Month: October 2009

Awesome link: lntoolbox.com notes.ini Analyzer

Received a link from a colleague yesterday to the notes.ini Analyzer at lntoolbox.com. It’s just amazing. It does require registration but once you have done it you can submit a notes.ini file, specify the version of Notes or Domino and it will highlight obsolete entries, explain what the different entries does etc. Here are the checks you can do:

  • Remove redundant keys (only the first match will be used)
  • Recase/reorder/resort keys
  • Remove comments
  • Allow us to use this notes.ini for analysis and site improvement.
  • Validate this notes.ini
  • Explain this notes.ini
  • Link entrys with description reference (http link).
  • Check for obsolete keys (you need to set the notes versions)
  • Remove apocryphal/bogus notes.ini keys

It’s just awesome!

So Lotus – how about that CSI view connector for Outlook?

Microsoft is opening the PST file format and making documentation available for developers to read/write and recreate PST files on other platforms. You can read more about it on winsupersite.com (Outlook PST: Open for Business where Paul Thurrott writes:

“So Microsoft will provide documentation so that any third party vendor can recreate the PST format on other platforms, for free and without fear of recourse, and interoperate with PST files more seamlessly. The potential results of this transformation are far-reaching. One imagines Google email servers that interoperate directly with PST file stores on Windows PCs, Macs, or Linux boxes. Or perhaps third party email solutions that can take an existing PST file and make the migration to a new solution easier than ever before.”

Reading this I’m left think: “hmmmm – so Lotus – what about that CSI view connector for Outlook?”. Admitting that I do not know which API’s are available now, wouldn’t this mean that Lotus could write a CSI view connector for Notes that would allow using Notes as the frontend to PST data files? I remember hearing about the new view technology in Notes 8 (that is Java views == CSI views) and it being mentioned that Notes 8 could just as well read data from Outlook. Well here’s your chance. It’s an intriguing thought… 🙂

Mozilla plugin check

Heard about Mozillas new browser plugin check service today on the SecurityNow! podcast. Nice new service to make sure your plugins are updated across the board. I couldn’t get it to work but it’s a service to keep ones eye on.

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Link: mozilla.com/plugincheck

Troubleshooting wierd Traveler startup message

Today I troubleshot an issue with a newly installed Domino 8.5.1 server with Lotus Traveler installed. Whatever was done the Lotus Traveler code would not initialize correctly and would print the following errors to the console despite being configured in the Domino Directory: 

Notes Traveler: SEVERE *system Server document for server
      SERVER/ORG in domain DOMAIN not found
Notes Traveler: SEVERE *system Exception caught while
      trying to access NTS server settings during
   at com.lotus.sync.admin.NTSSettingsINI.alarmCallback(
      NTSSettingsINI.I.java:776)

After much digging (and some reverse engineering) I found that it was caused by an invalid configuration. One of the first things the Lotus Traveler code does is open the Domino Directory, switch the the Servers view and lookup the server in question using the domain and server name. The domain and server name is read from the notes.ini file on the server using the ServerName and Domain notes.ini settings.

The problem was however that the Domain setting in the notes.ini contained an invalid domain name hence the server name couldn’t be found in Domino Directory. This hadn’t caused any problems mail routing why it had gone undetected. After fixing this small notes.ini setting Lotus Traveler started without any problems.

Kom til Gul Skole d. 17. / 19. november og find ud af hvad I ved!

Ved du hvad I ved? Det er et stort problem i mange virksomheder så hvis du ønsker at høre mere skal du komme til vores Gule Skole arrangement d. 17. november i København eller d. 19. november i Århus. Jeg tror det bliver kanon! Og ikke kun fordi jeg har stået for at skaffet hovedtaleren… 🙂

Vi har inviteret Christian Schwarz Lausten (twitter.com/unwiredchris / linkedin.com/christianschwarzlausten) til at komme og tale om de teknologier mange bruger i deres privatliv men ikke kan se værdien af i deres arbejdsliv. Mærkeligt. Specielt fordi det allerede nu og endnu mere i fremtiden er/bliver endnu mere “who you know”.

Mere info om arrangementet kan ses på vores hjemmeside: Vi ville være bedre stillet, hvis vi vidste, hvad vi ved!

Har du spørgsmål er du velkommen til at stille dem her eller kontakte firmaet på info [at] intravision [dot] dk.

Speaking at notesnet.dk tonight

I was contacted by IBM the day before yesterday (Tuesday) and asked if I would be interested in speaking at the notesnet.dk meeting tonight (Thursday) as IBM was unable to arrange for a speaker. I of course caved so I’m speaking tonight on Domino Designer in Eclipse (DDE) and giving my session on Java extension deployment using Notes/Domino 8.5.1. Should be fun.

New pet project: LiveTextr

Part of my job, interest and efforts goes towards illustrating just how extensible the Notes 8 platform is. Part of this is playing around with the platform and trying to do stuff to illustrate how the platform may be extended. One of the very cool ways to extend Notes 8 is using widgets and LiveText but debugging it can be a hazzle due to the way widgets are created and installed into the platform. The goal of my latest pet project was to alleviate some of these pains and make it easier to work with LiveText.

So I’m happy to show of LiveTextr!

LiveTextr is a sidebar plugin for Notes 8 that allows you to test LiveText regular expressions against the Notes documents you have open in Notes without creating a widget first. This means that I can open a document that contains some text I would like to test against and start writing regular expressions and have them debugged in the Notes client before doing the actual widget. Installing and testing the pattern is done by clicking a button and the pattern is dynamically added to the LiveText engine.

The first screenshot shows me debugging a pattern right there in my Notes 8.5.1 client.



Click image for larger version

LiveTextr also provides you with instant feedback on the syntax of your regular expression as you write it. This is also a problem with the built-in model as there’s no way to test your regular expression as you write the widget. The second screen shot shows the current feedback (shown in red text) when the regular expression contains errors.



Click image for larger version

Further improvements I’m planning is to allow users to build regular expressions visually (or at least without having to know the syntax of regular expressions) and to handle capture groups. I also plan to open source the project on OpenNTF.org.