Sanity Check

In the last week couple of weeks at my company we've had discussion over creating an application to track defective product shipments from vendors in each of our hundred plus retail stores. In our industry, these products are relatively inexpensive, personalized one-of-a-kind items that would only be of interest to the customer that order it. Thus, if an order is refused by our end customer for quality we generally will just destroy it rather than ship it back which would be a waste of money. Our vendor will reimburse us if we properly document the refusal with all the pertinent information. The refusal ratio will probably be in the 2-5% range. We use Lotus Notes in-store, but only on one computer. My thoughts are to create this tracking application in xPages so it can be accessed conveniently from any in-store PC via a web browser. So, now I will be working on a prototype. The basic architecture in Notes-speak would be a main form with the Store information, date, and the person who is submitting the data and a second form, probably a response document, that would record the details for each refused product. So one parent document would be related to many detail documents. If i did this in Notes I would display the detail form in an embedded view and I would check off that box that limts the documents displayed to the current thread which effectively would display just the detail response documents. I sat through most of the the xPage presentations at Lotusphere and am not sure if there is an equivalent option in xPages to display just the response docs. I know you can limit a view to documents with a key, such as the NoteID of the parent document. What I am wondering about is performance as the database grows. There's not a lot of infomation out there on the scalability of xPage technique like filtering a view. Questions abound:

• If I have a view containing 50,000 or more detail records, will the matching detail records quickly show up in the embedded view of the parent document using basic view filtering?
• Are some techniques of doing this more efficient than others?
• Is there any advantage or disadvantage of making the detail record a response document to the parent record in xPages?

If you're an xPert with xPerience with xPages and can help here, I'd appreciate your comments. I really wish there was an A-Z book on xPages, like a Red Book that goes through xPages more thoroughly. At this point there's a smorgasborg of unstructured ways to learn xPages like the Designer Wikki, code samples and tutorials from John Mackey, Matt White (and Elguji), Chris Toohey and IBM. Those are all helpful, but I guess I'm looking for The xPages Bible, an authoritative source that walks through everything including that huge Script Editor that also warns about techniques that work initially, but are not scalable. Where's my xBible?

The title was a question not a statement (as indicated by the symbol "?"), so if you' have the answer, please post a comment here which will be helpful to others. The question assumes those with legal access to ls09.info. A zip file containing all the sessions per track would be the user-friendly thing for IBM to provide to their yellow bleeding 'spherians.  Or how about an FTP link or server to direct our Quickr Connectors? We can do better than this. Life is too short to be mindlessly clicking on hundreds of links.

As for you non-attendees, as in past years, there's the old debate about whether all the sessions should be released to all. I can see both sides of the coin. Rest assured, I would suspect that IBM may generously provide a download link, maybe even some session audio to everyone....eventually.

 

Note: This extends my prior post The 'Sphere '09 When words fail, use pictures!  which links to my YouTube and Flickr image streams related to 'Sphere09.
If pictures are worth a thousand words, charts take those words and make them scream. Charts are really just pictures, which are just data, organized  by vectors. Our brains, fed input by our continually scanning senses, are always searching for patterns, commonalities, and trends. We interpret those patterns assigning value and meaning. Charts are very powerful means of influence. Here's two charts I came across this week that speak louder than words:




What is your interpretation? How does that make you feel as a Lotus developer/admin?

Like many bloggers, I am feeling the internal pressure to blog something insightful, witty, and profound about Lotusphere 2009 that will rise above the current tide of spontaneous blogging. I've read several "I'm blogging from the airport en route from Lotusphere" type of blog posts, but don't do that! After events like 'Sphere my internal CPU is constrained and I'm simply flushing cache to disk. In short, I'm DOWN and to run any blogging agent on my non-FT indexed brain would be extremely inefficient (little admin joke there). In the meantime, you may enjoy some of my short videos here and pictures here.

Update: I've got YouTube subscribers! I'm happy (in an egocentric way), but doesn't that mean I am expected to keep producing, like its my job? Will I now have to start recording myself in a low cut T?

Yep I am talking 'bout yer FONTS..yer Verdanas, yer Georgias, an' even yer Couriers fer talkin code-like. Why, how could we even comune-ninny-cate without dem.  Why we'd be unshaven cavemen, wavin sticks an' grunting instead of bein us sophistycated yeller bloggin perfessheenals. Yet as ShakeSphere wud say, "methinks thers a rub". Our most advanc-ed tewl fer collaberatin, yer Notsey Clyint, makes font pickin a real treat...NOT. Why thers 228 eye-scratchin fonts standin the way of yer Verdana font and if ya wanna go with yer Comics Sans fonts fer a pargraph cause yer tellin a joke, well don't git me started caus thats 63 items down the'eternal list of fonts. Methinks Notesy is takin a horsewhippin from dem word processing apps dat have sum memory fer witch fonts are poplar in yer writing style. Git on over here an vote fer my ideer 'about fixin this lack of fungtionalness.

(An dont be talkin bak to me 'bout them styles an default font settin cause I'm not listenin to that sorty workyround. Jes keep er simple caus I am).

The saying goes "Those who fail to plan, plan to fail". At my first Lotusphere in 2006 I went without goals nor a plan to achieve them. Somehow, despite this, I managed to avoid Lotusphere Fail Syndrome and came back to work with a 1001 new ideas, charged up and ready to go. I'm not taking any chances this year and am poring over the session descriptions (and even the slides...great idea) and planning every time slot with care. I've narrrowed down to 3 goals and am planning accordingly. Being still a Lotusphere neophyte (this will be my second) I'd be interested knowing your your priorities/goals because basically I'm paranoid I've missed something important.

Now, keep in mind I am of the "Hybrid Notes Guy" strain, meaning I do both Dev and Admin (using both sides of my brain?) so my goals pull from both hemispheres.

Top 3 Goals for LS 2009:

1. Learn enough about xPages so I can begin on a pilot app right away when I return - I am thinking of redeveloping one of my web apps, Photo Restoration workflow, in xPages, which will also take advantage of DAOS for those largish file attachments.
   
   
2. Learn the incremental Admin stuff I need to upgrade from Domino 8 to 8.5, taking advantage of DAOS, the new ID recovery and restore options, etc. I am on the i5/OS platform.
   
   
3. Learn how to leverage free graphing/charting tools to make my apps more visual. FREE is important as convincing management of the ROI of this endevour in this economy will be quite the challenge.
   

What about you?

Truth be known, for me, going to Lotusphere is not just an opportunity to further my training on the world's most advanced collaborative platform tools, and its not just a chance to meet those great folks whom I first get to know through blogs, podcasts, and email, but its really about temperature. Sure, us Canadians have adapted to cold temperatures. And most of the adaptation is mental. For example, we accept the fact that that yellow thing in the sky will be hidden behind clouds 90% of the time while our feeble tans fade away. We accept that from some point in October through to early May, most of us will just give up on outdoor activities and hibernate (there are apparently a minority who embrace the cold and ski, snowshoe, skate or other strange behaviour). For me hiberation means giving and partaking in hospitality, movies, Wii, Internet, and potlucks at the church.

Now I realize its not really that bad here in T.O (that's Toronto, Ontario for those who are not up on the lingo) compared to many other places even within Canada. I am on Lake Ontario and the so-called "lake effect" apparently protects us from the extreme temperatures that would be experienced in other regions of the country. In 2006, my first 'Sphere, I met a number of people from Iceland, Sweden, and even Germany who were experiencing record cold temperatures, far lower than anything we'd ever get in T.O. I imagine for these folks, the "temperature bonus" of going to the 'Sphere is an even bigger deal. Now, I am not a big business traveller-type so I am still awed how I can get on a plane and in a matter of hours, have no need for a coat, or even a sweater. I know many of you have lost that fascination over time, yet this innocence makes this trip even more pleasurable for me.

I was just talking with my wife today about how we could arrange for her to get down there with me, but with four kids, the cost, the short notice, and the fact that I really want to pour myself into networking this year and will be unavailable for her, it just doesn't make sense. So, here's my photo. I really want to meet many of you and develop some new friendships in the community. Don't be a stranger, be warm and say hi. I'll try to do the same. See you there.

Anybody else experiencing visual glitches with the Mac 8.5 Client? For example, we use layers as psuedo-dialog boxes in a number of Notes application. They work great with the Windows Client, but in the Mac client any Notes fields beneath the layer are showing through like this

UPDATE: I posted this on the LDD forum and an SPR was created, so a fix will be pending in a future release I assume

We're all familiar with the concept of GRAND OPENINGS. This is what those smart retailers do that understand Murphy's law. Think of a brand new store that opens its doors and runs quietly for a few weeks without much fanfare while the new staff get up to speed, the kinks in their systems get worked out, and the owners make adjustments to those things that are not quite working out in reality as were anticipated in theory. Everyone can go to the store, not just an elite few, but its generally just the locals who drive by and see the Open light is on that go in. This is known in market-speak as the soft-launch phase. Everybody knows what's coming next. Once the owners are satisfied they are ready for the big time, a GRAND OPENING takes place. Balloons, baboons, celebrities, fanfare and ribbon cutting, never to be repeated door crashers, you name it. The event is marketed far and wide with intensity.

Now apply this to Notes Domino releases. Most of us that are in the yellow bubble know that version 8.5 was code-complete a week or so before Christmas and is just sitting there waiting for the right time. Nobody will dispute the wisdom in waiting till after Christmas and New Years for the "GRAND OPENING". You want to have a clear voice in the market and there's just too many other competing messages out there during the holiday season, not to mention that many of the decision-makers are absent from the office and will not likely return until this coming Monday.

However, does it not occur to IBM that approved code sitting on the shelf is lost opportunity to allow the "locals", those who are the most evangelistic Lotus followers, to get up to speed and excited about the technology. Then when the GRAND OPENING (aka Official Release date) kicks off, complete with press releases, viral videos (sorry, I know its not viral till it is), and other such marketing splashes, those of us who are the most excited about the release can jump on board with our voices via blogs and other expressions. As well, during a soft launch phase, IBM can monitor the general chatter and evaluate their GRAND OPENING messages that are in the can for any last minute adjustments they might want to make. For example, perhaps there is a particular feature they didn't expect to be so well received, and one that they made a major plank in their communication needs to be deephasized. While some of this can be assessed by the responses to the betas, there is nothing like reading the responses to the final code.

Just thinking...sorry. Taking marketing hat off now.

RWR