which

• collects and keeps track of all the little things I have in my mind
• lets me organize my actions/tasks and present it to me in organized forms
• lets me quickly prioritize my tasks
• lets me plan my next day

And most of all: does this without getting in my way.

So after ready all the nice reviews of eProductivity I got curious and had a look at the video postet and the evaluation database. What got me hooked was the ease with what you could add new tasks and keep them organized: just drag and drop an email and you have a new task ready and have it (almost) automaticaly asigned to a context or a project

So after doing the nice tutorial in the evaluation database, I send in feedback and got this chance.

Peter Pressnel wrote a post about class casting and polymorphism in LotusScript. Unfortunatelly, in LS you can only extend one class, not implement Interfaces (like in every other OO language). Interfaces lets you add functionality to a given class by implementing the Interface: a Person will also by "Compareable" by implementing that interface. Now every method which needs a "Compareable" argument can work with Persons.

This missing feature in LS basicly means that you have to build this functionality anew every time you need it: you need a person.compareToAnotherPerson(aPerson as Person) and also your sorted list (or whatever needs something compared) needs to know about that method. This means a lot of unnecessary programming and also it binds your code together and you will very soon get either a very big LS file or the famous "Illegal circular use" error. Not nice!

But we have help from the Adapter Pattern. Instead of adding the functionality by implementing an interface we ask for an adapter of the object which implements this interface [1].

The adapater pattern is usually also implemented via an interface: IAdaptable.getAdapter(classname) which either returns an object of that classname or nothing. As there is no Interfaces in LS this method is implemented in a basic class from which every other of my custume classes is derived: BasicObject. This class also implements "toString() (usefull as a message to logError()...) and such basic things.

The API contract for that method is very easy: either return an object of the specified class, which represents the original object or nothing. Classcasting an object now becomes:

dim manager  as Manager
set manager = person.getAdapter("MANAGER"
if manager is nothing then Error 1000, "Person is not a Manager!"
[...]

instead of

dim manager as Manager
if not (person isa ucase("Manager") then error 1000, "Person is a not a manager!"
set manager = person
[...]

So the insert method of a sorted list, which expects a "Compareable" object (or nothing), would be something like this: list.insert(me.getAdapter("COMPAREABLE").

This is the BaseObject.getAdapter implementation.

Class BaseObject
	' [ public function toString() as String ... ]

        '/**
	' * Returns an Adapter of the current Object of the aked-for type or nothing
	' * The basic implementation returns this object if the caller asked for the class 
        ' * or a subclass of the class of the current object
	' * Should be overwritten to do something more usefull!
	' * @autor Jan Schulz
	' */
	
	Public Function getAdapter(nameOfObject As String) As BaseObject
		If Ucase(nameOfObject) = Typename(Me) Then
			Set getAdapter = Me
		End If
		If Me Isa Ucase(nameOfObject) Then
			Set getAdapter = Me
		End If
	End Function
	
	
End Class

An addition would be the implementation of an AdapterManager (see the article on eclipse.org): This would even solve the problem that you need to know the adapter class in the "adaptable" object (-> problems with "Illegal circular use"...). This would need a small AdapterFactory with one methods: getAdapter(object as BaseObject, classname as String). This factory would be implemented for each used combination and then an instance of such an object added to the AdapaterManager. Now you can query the AdapaterManager for an Adapater of your object: getAdapterManager().getAdapter(object, "SomeClassName". In this method you would ask each adapterFactory for this combination and return if you get an object back (or nothing if no factory can return such an object). Now the object wouldn't need to know that it is adaptable to a "SomeClassName".

[1] This pattern is usually used in other OO languages to keep the API of an class small and clean: if you need your person compareable, the methods of the "Compareable" Interface would be part of the API contract for the "Person" class. This is usually not desireably, especially if you add serveral interfaces.

After reading Chris Toohey's Quickpoll about Framesets vs. Web I started to think about rewriting a typical Notes Interface (outline to the left, views on the right) to be more "web 2.0" friendly with a landing page. To complete the challenge, the UI should be translateable and, of course, nice looking. The first problem: the typical landing page has "call to action" buttons: big, shiny buttons with an icon and some text. So, how can you do that in Notes? My tries:

• Buttons: can be translated via onLoad events and "document.forms[0].Button.value = document.forms[0].cfdField_LabelForButton.value", no icons possible
  
• HTML pass thrugh Computed text (=translateable) with <input>s -> just plain ugly.
  
• HTML pass thrugh Computed text with <button>s -> Does not work, as the notes internal html parser does not recognise the button tag
• Notes Table (with nice looking background + rounded corners) and a hotspot -> does not work, as the hotspot can't be set around the table and also because I haven't found a way to vertical center text in a table cell.
  
• Outline with one entry, styled with rounded corners, translateable the UI (lables are computeable), mouse over effects for the text. Only problem: setting width to "fits to content" has no effect, which means that the translations must be as long as the original text (seems to me that this is a notes bug).

Here is a screenshot:


The last one with the styled outline entry seems to be the best idea up to now, but the "fit to content" problem is bad

Anybody with some ideas how to get nice, translateable, hover aware buttons with icons on it in the notes client?

Here is the demo DB...

Another "Fun with..." blog entry...

Substitution are great: tired of domian.com/subdir/blog.nsf/dx/something? Then define a URL substitution (/subdir/blog.nsf -> /blog) and you get domain.com/blog/dx/something. Thats nice!

Unfortunately there are some gotchas as we found today:

• You can't use the substituted URL as a homepage: putting in /blog/dx/default will result in an 404. Which would anyway be stupid as your linked content (css, js, pictures) is not anymore available, as the browser gets the result of it as / and not anymore as /blog/dx/something. So looking for ../css/default.css would result in domain.com/../css/default.css, which is of course not available. The workaround: put the complet URL there: http://www.domain.com/blog/dx/default and the browser gets a redirect to that URL. Unfortunately this results in an additional dns request in most browsers, (= a little more wasted time) . Just redirecting to /blog/dx/default seems not to be possible (please prove me wrong...).
• You can't get the browsed un-substituted URL *anywhere* in the called code: there you only get the translated CGI Variables, meaning you have no clue what you are called. This is a problem if you want to redirect to a DB configured default homepage. An example: I would browse domain.com/blog, this would open the subdir/blog.nsf and in there the configured element. In my case it is a page (form or agent not possible ), which has some ComputedText on it, which redirects to the default document (/dx/default, configured in a profile doc). As the redirect needs to be absolute, I need the pathentry before the view name. @WebDBName gives /subdir/blog.nsf, as gives *all* CGI variables with path infos (at least in an agent). Now I need to have this piece of information available in the DB Profil, that this DB is called /blog and not /subdir/blog.nsf. Keeping the same data in two place is bad.
• The same problem arise, when you use logins and substituted URLs: call "/blog/page?OpenPage&login" and you get redirected to "/subdir/blog.nsf/page?OpenPage&login" (using "/blog/dx/default?login" you get redirected to "/". WTF?). This is not nice if you really want to hide your internal structures. I haven't yet tried what happens if you just put anonymous as No access and so get a loginpage without ?login. I suspect it's the same.
  

All in all: URL substituition is really usefull, but doing somethin more facy with it and it becomes a struggle...

Oh my, wasn't there a more professional way to do this:


Basicly it looks like they took two things and just placed them on top of each other... When you click on the splash screen you can move it around, but without the progress bar. If you click on another process and then on the notes process, only the progressbar is shown (fun again...).

Anyway: back to the basic client... Why?

• You can open two ID Files/ Notes instances at the same time (normal and Admin)
• Simple much faster
• a lot easier for the admin (i know the internals of my data directory to fix any isue I came across, but not of the data/workspace one...)
• I haven't found anything in the fancy new UI, which I really need.
  

8.5 will be bad: I can't open two IDs anymore, because I need the designer client in my admin instance, which is usually the second client I open. And using Designer in 8.5 means that I have to open my admin notes first (one of them can be a standard client, but it must be the first one), which basicly means that each time I have to look something up in the design, I have to close my normal basic notes, my admin basic notes, open the admin standard notes, switch to designer and open my normal notes. And it takes ages to open a not-yet-opend database in DDE. This sucks!

Our Domino Mailserver crashed or better became unresponsive with the server task at 100%CPU. The log showed during that time:

• Unable to access notes.ini. Determine what application or hardware fault is preventing access. Previous cache values used.
• Error updating local ID file: Could not open the ID file

Also, there were a few "Too many open Files" Error in DDM (mostly fulltext index files, sometimes also databases) which I at first didn't relate to this. It started after the 8.0.2 update in fall and got worse after that. A restart of the domino "fixed" the problem, but after the xmas holidays we had to do this every day

The Server was a ubuntu linux (latest LTS-release). The first level IBM Support couldn't help and the second level Support didn't want to support us as we are running an unsuported OS

I turns out, that the problem was a too low "ulimit -n" of 1024. This limits the open files of processes and can be set via PAM configuration files. Our domino server process has about 700 open DBs + other files in normal mode:

# lsof |grep " lotus " |grep "^server" |wc -l
1135

I suspect that the IO changes in 8.0.x and also that we had to add a few new databases during the start of term (we are a student organsation and we get new member during that time) were the reason why we never saw that before and also didn't see this on a different domino on the same Server, but without so many mailfiles.

The changes to fix it were:
/etc/security/limits.conf
+ lotus            hard    nofile          4096
+ lotus            soft    nofile          4096
also add this line in /etc/pam.d/su:
+ session    required   pam_limits.so

The last change is because we use the rcdomino startscript, which uses su to start the domino server.

After that: no more hangs...

Anyway: I still suspect a bug, as the domino should not hang without an error if that problem occures. Lets see if the report in our PMR gets a reaction

Another question: what is this limit on RedHat or Suse systems? We are not really big, so othere should have run into this much earlier if the limit wouldn't be higher... Or it really is an ubuntu problem...

I remembered that eclipse had an application container (used to be tomcat in eclipse 2.x, if I remember correctly, but should be something else today) to display help. But it looks as if that's not the cause for the firewall warning: When I open help I get another process, which listens on 0.0.0.0:4xxx (x is something different each time). Unfortunately it also listens to all interfaces

Fun: you can get at help via your normal browser (try righ click -> Open in new Window in the help system):

Seems that I really have to try if I can access that URL from a different computer via LAN (and after adding the Firewall exception...)... A complete JSP Container...

Anybody with some experiences with package sniffing and some fun for trying to get at the other process? A normal telnet didn't help

Our user are not allowed to change the "owner" of the mailfile via Mail-Policy.

Unfortunately you can still change the owner via web:

=> You can change it and it is saved.

We discovered this by accident: our mailfile is slightly altered, so that we can put Mail-In Names into it and use it as Teammailbox. The only change is to remove part of the validation formular for the owner field (which checks for hierarchical Names), so that the preferences can be saved (like for a signature change). Unfortunately this also is not so in the web version: you still get the message that the Owner must be hierarchical and so some clever person changed the group mailbox to his own name

As this is anyway changeable by tools (and we have some people who discoverd such tools...) it does not seem to be a security risk, but it seems that this makes using the default template as a team mailbox or generaly in the web slightly more troublesome

This is 8.0.x... Fun...

Notes 8 and higher seems to listen to some ports. Unfortunatelly it seems that it listen to the wrong interface, as I get a firewall warning:


TCPView shows this:


So notes listen on all interfaces (0.0.0.0) instead of on an local one (which would show 127.0.0.1). To show another example, here is "hamster", a local mailserver, which does the right thing and binds only to the 127.0.0.1 interface and never showed up via such a firewall warning:

So two things:

• Why does Notes need to listen on all interfaces?
  If I guess right it is used to communicate between the 'oldstyle' nlnotes and the new eclipse user interface. If so: no need to bind to 0.0.0.0, 127.0.0.1 is enought. This could also mean that someone outside can use my nlnotes autenticated client to see the information?
  Or is notes expecting callbacks from the server? That would be something new for me and as calling nlnotes itself does not do this, so I suspect that this is not the case.
  => So I see no reason why notes couldn't bind to 127.0.0.1 only: less problems with security and no problems with the firewall...
  
• If notes needs to bind to that interface, the installer needs to drill a hole into the firewall, as *every* other windows ("server" programm, which needs to do that (this includes skype, bittorent thingies and so on...). I've normaly no admin rights on my laptop (hapy user of sudo fror windows) and our normal office users do not have that at all -> we had to add that to all clients -more or less- manually after installing the client

So: did I miss something? If not: can someone at IBM please fix either the interface-binding or the installer? Thanks!

I've a linux server, which sometimes hangs with a server task at 100% CPU and lines like this in the log: "Unable to access notes.ini. Determine what application or hardware fault is preventing access. Previous cache values used." or " Error updating local ID file: Could not open the ID file". A restart fixes this, but never for long (sometimes same day, sometimes weeks). It seems like this started with the 8.0.2 Domino.

I searched the IBM site for similar bugreports an found Domino server hang after NTI error iError: 9, failed with TLOOK. Unfortunatelly I've no idea, if that's really our bug (somedebug output needs to be enabled, but the article does not say what) and also the SPR seems not yet in the fix list.

We habe a PA Account, but I couldn't find the "report a bug" link on the IBM site and it seems I don't have the rights to open a Service request. So: How do I report a bug? Just write it in the forums?

This a from a newly registered user (via admin client and CA)



Fun...

So, how do I file a bug report? I've actually no idea...

Just a short follow up to my problem from this afternoon about recompile going into an endless loop or not saving at all, when changing the order of the Use statements (Error "Duplicate PUBLIC Name": it seems that the compiler can't cope with long names of script libs. My scriptlib was named "de.katzien.ls.MVC.Model.MonitoringCapability". Changing it to "de.katzien.ls.MVC.Model.Monitoring" fixed the problem.

... or to hell...

Currently I'm trying to build an LS framework, which is runtime configurable. Instead of using static functions or simple class extention, I try to build an object graph, where each object adds some functionality. So something which needs to run after a Document is saved will add a observer to the document model and do the work in the right callback method. This results in small objects and class libs, but lots of use of "Use". Unfortunatelly designer seems to be unable to cope with this. Right now I'm in a situation, where designer compiles my code, if I press strg+s, but is sent into an endless loop if I use "Recompile all Lotusscript".

Other fun includes "Use" ordering:
this compiles with strg+s (but sends "Recompile all" into an endless loop):

Use "class::logger"
Use "de.katzien.App.Infomail"
Use "de.katzien.App.InfomailDB"
Use "de.katzien.ls.Email"

this not:

Use "class::logger"
Use "de.katzien.App.InfomailDB"
Use "de.katzien.App.Infomail"
Use "de.katzien.ls.Email"

The only change is the ordering... Error: Duplicate PUBLIC Name "CHANGE_LISTENER_EVENT_BEFORE_CHANGING" in USE de.katzien.App.Infomail
This name is the public Const in script lib "MonitoringCapability", which is use'd directly by .App.Infomail and indirectly by .App.InfomailDB (uses InfomailEntry which uses MonitoringCapability). setting this to private just ends up with the next error and I can't set a complete class to private if I want to use that class in some other lib...

And don't even ask about "Illegal Circular Use".

@IBM: Please improve the Compiler for LotusScript!

Todays fun: my logger (basicly an AgentLog, but with an underlying NotesDocument) opened a second doc where it shouldn't and worse didn't save the first document with the proper logging output. Turned out, that the last logAction call in the logger.delete sub (called by the garbage collector) found that the underlying logdoc was nothing (and so not saved until I turned on flushAlways) and so created a new one with only the "new log opend" and "log closed" message in it. Fun if you expect half a page of debugging output for an webagent (which you need because the agent is not working ) and only get "Log opened and closed"...

The fix was to cache the parent Database of the Logdocument in the Logger object.

This Database was actually cached (Dim logDB...) in the OpenLogFunction Declaration section (the Logger is an extention), but it seems that this script lib was garbage collected before calling delete on my object and as the DB got collected, so gets every object which came from that DB. By-by logdoc...

It seems that something changed between last years domino (7.0.x or 8.0.1, not sure which I tested on) and 8.0.2 in the garbage collection routine, as the same logger setup worked some month ago without this problems. Or I garabage collection is influenced how many classes/ScriptLibs you use in the your agent...

So, todays lesson learned: Do not cache objects in other scriptlibs Declaration section if you use that object in delete... Fortunately this is my only class with a deconstructor

I like to write code like this:

public function getSomething() as Something
  if oSomething is nothing then
    set oSomething = new Something()
  end if
  set getsomething = oSomething
end function

How do this with dynamic arrays? I was very surprised when this threw an error:

dim arrSomethings() as Something
if isArray(arrSomethings) then print ubound(arrSomething) ' unitialized array error when calling the ubound function 

You have to call a redim arrSomething(0 to 0) bevor you can do anything with that array. I tested it with every isXYZ function I could find in the designer help, but i couldn't find a way to detect that...Somehow I agree with Tommy Valand: LS Arrays are strange. Give me a Java collections like API and I'm happy

BTW: datatype (arrSomething) gives "8738", even after the redim, but the designer help says that "8704" is a Dynamic array. Bug?