Americans sometimes use a funny little
expression: There's more than one way to skin a cat.
This is a (kind of creepy) way of saying
that there are several different ways to accomplish a given task. And this
is my challenge. My developer side says to do it one way, but my admin
side might have a different perspective. In the end, a decision must
be made one way or the other. Case in point:
Recently, I completed the first part
of a source code control and build process management implementation (FYI,
Teamstudio knows quite a bit about source code control). The team included
Chris Blatnick of Interface Matters
fame, Kevin Petitt of SuperNTF fame,
and Jamie Magee of Martin Scott and NoteMan Tools fame.
It really was special for me to be able to teach these guys anything.
All of us are familiar with other tools,
as well, like the ones from Ytria. The point here
is that you can be so much more productive if you invest in some tools.
Of course, we all prefer that you choose *our* tools, but what we really
want is to help you deliver the best solutions for your users in the most
cost effective way possible. At the risk of repeating myself, that generally
means you need to invest in some tools. (For what it's worth, I definitely
like the 'free' ones, but you should always keep in mind that you get what
you pay for).
Anyway, here's the challenge. I
came across an agent that created a document collection by doing a search.
My first reaction (from the developer side of my brain) was to just
create and use a view. Further review showed that the agent ran once
a week and only took 20 seconds. That's when my admin side took over,
and said: Why have the server maintain the index for this view all week
long, when it would only be used once a week?
Any thoughts? Is a search always
bad? How much overhead is noticeable when maintaining the view? Multiply
this by dozens of databases. How would you decide?
Unplugged for iOS is now available
Mon, Mar 5th 2012 11:13a Karen Frasca With the Unplugged XPages Engine and HTML5,
we’re introducing a simple yet powerful way to extend your Lotus Notes
and Domino apps to iOS devices!
Unplugged works with Domino Designer
to create mobile apps for iPhones and iPads, which update via mobile sync
to Domino servers.And,
the HTML5-based architecture of the Unplugged XPages Engine unleashes the
full creativity of the mobile user interface designer – so you can create
touch-optimized, visual, customized mobile apps for iOS [read] Keywords: domino
lotus
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mobile
96
I will show you mine if you show me yours
Mon, Feb 13th 2012 11:12a John Kingsley I'll show you mine if you show me yours...
Okay, I'll go first. This code
is so bad I had to share it. And let me be clear - this code is from
R3 days. But that means it may have been looked at many times AND
LEFT ALONE! We can all help Notes suck less if we stamp out code
like this whenever we see it.
In this first example, the only line
in this entire block that did anything IS COMMENTED OUT! Just delete
the entire block.
If
oppDoc.iprgWonPercent_SS(0) prv [read] Keywords: notes
application
93
There is more than one way to skin a cat
Thu, Feb 2nd 2012 11:11a John Kingsley Americans sometimes use a funny little
expression: There's more than one way to skin a cat.
This is a (kind of creepy) way of saying
that there are several different ways to accomplish a given task. And this
is my challenge. My developer side says to do it one way, but my admin
side might have a different perspective. In the end, a decision must
be made one way or the other. Case in point:
Recently, I completed the first part
of a source code control and build process managem [read] Keywords: admin
agent
interface
server
twitter
86
My 2 Cents on Lotusphere 2012
Tue, Jan 24th 2012 3:10p John Kingsley This year marked my 8th or 9th time attending
Lotusphere (if only I had a backpack to commemorate each one!).
I've always attended as an exhibitor.
Back in my Digital days, the senior management always wanted the full conference
passes, because in the early days exhibitors got boxed lunches and full-conference
badge holders go the fine dining hall.
Anyway, here's my personal take on the
show:
1. I got a nice surprise when someone
stopped me and asked if I was from Teams [read] Keywords: lotusphere
notes
xpages database
development
facebook
mobile
152
Developers, like lawyers, should not ask questions they do not know the answer to
Fri, Dec 16th 2011 10:09a John Kingsley I recently inherited responsibility for
maintaining some applications. At the same time, we happen to be
decommissioning a server, so I needed to change the Server to Run On for
the agents. And, for some reason, I had to ask: "What does this
agent do, anyway?"
Turns out, this was the agent that runs
once a week against all documents in the database. Well, first of
all, it doesn't *really* run against all documents in the database. I don't
think it matters much, but target of [read] Keywords: agent
notes
application
applications
database
development
server
87
A development tip, and more
Tue, Nov 8th 2011 3:09p John Kingsley I recently inherited an application from
someone who inherited it from someone else.
It reminded me of something I discovered
back in the R4 days: When you copy and paste a field multiple times, Notes
takes the original field name and then adds an underscore and a sequential
number (as in Product, Product_1, Product_2, etc.). The problem comes
when you have to loop through each field -- and who hasn't had to do that?
What you get is something like this:
For x = 0 To 15
[read] Keywords: agent
notes
R4
application
blackberry
database
development
100
Teaching an old dog...
Mon, Sep 12th 2011 9:09a John Kingsley I'll admit to using punch cards during
my college programming years - and this was at a world famous engineering
college in IBM's back yard. Those were the old days... But it still takes
me awhile to try new things. Only recently did I create a list where each
entry was an object - my first class and my first list all at once.
I'll also admit that a lot of my programming
bravado comes from the guys down the hall here at the Teamstudio office.
You see, I don't consider myself a d [read] Keywords: ibm
archive
css
office
87
A word on our recent twitterstorm
Wed, Aug 17th 2011 4:09p John Kingsley (As if "twitterstorm" is a word).
We recently sent an email to our mailing
list that raised a few eyebrows and caused a bit of a ruckus on Twitter.
There were a few reasons for this, the
first of which was that, due to an email glitch, half of the emails arrived
in the recipients' inboxes as blank messages. Because of that, we
had to send the message a second time, which was probably annoying enough
in itself. But it was the content of the message that really got people
ta [read] Keywords: adminp
agent
domino
notes
application
applications
development
email
microsoft
server
twitter
61
The Same... Only Different
Wed, May 25th 2011 9:10a John Kingsley I was traveling recently, and had the opportunity
to stop and spend a night with one of my brothers and his family in Longmont,
Colorado.
On the way to his house from the airport,
he was complaining to me about a new nightly build process that they implemented
at his office. Apparently, it resulted in every developer having
a complete copy of all the modules in the build, not just the ones they
were working on. I chuckled and told him, "I sort of know what you're
talking about - [read] Keywords: notes
application
applications
development
mobile
office
openntf
