TexasSwede

• Domino Designer 8.5.1 can be used for free (no license needed) to develop local applications.
• In order to deploy applications to a Domino Enterprise Server (regular license or Express, does not matter), an Enterprise Client Access License (CAL) is needed. The Messaging only CAL can not be used, nor can the Collaboration Express license.
• Any developer in a Domino Collaboration Express environment need (in addition to the Express license) an Enterprise CAL in order to use Domino Designer. The cost is $159. The Express license is $142. Both prices are according to Ed Brill.
• A license for Domino Designer used to be $864, so it is still a substantial cost reduction, $705 to be precise.
• For a customer using the cheaper per-seat and no server charge Domino Express license, the cost savings will still be large, even if Designer technically not is free in that environment.
• Previous versions of Domino Designer are not free. Only 8.5.1 and later.

In my personal opinion, I think IBM should make all versions of Designer free. No extra license needed to deploy applications on any servers. Each developer will still need either an Enterprise CAL or a Domino Collaboration Express license anyway.

I hope this is a beginning of getting Domino Designer out there, and making developers aware of the tool. I can see a need for plenty of good books/wikis/reference material for new developers, though. I still believe in books. You can read them in the bathroom, in bed, on a flight (even during take-off and landing). Revisit the R6 Developer Redbook and publish a new version of it, updated for Designer 8.5.1...

It has been a while since I did some blogging, but I been recharging some this last weekend and I will try to get back into a somewhat regular schedule.

Before I start, I would like to point out a function I would love to see in Lotus Connections, where this blog runs. I don't think it is something only useful for Bleedyellow.com, but for all Connections users. The function? To allow anonymous (or at least non-validated/logged in) users to comment.
Could be a setting on a per-blog basis. I don't think it is unthinkable that a company get Lotus Connections and use it both for internal/closed blogging, and for some external blogs as well, where they want to allow feedback form the public.

OK, now on to other stuff. I been reading for a while about all the benefits of the compression in Domino 8.0.1 and 8.5, as well as DAOS. So of course, having several huge databases, I got very excited. The claim system I wrote is split over a couple of databases. The main one is currently 6,930 MB (including view indexes) with 1,4 million documents, and the biggest supporting one is 7,363 MB with almost 1,8 million documents (about 1400 new ones created each business day). The view indexes are fairly large, over a GB on the first database for example.

Our Domino administrator did some testing on a Domino 8.5 server he setup, but he did not see any space savings at all on the claim system. I believe that the database size even increased a few MB. He then turned on the new attachment compression, and got a 1.5% savings, or something to that effect.
He will soon try the same with his mailfile and see if he get a better result. When I get the final numbers, I will post them here.

So why are we not getting any 20-40% savings others report? Well, for one thing, the documents contain very little rich text data. Almost all fields are plain text fields, and the few rich text fields are used for comments and usually not populated with much data, if any. There are also not a large number of attachments. They are all stored outside Domino, using an FTP upload/download system I designed many years ago. In some of the main documents there is one attachment (usually a PDF of a loss report), but in many of them, the users also use the attachment functionality to put the attachment on the FTP server.

So if your database does not contain large rich text fields and attachments, it seems like the compression will not do much good. However, for mail files or other similar applications, the savings seems to be substantial.

I started developing for Lotus Notes using 4.5 back in 1996, but it was not until 1997 I started doing some serious development.

At that time I was a journalist, working for IDG in Sweden. Since I was covering PC hardware and software, I went to Lotusphere Europe in Nice in 1997, and also to a pre-cursor to it in Maastricht, Holland in 1996. I basically learned the product on my own, which was not that hard since I had a programming background. Journalism was something that I happened to get into when the company I worked for before went bankrupt.

Anyway, in 1997 I got married to Angie, who I met in the summer of 1996 while visiting Seattle and Microsoft. After we got married, she decided she wanted to move back to the US, so I transferred to Boston where IDG is based. I now became a full-time Notes developer. My last project in Sweden wa sto write an editorial system in Notes, something I did in 3 weeks while also packing my appartment and getting ready to move on New Years day.

That application is still in production today, 10 years later. They tried a few times to replace it with commercial products, but they did not work well enough compared to the custom built system I developed.

Ever since then I been developing Notes applications, both for the client and web. In 2002 we moved to the Dallas area, since Angie wanted to live closer to her family after we had our son. I got a job as Notes developer at an insurance company, where I still work today.

I can't imagine not working with Notes and Domino, and I am very excited about the new directions the platform is taking.

It is now 5pm Friday, I am about to go home, finish packing and early tomorrow I will board a plane to fly to Orlando for my 12th Lotusphere. I am looking forward to it more than ever, I expect to hear plenty of news, meet people I already know, and learn to know more of my fellow Yellow-bleeders. :-)

 

See you in Orlando!