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IBM moving to electronic support only

Sat, 19 May 2012 06:50:25 GMT

Starting June 2012 customers are "requested" to start opening IBM Serbice Requests (SR) using the electronic support portal and from 2013 only electronic entry will be possible for severity 2, 3 and 4. This is in no way a surprise and makes IBM move funds from the probably costly phone based support they are offering now and probably also makes a lot more sense for supplying all the relevant information. This is all well and good so long the quality of the data entry forms are top notch. More information can be found at the announcement.

Notes 8.5.3 and Sametime Web API woes

Wed, 22 Feb 2012 13:18:54 GMT

For one of our products we are using the Sametime Web API which is a great way to Sametime enable applications outside the Notes client. Basically it uses the web container running within Notes Standard to provide a HTTP API for Sametime awareness. Great. We had an issue however after upgrading from Notes 8.5.2 to Notes 8.5.3 where Sametime awarenss stopped working but thanks to the design partner program and the help of Khuan Hoe Kong from IBM we're now back in the business. As this issue may bite others I thought I would post it here.

Our problem was that we were using the "mystatus" and "getShortStatus" API calls to get awareness status that is we were using local calls like http://localhost:59449/stwebapi/mystatus/ and http://localhost:59449/stwebapi/getShortStatus. These calls returned JSON we could use to get awareness status and as previously mentioned these calls worked fine in Notes 8.5.2 but after going to Notes 8.5.3 (and hence a newer version of the embedded Sametime client) they stopped working. Apparently these calls were considered a security risk so there were blocked and needed to be unblocked in order to work. Below is the response from IBM.

For security reasons, many of the WEBApi functions are disabled by default, including the mentioned two. To enable the function, add a preference to the plugin_customization.ini in the following format:

com.ibm.collaboration.realtime.webapi.<function>Enabled=true

For example, to enable the getstatusshort, you would add this preference:
com.ibm.collaboration.realtime.webapi .getstatusshortEnabled=true
To enabled all the Web API functions you can use the global override:
com.ibm.collaboration.realtime.webapi/ enableAllWebApisOverride=true
The details of this change may be found in ST8.5.1 SDK.

While the above solution works it requires the customer to configure the client and hence wont work for us. The funny thing is that while the getstatusshort method is blocked for "security reasons" the getstatus method works just fine. Only difference is that the getstatus method returns more info. Makes no sense.

My main reason for considering this a bad approach is that I get an HTTP code 200 back but the response is empty/invalid. That seems wrong. A better REST solution would be to return a 403 Forbidden with an explanation why. What would in my mind have been the correct solution. Hope that can be incorporated into a future release.

But it works now so I will go back under my rock.

Windows 2008 64-bit can cause a significant CPU increase and I/O degradation when Domino opens many databases

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 10:52:24 GMT

Had a customer report the above issue and have it fixed by IBM so I thought others might benefit from it. The issue has been fixed as IBM SPR# KBRN8AKKA9. The technote is 1449825 and contains a lot of good info. Setting notes.ini "Disable_Random_RW_File_ATTR=1" fixes the issue.

"After Domino opens many NSF files in quick succession during a backup, the Virtual Address Space of the OS system cache may be completely used up (for example, 1TB of data may be used in this OS cache). Successive calls into the OS cache manager to get memory from the OS system cache then results in mapping/unmapping of views from the system cache. These mapping/unmapping operations takes a lot of CPU time and as a result shows as high OS CPU usage. In addition, because the large OS system cache may now reside on the disk (the RAM is not large enough to hold the OS system cache) this results in significant I/O on the system."

IBM Lotus Domino 8.5.3 server performance and IBM Lotus Notes 8.5.3 client performance

Fri, 09 Dec 2011 07:31:13 GMT

Saw this very nice - although very technincal - whitepaper on developerWorks on how Notes 8.5.3 has been optimized to reduce the number of transactions with the Domino server. A small little thing that I haven't seen mentioned before but which can have a big impact on your environment and users. Probably shouldn't be considered light reading.

"IBM Lotus® Domino® 8.5.3 and IBM Lotus Notes 8.5.3 have been optimized to reduce the transactions from the client to the server. These optimizations yield a reduction in server resources, thus lowering the Total Cost of Ownership. This white paper shows the reductions in processor and disk utilization achieved with large numbers of Notes 8.5.3 clients running on a single Domino 8.5.3 server."

IBM Lotus Domino 8.5.3 server performance: IBM Lotus Notes 8.5.3 performance

IBM Connections Extension license - how to handle varying user entitlement and which drawbacks I see

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 07:54:56 GMT

As I blogged the other day (IBM Connections Extension license) IBM has released an extension license for IBM Connections to allow customers to buy the remaining features (besides Profiles and Files). It did however beg the question: "So how do I control access to the remaining features for users not entitled to use all features in Connections?". After asking Ed Brill the solution from the IBM Connections team is surprisingly simple and easy to implement. It does however put the burden on you as the administrator is it's not a "checkbox solution". Let me try and explain how to do it.

In IBM Connections (and all other J2EE applications) access to functionality is controlled by roles. That is the container will verify that a user has been mapped to a particular role (either as the user or by virtue of being member of a group) before granting access. In Websphere Application Server this is done in the Integrated Solutions Console (ISC) on a per application basis. The way you restrict access to particular features is the same way you force users to log into Connections and is nicely described in the wiki/InfoCenter. The way you would do it for this scenario is to create an LDAP group of fully entitled users and make sure only these users are granted access to features other than Profiles and Files.

The solution works and is easy to implement but is has a major drawback in it doesn't change the main menus. At least to the best of my knowledge as the service that returns menu items reads of the general Connections configuration and does not take the access of a particular user into account. A better solution would of course be that the service was aware of the access restriction and only features to which a user has access are presented in the menus. It would also lend itself better to a simpler UI for these casual users of Connections.

Another issue is that the approach doesn't restrict a fully entitled user ("user 1") to share information with a limited entitled user ("user 2") in say communities. "User 1" is free to add "user 2" but "user 2" would be unable to see the information. The user would receive e-mail notifications etc. but wouldn't be able to open the community. The user would try and go to the community, could log in successfully but still be unable to access the the community. Probably unable to realize why. The main culprit here is that the name resolution service isn't aware of the - potentially - limitied entitlement of some users. I see helpdesk calls on the horizon.

So while I really, really, really praise IBM for the Profiles/Files entitlement being added to Notes 8.5.3 I also see room for improvement. The role based approach allows you to manage access and thus avoid problems in the event of an IBM compliance check but there are user experience issues. Hopefully IBM will address these in upcoming released.

New IBM Connections Kick-Start offering

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 11:53:31 GMT

IntraVision is happy to offer a fixed price IBM Connections Kick-Start offering to get you started with IBM Connections per the entitlement offered by IBM as part of the Notes 8.5.3 maintenance release. At our Social Business event on Thursday 27 October (there's still time to register) we will be happy to discuss this offering as well as our new OnTime for IBM Connections product with you. More information about event may be found as part of our online newsletter (linked below).

IBM Connections Kick-Start and Social Business event with Stuart J. McRae (in Danish).

IBM Connections Extension license

Tue, 18 Oct 2011 10:06:03 GMT

(Of course) Stuart beat me to the punch but I wanted to blog it anyway.

Today IBM officially announced the IBM Connections Extensions Authorized User license as an easy (and inexpensive) way to buy the rest of the IBM Connections suite of features if a customer is making use of the entitlement for Connections Files and Connections Profiles granted as part of Lotus Notes 8.5.3. I too think this is a great move by IBM but asks the question how I'm going to control what parts of Connections users use if running in a mixed environment where some users are using Connections as entitled through Notes and some use it by virtue of their full license. In Sametime we have policy controls to help us but we do not have that in Connections nor have I heard any mention of it. I guess we will have to see how to approach this and whether it becomes an issue at customer sites.

Anyways still a very nice and clever move by IBM.

IBM Champion

Thu, 23 Jun 2011 07:18:28 GMT

Really honored and flattered to have been both nominated to, and yesterday proclaimed as, an IBM Champion for IBM Collaboration Solutions (i.e. Lotus). Thank you guys who nominated me and voted for me VERY much.