You can read a story of mine...
Thu, May 10th 2012 6:10a Andre Guirard In the recent anthology Sky-Tinted Waters from SamsDot, my story "Misprint" appears. It's about a young stage magician and a trick that works a little too well, and the dangers of not reading ahead to the end of the instructions. The other stories are also very good and I'm enjoying reading it. I hope a bunch of you will buy copies, and that you'll find the stories entertaining. No ebook version is planned at present. [read] Keywords: ldd
lotus
135
Question about non-ASCII Domino domain names
Tue, Feb 21st 2012 8:10a Andre Guirard This is a survey, especially for OUS based admins. How many of you are using Domino domain names that contain non-ASCII characters? In your experience working with customers, is that pretty common? If you don't use them, is it because of any specific problem, or just because the documentation doesn't list them as valid characters? [read] Keywords: administration
domino
ldd
lotus
161
Finding the length of a LMBCS string
Mon, Feb 13th 2012 4:50p Andre Guirard Today I needed to use LotusScript to find the length of a string, in bytes. It took a little experimentation, so I figured I should post it here in case anyone else might sometime find it useful. This is in LotusScript; there's probably an easier way in Java, but I needed it for a form validation. %REM Function LmbcsLen Description: Return the number of bytes in a string if expressed in LMBCS character set. Strings in LotusScript are in Unicode, but are conv [read] Keywords: ldd
lotus
lotusscript
java
443
New Best Practices Wiki
Tue, Jan 10th 2012 11:00a Andre Guirard There's a new wiki about Domino development best practices. It was written by various experts in and out of IBM, and I followed up with a lot of edits myself, so I'm an after the fact contributor. It's brand new so there are probably some mistakes, which I hope you people who know what you're doing, will correct. I think this will be a good resource for developers, and I'm adding a link to my list of links on the right. In other news, if you'd like to read a short story by me (under my fic [read] Keywords: domino
ibm
ldd
lotus
apple
application
development
wiki
Overly Social
Tue, Nov 15th 2011 7:00a Andre Guirard It seems like a lot of companies are still struggling to figure out how this social stuff can be used to aid their marketing. It might be just me, but some of them seem to be wandering far into the Too Much Information zone. I'm not even talking about the information the companies themselves publish, though why anyone would want to subscribe to the Twitter feed of a Chinese buffet restaurant or a hotel has frankly been puzzling me for a while. No, I'm talking about the information the companie [read] Keywords: ldd
lotus
application
facebook
twitter
LotusScript Gold Collection 1.3
Mon, Oct 31st 2011 11:20a Andre Guirard A new version of the "LotusScript Gold Collection" toolkit is available on openntf.org. It includes the much requested NotesGroupManager library which used to be in the Lotus Sandbox, and a way to call Notes C API functions without having to check which OS you're using before each call. The latter might not work on all servers, but the problem has been reported to the LotusScript team in development. It works great on all clients (and you could easily make a server version, it's just not as [read] Keywords: ldd
lotus
lotusscript
notes
development
openntf
server
116
Searching for blank date fields, and what makes a supported feature
Mon, Oct 31st 2011 4:20a Andre Guirard Timothy Briley asked: I've noticed that over time you've written a bit about valid searches in Lotus Ntoes. Can you comment one way or another on whether or not this is a valid search method: To find documents in a view containing an empty date field manually by using the search bar or programatically using notesView.FTSearch: Not([fieldName] > 0) If this is a valid method, why isn't it documented? It is seems to work for you, fine. Many things are not documented. Sometimes [read] Keywords: domino
ldd
lotus
notes
application
applications
wiki
What I’ve been working on...
Wed, Jun 8th 2011 6:33a Andre Guirard One reason I haven't been posting here much recently, is that I've been working on LotusLive configuration tools, and I didn't think that would be of general interest. These would be the NSFs that end users download to configure their workstations to access LotusLive Notes, and the one that the on-premises administrator in a "hybrid" organization uses to set up their servers to communicate with LotusLive's servers to deliver mail, etc. It's a lot of complicated application development for [read] Keywords: ldd
lotus
notes
notes client
application
development
server
110
Creating a replica ID item for adminp requests
Tue, Jun 7th 2011 6:24a Andre Guirard When automatically generating an adminp request that applies to a specific database, there's an item in the request that you may find hard to create. If you create adminp requests manually and then examine the items in them, you can see for instance that you might have the item ProxyReplicaID with a date/time value. Doesn't look like you would expect a replica ID to look. How do you convert the value of (say) NotesDatabase.ReplicaID, a string, to the TIMEDATE value that gets stored in the note [read] Keywords: administration
adminp
ldd
lotus
database
68
What is this boy doing?
Mon, Jun 6th 2011 7:43a Andre Guirard This has nothing whatever to do with IBM products, but is just a fun little project of my own. So if you're bored or whatever, steer your browser to the Pounce blog and ask a question for Tyler to answer. The site is pretty rough at the moment; I'll pretty it up as I have time over the coming days. [read] Keywords: ibm
ldd
lotus
66
LS2J static method calls and a little introspection
Thu, May 26th 2011 11:30a Andre Guirard I've been needing to use LS2J recently so that I could code DNS lookups and web page requests as part of a testing system I'm working on for LotusLive. The documentation is a little vague on how you work with methods in a Java class from LotusScript, so since I had to experiment to find out how it worked, I figured it would be nice to record the information here. In most cases, you're writing the Java classes you're calling via LS2J, so you get to decide whether there are static members. Bu [read] Keywords: agent
domino
ldd
lotus
lotusscript
notes
development
java
system i
102
Another way to make an efficient date/based view
Mon, May 23rd 2011 3:40p Andre Guirard This technique isn't applicable in all situations, but it's a way to make a date or time-based view whose index is only rebuilt when needed, and doesn't require that the date be hardcoded into a design element. The example is intended for use in the Notes mail file, where there's only one user who we're mainly concerned about. It could be used in a shared app context, but in that case it should be set up to use the server's time settings, not the client's as in this example, since differe [read] Keywords: dxl
ldd
lotus
notes
applications
profile
server
77
Good news for DXL exporting
Mon, Apr 4th 2011 8:50a Andre Guirard The fix is in 8.5.3; DXL exporting of file attachments (and all base64) is now substantially faster, on the order of 50%. As always, no change can be considered final until the product is released. [read] Keywords: dxl
ldd
lotus
50
Ripped off content
Wed, Mar 16th 2011 9:23a Andre Guirard If you're reading this on the blog of Bruno Grange, please be advised that it was ripped off of the blog of Andre Guirard - http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/bpmpblog.nsf . Much of this content seems to have been copied without permission. I'm communicating with our division's IP counsel to see what they want to do about it. Bruno, if you're reading this, please be advised that IBM takes intellectual property very seriously. [read] Keywords: ibm
ldd
lotus
62
Good news for LotusScript editing
Fri, Mar 11th 2011 11:20a Andre Guirard I'd earlier reported a weird bug that caused one script library to suddenly get dozens of superfluous errors when another library that it includes, is edited. I got word this morning that a fix was submitted for 8.5.3. Caveat: As usual, nothing is final until it's released. [read] Keywords: ldd
lotus
lotusscript
script library
bug
oop
67
On improving performance of views with response docs
Tue, Mar 1st 2011 11:50a Andre Guirard At Lotusphere 2011, I attended a session by Andrew Pollack (BP114, a nice presentation which you can download here). Andrew suggested replacing @IsResponseDoc in view selection formula with @AllDescendants as a way to help performance. (Actually he said @Responses but I think he meant @IsResponseDoc). At the time, I said I didn't think it was quite that simple; this is the promised follow-up to explain what I meant. There are two important differences between @IsResponseDoc and @AllDescendants [read] Keywords: domino
ldd
lotus
lotusphere
application
database
101
Expand sections on document open
Fri, Feb 4th 2011 11:53a Andre Guirard A business partner approached me at Lotusphere with this problem, and after playing around with it a little, it seemed to me the workaround might be useful to others with similar requirements, so here it is. Requirement: set up the Memo form so that if it contained collapsed sections (e.g. a reply thread), all the sections would be automatically expanded on open. Problem: the function NotesUIDocument.ExpandAllSections doesn't work when used on a form that has a non-scrolling header, like the Me [read] Keywords: formula language
ldd
lotus
lotusphere
lotusscript
notes
85
Using a NotesNoteCollection as a ’manual’ note container
Thu, Feb 3rd 2011 7:10a Andre Guirard From a question in one of the BOFs here, I've learned that the documentation of the LotusScript NotesNoteCollection method (NotesCollection in the Java API) contains a significant error. The help for the BuildCollection method says, "You must build the collection before it is usable." This is wrong. The documentation writers were only imagining one use for the collection -- to search for notes. But there's another use for a NotesNoteCollection -- as a generic container for notes that you fin [read] Keywords: ldd
lotus
lotusscript
notes
java
33
Lotuspheres are contiguous
Tue, Feb 1st 2011 7:40a Andre Guirard Waiting for the keynote to start... It's always a kick to come to Lotusphere -- and when I'm here, it seems to be a continuation of previous years, as if the chunks of my life that are Lotusphere are yanked out of the rest and arranged consecutively. Certain things are constants -- shin splints for one, from the basic conflict between having to walk at least three miles a day, and IBM's suggestion that we should be somewhat formally dressed. The food service's lame idea of gluten-free. The f [read] Keywords: ibm
ldd
lotus
lotusphere
applications
community
development
linking
73
DXL importing issue -- you may want hotfix
Mon, Jan 17th 2011 11:40a Andre Guirard From a service issue I've been working with one of our customers, I've discovered that there's a problem importing DXL containing large blocks of base64 data -- more than 4MB -- which would include any file attachments > 3MB, for instance. You would get this error message in the importer log: "Base64 byte stream contains invalid data or is too large to store in a single note item." (Of course, you can also get this error if your data really is invalid.) This might happen in about 2% of [read] Keywords: dxl
ldd
lotus
applications
Better SSJS validation for XPages
Wed, Jan 5th 2011 10:40a Andre Guirard I've been doing some XPages development recently, and I was frustrated by some inconvenience in doing server-side validation using JavaScript. The typical way of doing a series of validations on the same field, is to have a message and condition for each test, e.g.: = 3)}]]> var valu:string = value.trim(); [read] Keywords: ldd
lotus
xpages application
development
java
javascript
server
Bill Donohue’s bold proposal
Thu, Dec 2nd 2010 10:50a Andre Guirard Bill Donohue, president of the Catholic League, has successfully pressured the Smithsonian Institution to withdraw an anti-religious piece (or so it is perceived) from a privately funded show, complaining, "...why should the federal government underwrite an institution that uses money to bash Christians, when it is unconstitutional for the federal government to underwrite the promotion of it?" I welcome Mr. Donohue's proposal that we withdraw Federal funding from institutions that participate [read] Keywords: ldd
lotus
41
Performance and compression
Tue, Aug 24th 2010 11:40a Andre Guirard I have, at times in the past, advised people to try turning on document compression in their databases as a way to improve performance, thinking that if the application is I/O bound, the extra time spent in compressing/uncompressing the data, would be more than made up for by the time savings of not having to read as much data. Apparently, though, the benchmarks show that it's a rare situation where this would work, and that using compression actually slows things down at least a percent or [read] Keywords: domino
ldd
lotus
application
