Continuing in our series of Lotus Notes secrets, we’d like to share a strange little tidbit about design element replication (this is one of the secrets that Ytria’s Eric Houvenaghel shared at his Lotusphere 2010 BoF session):
A tale of two Lotus Notes developers
Once upon a time two developers were each working on their own local replicas of the same Notes application.
One developer, we’ll call him Bob, was nervous about losing changes so he clicked Ctrl+S after every single change he made.
The other developer, who we’ll dub Henry, was a bit more laid back. He only saved his work periodically, after significant changes were made.
Now the problem:
Naturally enough, Henry and Bob would sometimes get their wires crossed and work on the same design elements at the same time. And since Designs can’t have conflicts, someone’s work would inevitably be lost after replication. But oddly, in these situations it was always Henry’s work that got lost–even if he was the last one to work on the design element in question.
But why?
Because every time Bob clicked Ctrl+S the sequence number would go up and it turns out that a higher sequence number trumps a more recent Modified date in design element replication.
Still don’t believe me?
For all you doubters out there, I performed a little experiment with scanEZ to confirm our observations (I used scanEZ because it lets you have multiple open sessions with different active IDs).
First, I did some modifications to a view being sure to save frequently, thus running up the sequence number (see the image below)…
Image A: The Ctrl+S Maniac
Next, I performed another modification on the same design element on a replica of this database using a different ID. This time I only saved once. But notice in the image below the Modified date is more recent than in the image above:
Image B: The changes are more recent but the dev saved his work only once
When I replicated, as expected, the version in Image A was the “winner”:
The "winner"
How to avoid this issue
A locking solution that prevents developers from working on the same design element is probably the simplest way to prevent this problem from occurring in your Notes shop.
How *often* you click Ctrl+S can affect Lotus Notes application development
Thu, Feb 4th 2010 6:27p Peter Woodford Continuing in our series of Lotus Notes secrets, we’d like to share a strange little tidbit about design element replication (this is one of the secrets that Ytria’s Eric Houvenaghel shared at his Lotusphere 2010 BoF session):
A tale of two Lotus Notes developers
Once upon a time two developers were each working on their own local replicas of the same Notes application.
One developer, we’ll call him Bob, was nervous about losing changes so he clicked Ctrl+S after every single c [read] Keywords: lotus
lotusphere
notes
application
database
development
187
How hiding views from the Notes client can bring a Domino server to its knees
Thu, Jan 28th 2010 6:28p Peter Woodford In Domino Designer, enabling the option to hide views from the Notes client has one very unexpected impact:
It’s not just hiding the views from the Notes client, it’s also hiding it from the Updall task–which means the Updall task will no longer update the view index.
The job of indexing the view will instead fall upon the lap of the HTTP task which is 90% less efficient than the Updall task for this job! This can have a major impact on server performance if you have a decent n [read] Keywords: domino
lotus
notes
notes client
updall
server
202
Building a Library of Lotus Notes Secrets
Thu, Jan 28th 2010 11:29a Peter Woodford All you Notes pros out there, does this story sound familiar? You get stuck on something so you ask yourself, ‘why isn’t this working?’; in the course of troubleshooting you discover a little something about Notes (something that’s conspicuously absent from the Help documentation); knowing this ’secret’ helps you fix the problem and helps you steer clear of similar issues in the future.
Any truly mature computer technology has its share of secrets—you know, [read] Keywords: administration
ibm
lotus
lotusphere
notes
ray ozzie
application
development
email
server
19
Previewing Lotus Notes Database Replication with scanEZ
Wed, Jan 27th 2010 11:04a Peter Woodford Despite the many advantages that come from the Lotus Notes and Domino secure distributed environment, it’s important to remember that replication remains something of a ‘black box’ process. And no matter how carefully you plan for every conceivable situation, replication-related problems will crop up from time to time.
This is why scanEZ’s dedicated Replication Auditor tool can be so helpful. It lets you simulate what will happen the next time a database is replicated&# [read] Keywords: domino
lotus
notes
database
10
When Formulas Fail You: An Alternate Way to Search for Elusive Notes Documents
Wed, Jan 27th 2010 11:04a Peter Woodford It’s tough to find certain types of documents in Lotus Notes databases. For instance, a problematic application may be full of ‘orphan documents’ (documents with $Ref items but no valid parents) but there’s no easy way to find these documents in Notes. This is where scanEZ comes in. The Document Analyzer was specifically designed to help you retrieve these and other tough-to-find documents.
Here’s how it works:
1) First launch scanEZ and open a Lotus Notes database [read] Keywords: lotus
notes
application
database
workspace
