HTTP Redirect buffer overflow
Wed, Feb 24th 2010 5:23p Paul Hudson We use the Domino redirect [url] to direct to users to different web pages.
One of our systems handles the Athens devolved authentication used many by UK Universities to provide access to journal subscriptions to students off-campus.
Athens basically works by a set of redirects and can be used by users either pre journal search or post. If they choose not to pre-authenticate. When a user accesses a journal they’re directed to Athen’s login page. They can then identify their host inst [read] Keywords: agent
domino
ibm
java
33
Denial of service caused by Google Search Appliance OneBox module
Sat, Feb 6th 2010 4:26a Paul Hudson We use a Google Search Appliance to index our Domino websites. We use Google’s OneBox module to execute FT searches to return results from a database we don’t want Google to index (basically 80,000 journal records we don’t want to be counted against our license total).
Yesterday we upgraded our Search Appliance to the latest version of Google’s software (6.2.0.G14). About an hour after switching it on, one of our Domino servers was hit by a sustained denial of service. T [read] Keywords: agent
domino
lotus
bug
database
google
server
Mobile Roadie
Wed, Dec 9th 2009 7:56a Paul Hudson Mobile Roadie looks like an interesting service that helps people create iPhone apps.It appears to be aimed towards bands, but it’s just been used for ‘Le Web‘ conference. (Supports Twitter, uSteam, Comments, News etc).
Via TechCruch [read] Keywords: application
iphone
mobile
twitter
7
Today I’m truly disgusted
Fri, Dec 4th 2009 6:55p Paul Hudson I grew up in Middlesbrough, a small town in the North East of England. It’s one of those ’salt of the earth’ towns. To outsiders it doesn’t appear to have much going for it. But in general the people are brilliant and they have a pride in the area that you don’t find in many of the more affluent areas of the UK.
Teesside in 1900
Like many industrial parts of the UK, it’s been in decline since the 60s, as successive governments have stood by and watch it [read] Keywords: application
wiki
5
So what’s your excuse?
Mon, Nov 23rd 2009 7:57p Paul Hudson (I meant to post this last week but didn’t get round to it)
It’s interesting to read the reaction to the abstract rejections for Lotusphere. I’m sure some of the rejected ideas would make great presentations. But I’m not going to go into the pros and cons of the abstract selection process, that’s been covered by many recent blog entries.
After I had my abstract rejected last year, I vowed that I’d blog about my particular area of interest, accessibility. After [read] Keywords: domino
ibm
lotus
lotusphere
notes
xpages network
openntf
profile
server
10
Two Web Application Development Consultants posts with a focus on ‘Learning Technologies’
Mon, Nov 23rd 2009 7:57p Paul Hudson Sorry, for posting a job advert. But it might be useful to any out of work Domino developers.
2 x Applications and Development Consultant (with a focus on Learning Technology)
We are looking for experienced web-based software development professionals with substantial programming experience (preferably with expertise in Lotus Domino, Lotuscript, Java but additional languages such as .NET would be of interest) to join our web and learning applications team; developing and supporting the Universit [read] Keywords: domino
lotus
application
applications
development
java
10
‘Computed Text’ disappeared from menus in 8.5.1
Wed, Oct 14th 2009 8:54a Paul Hudson With the release of 8.5.1 I thought I’d make the switch. So far I’ve been impressed. I’ve used 8.5 to play with XPages but I’ve not used it as my main development tool, so I’ve haven’t updated existing apps. Today I’ve been updating a 7 app and wanted to add some ‘computed text’ but couldn’t find it under the ‘create’ menu. After much hair pulling and unhelpful ‘help’ files telling me it’s still under ̵ [read] Keywords: xpages development
8
Our Domino web stats
Tue, Aug 11th 2009 7:50p Paul Hudson We’ve just generated our yearly overview stats for our Domino-based Learning Environment. Our Learning Environment is firmly embedded within the University’s learning and teaching so it’s heavily used. Some of the figures are:
Daily Student Logins: 13,000
Daily Staff Logins: 1300
Data Transferred: 14TB
Average Daily Transfer: 46GB
Page Requests: 300,000,000
2008/9 Module Websites: 4000 (over 20,000+ in total)
Discussions Topics: 24,000
Teaching Resources: 120,000
Assignment su [read] Keywords: admin
domino
ibm
notes
development
wiki
43
Mac Pro & Cinema Display unboxing
Thu, Jun 18th 2009 2:58p Paul Hudson I’ve finally persuaded work that I need a Mac for my replacement computer. I’ve always been given RM ‘workstations’ (that have to last 4 years) that are really just fairly standard desktops with a bit extra memory and slightly better graphics card. From my point of view, they are underpowered for development work. Not bad machines, but more suited to general office tasks. But working for a University, you sometimes have to accept that cloth has to be cut to fit.
After tw [read] Keywords: admin
designer
domino
lotus
lotusphere
apple
development
laptop
mac
macbook
office
34
Server loosing permissions
Tue, Jun 16th 2009 4:51p Paul Hudson Our Domino servers (7.03) run on Solaris and we’ve recently moved them onto new hardware. As part of the move, they have been moved in Solaris zones. Unfortunately since the changes we’ve experienced a serious issue that appears to be related to server permissions. Users are loosing the ability to upload files as it appears that the server is rewriting the permissions to the ID file so root access is required. Effectively the server is loosing access to it’s own ID file. So far [read] Keywords: domino
server
6
Odd Notes problems
Mon, Apr 27th 2009 2:49p Paul Hudson We all experience issues with all software and Domino / Notes is not immune but it’s really infuriating when two issues strike at once.
We’ve been moving server’s around and my Design (8.02) client stopped replicating. Not in the normal way, an invalid connection document, but one where any replication event caused an immediate NSD. After much hair pulling - and at my age that’s something you want to avoid in case it doesn’t grow back - the only solution appears to [read] Keywords: admin
document
domino
notes
nsd
server
4
Line Input fails crashes when importing Unicode
Tue, Apr 14th 2009 2:50p Paul Hudson We have a facility for staff that allows them to download an Excel marking scheme, enter student marks and then to upload it as a tab delimited file (or xml file) back into the system. Last night a member of staff using the facility crashed both servers in our cluster.
On further inspection (and a lot of development server crashes!) I finally narrowed the problem down to a single line of code
Line Input #fileID, strLine
On further investigation it appears that the user exported their marking sch [read] Keywords: domino
development
server
xml
7
Domino issues with latest Google Search Appliance software (5.2.0.G32)
Sat, Apr 11th 2009 2:48a Paul Hudson A word of warning if you use a Google Search Appliance to index your Domino content. The latest version of the appliance software (5.2.0.G32) has a bug which means it is now case sensitive when checking for Domino rewrite and ignore rules. For example it will only exclude agents if they are correctly capitalised. i.e OpenAgent. If you have agents which might cause you some problems (say agents that delete content or send emails), make sure you add ignore statements to the exception lists before [read] Keywords: domino
bug
google
7
Google Apps for Education
Sat, Feb 28th 2009 7:52p Paul Hudson I spent a pleasant Friday morning at a Google UK education event. Like many Universities we’re investigating how to provide services to our alumni and a common request from graduates is to keep their email address.
There are a number of options. Scale up our present Unix-based email. Implement a new email system. We use Exchange for staff. But implementing a Exchange for students and alumni would be too expensive. Alternative their is the hosted route.
Both Microsoft and Google offer hosted s [read] Keywords: ibm
email
exchange
exchange
google
microsoft
office
6
Save conflicts and Document Locking
Sat, Feb 28th 2009 7:52p Paul Hudson I’ve still got document locking in test. New ‘features’ keep cropping up so I’ve held off running the design update!
The latest issue is that databases with locking enabled are generating email messages warning users when their messages have generated a conflict. So far I’ve been unable to stop these emails.
There are a few comments reporting the same issue on the support forums and there’s an IBM reply stating that it’s been recorded as a bug - but thi [read] Keywords: document
domino
ibm
bug
email
5
17” MacBook Pro
Sat, Feb 28th 2009 7:52p Paul Hudson I’ve just bought a new 17” Macbook Pro. My 2006 15” MacBook Pro had started to show it’s age.
First impressions? Well it’s a Mac, and we all know they are good at first impressions and this one is no different.
The unibody design gives is the laptop a solid feeling. The HD screen is bright and although this isn’t the first laptop that I’ve owned with a glossy screen, they are an acquired taste, so it’s worth checking out in store if you’re uncertain whether to pay extra [read] Keywords: domino
apple
development
laptop
mac
macbook
podcast
wireless
11
Screen reader survey
Sat, Feb 21st 2009 2:52p Paul Hudson A survey by WebAIM on how users of screen readers interact with web pages is worth a read. It gives a small insight into how screen reader users navigate around pages and some of the problems they face. The survey failed to clarify the term Web 2.0 so the survey hasn’t helped to understand if AJAX based sites disenfranchise partially sighted users but it does confirm some of the advice accessibility experts make. It also reinforces some of the point I tried to make to the Domino developers [read] Keywords: document
domino
lotus
lotusphere
xpages ajax
application
interface
web 2.0
4
Congratulations to flickr…
Tue, Feb 10th 2009 6:53p Paul Hudson Flickr is 5 years old today
I’m really glad Flickr has survived and grown from strength to strength.
For me, Flickr is the perfect ‘Web 2.0′ website. It doesn’t throw lots of rotating wait icons all over the place. It only uses dynamic features when they benefit the user and it’s inline editing is implemented perfectly.
Powerful but easy to use - I can’t give it a more glowing review than that. [read] Keywords: web 2.0
15
Templates - why are so many settings not inherited?
Mon, Feb 9th 2009 7:56p Paul Hudson Ok, I’ve been using Domino long enough to know that templates don’t do what you think they should do so I shouldn’t really be surprised.
I had a problem with document locking. Some documents couldn’t be edited because there were some temporary locks being set and my code didn’t unlock them. Okay, my code was at fault, I’d accidentally allowed temporary locks when the administration server was unavailable, but since our servers only get rebooted once a week abo [read] Keywords: acl
administration
document
domino
template
database
server
Mircosoft continue to shoot themselves in the foot - Windows 7 lineup announced
Tue, Feb 3rd 2009 5:56p Paul Hudson They’ve announed the Windows 7 lineup claiming it offers ‘clear choice for consumers and business’. It appears they haven’t learnt from their mistakes?
They claim that the streamlined ‘clear choice’ is a choice between ‘Home Premium’ and ‘Professional’.
But reading further they mention that they’ll continue to offer enterprises the Enterprise edition and ‘Home Basic’ for the emerging world. Plus there will also be a & [read] Keywords: apple
enterprise
microsoft
5
Lotusphere pics and videos
Sun, Feb 1st 2009 9:54p Paul Hudson My photos from Lotusphere have already been added to the Lotusphere flickr group, ( as p_a_h) but I’ve just uploaded a bunch of Lotusphere related videos to Youtube:
Country Music Solos from the Sunday night party
Blues Brothers from the Wednesday night party
Mustang Sally from Jamfest
and documentary evidence if needed of why we turn up to work the following week so tired
All videos except ‘Mustang Sally’, were created with the new iMovie ‘09. I installed it earlier t [read] Keywords: lotusphere
mac
6
Domino 8.5 - reflections
Wed, Jan 21st 2009 10:52a Paul Hudson From my personal perspective the big feature in 8.5 is XPages, but 8.5 is not a one trick pony. There have been a number of other improvements, such as the ID Vault (something not applicable in our institution) and Domino Attachment and Object Service (DAOS).
DAOS
DAOS is described elsewhere. But basically, DAOS allows you to store the attachments in your Domino databases outside of the database, reducing the size of the nsf.
Big figures are being thrown around; reducing storage size by 40-6 [read] Keywords: domino
ibm
id vault
lotus
xpages bug
database
eclipse
password
server
xml
3
JMP203 - Getting to know XPages & the new Domino designer
Sun, Jan 18th 2009 2:51p Paul Hudson This is the biggie for us web developers. This is the first session on the technology at this year’s Lotusphere. It’s definitely popular, and hence very warm.
The session was ran by Maureen Layman and a newbie Maire Kehoe and demonstrtedb(live) many of the new XPage features in Designer 8.5. Maire was clearly nevous but did pretty well.
Most of the stuff was basic stuff. I’ve not looked at themes or localisation yet and I wasn’t aware of the server side inline errors (tho [read] Keywords: designer
domino
lotusphere
xpages server
4
Things I learnt about XPages today - Do not use the quick edit tools
Thu, Jan 8th 2009 7:48p Paul Hudson I thought I’d document over the next few months my baby steps in learning XPages. Although I won’t be using XPages for any development in the short to medium term, I’m going to start to investigate the accessibility implications of each option before developing anything in anger.
My first step - and it really is a first step almost embarrassing step, was to simply add html to my page so that I can develop pages with a semantic structure. Stop laughing at the back. We all have t [read] Keywords: designer
document
domino
javascript
template
xpages development
7
Big Announcements
Wed, Jan 7th 2009 3:21p Paul Hudson I wonder why it is that many believe Notes is dead? Compare and contrast two recent announcements from IBM and Apple
Notes/Domino 8.5 release
(There is a little link in the news banner in the centre of the screen to a press release about Notes on the Mac)
iLife ‘09
On Apple’s site, there are loads of videos and information telling us why iLife ‘09 is worth upgrading to. On the IBM site we get
If I hadn’t been to Lotusphere 2008 and didn’t follow the Lotus rela [read] Keywords: domino
ibm
lotus
lotusphere
notes
apple
mac
6
Designer 8.5 - XPages first impressions…..
Tue, Jan 6th 2009 6:17p Paul Hudson …. confusing! I’m sure it will make sense once I start to use it.
Had a brief look at the 8.5 discussion template and it appears all that all link properties are blank so no effort has been made to generate alternative views when Javascript is unavailable. Bad design.
I’m not sure when I’ll be able to use XPages in anger. Our learning environment has 22,000 users with 14,000 individuals logging in daily. It’s completely web based - no Notes clients, and with the [read] Keywords: designer
domino
javascript
notes
template
xpages properties
11
8.5 Discussion template
Tue, Jan 6th 2009 7:54a Paul Hudson Ok, now this is beyond a joke. Sorry, but Domino 8.5 is going to be an accessibility nightmare. I know the discussion template is used many many companies and I’ve seen some University’s base their discussion facilities on this template (not us, we wrote our own), but the new template makes NO ATTEMPT to be accessible, both from point of view of handling javascript or by using semantic HTML.
Sean Cull has kindly left his 8.5 discussion template open for us to play with.
If youR [read] Keywords: document
domino
javascript
template
css
database
firefox
2
Lotusphere online
Tue, Jan 6th 2009 4:02a Paul Hudson Lotusphere online has been available for several days. Although I’ve still not been sent an email informing me that it’s live (just like last year), unlike last year my email and confirmation number work.
A number of features are created using XPage technology and this is the first application I’ve seen that uses this functionality. I’ve mentioned that I’m concerned that XPages will provide Domino designers with tools that they might use that caused them to embed [read] Keywords: domino
ibm
lotusphere
xpages application
email
server
5
HTML-Ipsum
Mon, Dec 15th 2008 4:30p Paul Hudson I’ve been using lipsum.com for years to generate lipsum text for page mock-ups. HTML-Ipsum is a really simple site that takes lipsum generation one step further. This site generates html based lipsum but includes useful mark-up such as bullet lists, paragraphs and headers, allowing you to quickly preview the styles you’re applying to your website. [read] Keywords:
2
User education
Mon, Dec 15th 2008 4:21p Paul Hudson We’ve all had users who ask the most obvious questions. This excellent tool allows you to answer them:
http://letmegooglethatforyou.com/ [read] Keywords:
5
I knew Lotusphere 2008 was going to be good when…..
Wed, Dec 10th 2008 3:59p Paul Hudson I’m a big Led Zeppelin fan and I was lucky enough to get a ticket to their reunion gig. Imagine my joy when boarding my British Airways flight to Orlando to discover a certain Robert Plant on my flight. I’m not the sort of person who normally gets star struck so walked past him as I ventured through Business class to my cattle-class seat. But by the end of the flight I had decided it would have been rude not to thank Robert for the gig. Okay, I might have had to let my bag go around [read] Keywords: lotusphere
4
Bid for a gig
Wed, Dec 10th 2008 8:19a Paul Hudson Is there a band you’d like to see reform? Would you like to see a major band play for a select audience? Then owngig.com might be the site for you. You say who you would like to see and how much you’re willing to pay and if there are enough people interested owngig will attempt to make it happen.
I know some bands have used this approach, but if owngig.com can link their site into existing social networking communities such as Last.FM, Facebook, and MySpace, they could be on to a [read] Keywords: lotusphere
facebook
myspace
networking
php
3
Stephen Fry on Vista
Mon, Dec 8th 2008 3:18p Paul Hudson Apparently Stephen Fry is having problems with Vista in a rather public fashion.
When I installed Vista as a Boot camp installation I was so relieved to see it, it was almost pleasant, but I can understand Fry’s annoyance. You see Microsoft have a secret weapon to make us University staff enjoy the Vista, their awful ordering process.
In October Microsoft released Vista under it’s ‘Ultimate Steal‘ programme. This provides University staff and students with incredibly che [read] Keywords: email
mac
microsoft
password
twitter
vista
