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Nice Notes 8.5.2 feature – upgrading multiple local databases to a new ODS

Please note: The following is from the release notes of Notes 8.5.2 so I don’t take credit for writing this. Lotus Notes 8.5.2 is in beta and there are no guarantees that the features described here will be in the final product that IBM ships.

In the latest code drop of Notes 8.5.2, using either the Notes Client, Domino Administrator Client, or Domino Designer Client, a customer can force the client to perform ODS upgrades of all local databases. For most non-essential databases, the ODS upgrade will take place in a background process and while a database is upgraded, the end user will not be able to use the database. For essential databases that are in use at the point that an upgrade is attempted, the ODS upgrade will be done at the next first time open which will typically occur at client restart.

Configuration Options – Required

The following new NOTES.INI setting performs the upgrade:

NSF_UpdateODS=1

With this set, the client will do a one time pass to upgrade local databases using the compact task.

Configuration Options – Optional

In addition, the specific ODS level that is desired should be set (if none set, ODS51 will be forced):

To create ODS 51 databases:
Create_R85_Databases=1

To create ODS 48 databases:
Create_R8_Databases=1

User Feedback

For databases compacted in the background, there will not be any user visible indication that the database compacts are in progress. If a user attempts to use a database while the compact is in progress, they will see the error:

"Database is being Compacted; Compact must finish before use"

For databases that are in use at the time the compact is attempted (names.nsf, cache.ndk, log.nsf, and possibly user mail files), the compact will occur at the next client restart. When the database is compacted at restart, progress will be shown in the splash screen or in the status bar, depending on when the database is opened.

For each database that is compacted, a “Compacting…” and “Compacted….” will appear in the log.

11/12/2009 03:01:49 PM  Compacting dummy.nsf (dummy),  -r -C
11/12/2009 03:01:52 PM  Compacted  dummy.nsf, 0K bytes recovered (0%)

For each database that is at the desired ODS (or later), only “Compacting…” will appear in the log

11/12/2009 03:01:49 PM  Compacting dummy.nsf (dummy),  -r -C

At the end of the upgrade, the following will appear in the log:

10 databases had an older NSF ODS version. 8 of
those databases were successfully upgraded to a
later NSF ODS.

Book keeping Options

NSF_UpdatedToODS=#

After the upgrade is attempted for all local databases, this will be set to the ODS level that was requested. Deleting this setting will cause the code to attempt to perform upgrades. If upgrades are not necessary, the database will be skipped. If the client is shut down before all databases are completed and processed, then this is not set, and the next retry will attempt compacts on databases that are not at the desired ODS.

Clarifications/Not in scope

If there is an error during the compact, the database ODS will not be changed. There will not be any retry logic. If there is not enough space, which can be one of the errors, then the database ODS will not be changed. If a database takes a while to compact then the user does not have access to that Db during the compact. For always in use databases, their compact will be done on the next client restart, and will block user usage.

Limitations

Only Windows and Linux are supported. Macintosh support will be available in a later code drop.

Configure Eclipse 3.5 for Notes 8.5.2

As for previous versions I maintain a document outlining how to configure a vanilla Eclipse install to work with Lotus Notes for Java extension development (with install_id and rcp.base). I have made the first version for Notes 8.5.2 as of code drop 5 so please see Configure Eclipse 3.5 for Notes 8.5.2 if this is of use to you.

Please Lotus that Notes 8.5.2 is in beta and there are no guarantees that the features described here will be in the final product that IBM ships.

Notes 8.5.2 – preload on startup

Disclaimer: Lotus Notes 8.5.2 is in beta and there are no guarantees that the features described here will be in the final product that IBM ships.

Being part of the design partner program for Lotus Notes 8.5.2 I just received code drop 5 i.e. the latest beta of Lotus Notes 8.5.2. Part of this release you are asked a new question while installing which is whether you want to enable preloading Lotus Notes when starting Windows (don’t know if this goes for other platforms).

Now I’m on a SSD drive so my experience may be different from others on a “normal” spinning drive but it will be interesting to see how it performs and if it makes a noticeable difference.

Send/SMS… Sametime plugin

Using a couple of developerWorks articles (Extending the Lotus Sametime client with an LDAP directory lookup plug-in and Extending IBM Lotus Sametime Connect V7.5 with an SMS messaging plug-in) for inspiration I wrote a SMS plugin for the embedded Lotus Sametime client in Lotus Notes. The action goes in the Send menu when right-clicking a contact.

The plugin picks up the cellphone number from Domino Directory, supports sending to multiple contacts in one go and uses our exiting SMS gateway for sending the SMS’es (via e-mail). The hardest part was finding the menu path to use to stick the action where I wanted it. For others you should use com.ibm.collaboration.realtime.imhub.send/slotX where slotX is either slot1, slot2 or slot3 depending on where in the Send menu you want the action.

Once I’ve made it configurable which server to use for Domino Directory and how the SMS should be sent (which domain) I’ll probably make it publicly available.

Properly signed XTAF dictionaries now available for Notes 8.5.x

The wait has been long but I just got word (via Christian Henseler) that IBM yesterday released properly signed XTAF dictionaries for Notes 8.5.1. In case you’re wondering “XTAF dictionaries” are the common dictionaries shared by Lotus Notes, Lotus Sametime and Lotus Symphony. Additional language dictionaries has been available for a while but the Eclipse feature wasn’t signed so it was troublesome to install on client machines. The Eclipse features are now properly signed and they are easy to add to an update site and roll out using a widget catalog.

The bundle you need to grab from PartnerWorld or Passport Advantage is “IBM Lotus Notes XTAF Dictionaries 8.5.1 for Windows and Linux Multilingual (CZHE3ML)”.

Installing Lotus Connections 2.5 on Windows 2008 Server

The last two weeks I have had the honor of installing Lotus Connections 2.5 on Windows 2008 Server 64 bit with Microsoft SQL Server 2005. Twice. And what a change from my normal Windows 2003 Server. In this blog post I’ll outline some of the issues I ran into and what I had to pay special attention to.

First off Tivoli Directory Integrator 6.1.1 (the component that move data from LDAP to the Profiles SQL database) isn’t supported and doesn’t run on Windows 2008 Server. The TDI scripts provided with Lotus Connections 2.5 doesn’t work with TDI 7 which leaves you at a dead stop. Only solution as of now is to find a Windows 2003 Server or other Windows platform to run TDI. Hopefully Lotus Connections NEXT will use TDI 7.

Next issue I had to address was that Websphere Applicaton Server (WAS) 6.1 should be at fixlevel 19 before you create any profiles on a Windows 2008 Server. This meant that the profile couldn’t be created as part of the WAS installer. This wasn’t too big of an issue as it’s a best practice not create the profile during setup anyway. A benefit of doing it this way is that it allows you to create the profile in another location than between your WAS binary directory.

So all was well and good? Not really as the GUI tool to manage profiles isn’t supported on Windows 2008 Server either. There is however a manageprofiles command to manage profiles which may be used. The command looks rather convoluted but it goes something like this (I ran it was admin):

manageprofiles.bat -create -profileName AppSrv01
   -profilePath d:WASProfilesAppSrv01
   -templatePath c:ibmwebsphereappserverprofileTemplatesdefault
   -nodeName LotusConnectionsNode01
   -cellName LotusConnectionsCell01
   -hostName lc.example.com
   -isDefault
   -winserviceCheck true
   -winserviceAccountType specifieduser
   -winserviceUserName username
   -winservicePassword password
   -winserviceStartupType manual

The last few arguments create the Windows service. I have had some success doing this but most times I leave the “winservice”-arguments out and use WASService.exe to create the service instead.

wasservice -add LotusConnections
   -serverName server1
   -profilePath d:wasprofilesappsrv01
   -startupType automatic

When I installed Lotus Connection I had to run install.bat as admin to avoid having the SQL connection check fail.

Generally in Windows 2008 Server I found that paying special attention to drive and folder security made my life a lot easier. That goes for both WAS and IBM HTTP Server IHS). Additionally on one IHS server I had to manually install GSKit to enable SSL as it wasn’t installed by the installer. I also had to put GSKit (C:IBMGSK7lib) on the PATH in Windows. To symptom was that IHS couldn’t access the SSL keystore.

I hope this will help someone.

Picture from NLLUG2009

Just received this picture from NLLUG2009 (the Dutch Lotus User Group 2009) of me and Kevin Cavanaugh deep in discussion. Goes to show the level of access possible at these events.

Speed up WAS restart when configuring with Lotus Connections

When installing and configuring Lotus Connections or any other Websphere Application Server based application you’ll probably find it beneficial to speed up restarting WAS. I found that disabling auto-start of some of the Lotus Connections applications was an easy way to do this. I simply followed the steps in “Websphere Experience: Startup behavior of an application” to do it.

For the people not afraid of XML-files you might as well simply edit the deployment.xml file(s) in <profile path>configcells<cell name>applications<application name>.eardeployments<application name> and set enabled=”false” for the <targetMappings>-tags at the top. As always with editing files directly – proceed at your own risk… 🙂

Test my SWT interface!! Yes Master…

Just found an incubator project at Eclipse.org called SWTBot which is an extension to test UIs written in SWT. I will need to look into that.

SharePoint 2010

While parsing my RSS feeds today I found an article on the winsupersite.com on SharePoint 2010. As always when you’re involved with a technology it’s good to know that the competition is doing and SharePoint is surely a technology platform to watch if you’re involved with Lotus Domino and Lotus Notes.

I find it very interesting to see how Groove has been renamed to SharePoint Workspace. This will make it easier to see how Groove is connected to SharePoint and make it easier to understand for customers. Another hallmark of Microsoft (deep integration between all Office Suite members) is being extended to SharePoint and SharePoint is being extended to Office Mobile.

The launch of Office Web Applications, the ability of Office Web Applications to integrate with SkyDrive and having the opportunity of running the Office Web Applications on-premise is also quite nice. Looking at Office Web Applications it surely leaves Google Docs in the dust and looks like a much more mature and usable product. Microsoft has really hit the mark with this release and the partnership with Facebook makes it a web productivity suite to be reckoned with.

Looking at this SharePoint release I certainly have to spend some actual time getting to know the product and see how SharePoint compares to Lotus products from a collaboration point of view.

Author: lekkim