Vince Schuurman

Ideajam on and about OpenNTF's website

Vince Schuurman — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 14:17:28 +0200

OpenNTF started an IdeaJam on the OpenNTF services and website usability.
So if you have something to say go here to post your thoughts now.
The Ideajam will close at 07/16/10 10:00AM Middle European time (GMT +1), so you have to be quick!
.
Every OpenNTF user can participate. Use the ideaspace 'July2010' and the tag 'July2010'.

Fixed comments on IE, Chrome still a problem

Vince Schuurman — Mon, 31 May 2010 15:35:33 +0200

The 'unkown error' thrown by IE is fixed now, but Chrome still does not want to play along with the JS on this site.
Sorry, I don't have time to check out why at the moment so for now Chrome is out :(

Domino crashing every 70 mins (like clockwork)

Vince Schuurman — Mon, 31 May 2010 07:38:31 +0200

This problem stumped me for a while.
Since this particular server had not been maintained in years (why would one, it's Domino right? ;)) I first checked the usual suspects; agents, replication schedules etcetera and disabled unnecessary processes.
That didn't help, so I asked them to send me the console.log and the NSD's.
From the NSD's we concluded that the SMTP task was responsible for at least a couple of the crashes, so we disabled the SMTP at 69 minutes and enabled it after 71. No Crash!!???
We already did all the usual fixes like deleting the smtp.boxes, disabling all virus and spam engine both on the server itself and in Domino, but nothing helped.

Luckily my good friend Kurt de Feyter helped me out by converting the NSD into something more readable showing that the names.nsf was seriously corrupted.
Fixing that did not help however, but combining the NSD with SMTP debugging we found that all the crashes were caused by the same incoming e-mail.
After blocking the originating IP on the firewall and in Domino the problem was 'fixed'.

Since this is 6.5.6 we are talking about, there is no intend to investigate any further, but if you ever see this kind of behavior, remember to check the external factors.

8.5.1 Lotusscript INI setting: GO_FASTER=1

Vince Schuurman — Fri, 21 May 2010 22:59:02 +0200

One of my customers called me 2 weeks ago (right in the middle of my vacation as usual ;)) that after upgrade to 8.5.1 FP2 the performance of one of their production servers got so bad that both the front-end and the back-end crawled to almost a full stop.
Since I was on vacation there was not much I could do, but luckily they got help from IBM, and although it took them almost a week they came up with the solution reported earlier by Erik Brooks.
It seems that the 8.5.1 Lotusscript engine has some serious performance issues due to SPR# DCOE6KPW48.
The SPR# DPOL7PEHQX apparently counteracts that problem providing a new ini - FullTrimFix=0 - to disable DCOE6KPW48, which then will restore performance.
Erik reported performance issues of agents running 3-4 times as slow, but my customer experienced far worse. So keep this in mind if you run 8.5 servers with complex applications.

'Escaped' from Tenerife

Vince Schuurman — Thu, 13 May 2010 20:40:49 +0200

Due to the ash cloud, all air traffic to and from Tenerife was suspended temporarily on tuesday .
It was just plain bad luck that my flight was among those that were cancelled. It was IMO not 'just' bad luck that the earliest possible return flight to our original destination was said to be May 23rd!!!

Luckily I was able to book a flight with another airliner before the other other duped passengers because I never go anywhere without laptop or UMTS dial-in card. And although it was a night-flight (I hate those because I can never sleep while travelling) and the destination was 100 km off of my original destination, I felt lucky to get a flight at all.
So remember this folks, don't leave home without proper internet access (Anil, that goes for you too :P).

Timing multiple ajax calls

Vince Schuurman — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 09:51:03 +0200

Whilst developing a multidatabase search engine I came across Ajax queue. This small and easy to use jQuery plugin let's you specify whether the calls should be made consecutive or simultaneous. The beauty is that when you choose 'synchronized' the callbacks won't fire until all the ajax calls have finished.
This means for example that you can search through multiple databases and process the results after all search query's have finished :)

Code example:

$(function(){
for (i=0;i jQuery.ajaxSync({
url: urls[i],
success: function(html){
// do stuff
};
});
})

The other option is to perform 'consecutive' calls. This allows for example to search in one database and then use these results to perform another search.

Cleaning up is hard to do

Vince Schuurman — Thu, 4 Mar 2010 15:16:26 +0200

Especially cleaning up code in databases you are not familiar with can be a real pain.
My take on this issue has always been if you are not certain, leave it alone (hands off approach), but apparently not everybody agrees.

One of my customers called with a question about a certain agent that gave him some problems. They were cleaning up the code but suddenly one of the agents showed red crosses in the designer client (yes, 8.5 designer finds those oddities for you even if you are not looking for them).
He tried to fix the crosses by recompiling the entire database (in production....mmmm.....) but that didn't fix it, could I take a look?
Sure, I can, and this is the problem:

The agent is still running

but the scriptlibraries are missing

They are in luck the agent wouldn't save on the recompile because without a scriptlibrary I'm sure it would not have been very functional otherwise.
After checking I found that the scriptlibraries have been missing for a loong time, the copy I had from a couple months back also missed that scriptlibrary so I hope they can find it on a backup somewhere.

Note: ALWAYS use monthly/halfyearly backups in addition to the weekly cycle. The data or code could be missing a long time before you notice it.

Retiring as chairman of OpenNTF

Vince Schuurman — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 20:43:07 +0200

I decided against another term as chairman of the Steering Committee, so during Tuesday's meeting a new chairman will be appointed.

I have worked on OpenNTF since the start 8 years ago and even ran it solo for a couple of years.
But a lot has changed over the last year. Not only is OpenNTF now being run by the Steering Committee, with the Technical Committee doing the development and maintenance, but due to the crisis my work situation changed as well. I have a lot less free time currently and OpenNTF has a lot more help, so I feel I have to take a small step back and let other people take the lead.
I will stay on the Steering Committee of course and help out with general business and the Technical Committee, but not act as frontman for a while.

So I wish all the best to .... (to be filled in on Tuesday) as the new chairman of OpenNTF :)

Technorati tag: OpenNTF

Firefox for Maemo 5

Vince Schuurman — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 19:54:57 +0200

Firefox 1.0 for the N900 is available for download

I must say it takes some getting used to, it's not as fast as the built-in browser, but has a lot more features.
For example settings

Tabbed browsing

and lots of add-ons

And it's only version 1.0 so it may get better ;)

XPage Calendar Application

Vince Schuurman — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 00:07:07 +0200

My brother owns a couple of child-care day centers and he asked me if I could develop an application where they could flag certain days as available for people without a regular contract.
Since this application needs to be easy to operate for both people seeking child care as for the child-care centers, I developed a very simple interface.
Logged in as 'customer' you can only 'reserve' dates set by the center and as center you can enable/disable a date using just two simple clicks.
To make it more interesting for myself I decided to develop it in XPages since there doesn't seem to be any XPages calendar applications around.
Anyway here it is, bear in mind that I'm not a GUI designer, my focus is on the functionality :)

Demo

And no it is not finished yet, in fact 'the customer' hasn't even seen the prototype yet, so if you have constructive criticism I might be able to sneak it in before the grand finale...

P.S. It works perfectly on the Nokia N900!!

Mmmm maybe something for the next version of the OpenNTF Mail Experience? ;B

Finally started on OpenNTF Mail Experience 8.5.1

Vince Schuurman — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 16:54:24 +0200

First build can be downloaded here
I did not fix any reported bugs yet, it's a first draft and it could not wait till after Lotusphere :)

Technorati tag: OpenNTF

Again OS update for the N900

Vince Schuurman — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 21:41:47 +0200

2 updates in one week, to 2.2009.51-1 this time.
Also found a cool new geeky app for the geekphone:

Update: It appears the first update was necessary to prepare the phone for this substantial OS upgrade

N900 updated to 1.2009.44-1

Vince Schuurman — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 08:28:13 +0200

Via WiFi!! Nice....
It is said to be a minor upgrade, but better safe than sorry ;)
Don't forget to check out the new applications meamo.org as well.

Back to 'normal'

Vince Schuurman — Sat, 9 Jan 2010 11:04:58 +0200

The last 6 months have been crazy with work, but finally things seem to settle down a bit, I even had time for some hobby projects this week.

For example most Dutch webshops use Ideal as interface for banktransactions. Developing an interface on Domino was on my todo list for ages, but I simply did not have time. But this week I found time and just did it (so Jasper if you still need help let me know ;)).

Next week I will start on a new version of the OpenNTF Mail Experience template as requested by 'several' people so if you have new features you want put in, please let me know.

And no, sorry I'm not attending Lotusphere this year.

Two weeks with the N900

Vince Schuurman — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 16:44:43 +0200

Volker's posts about the Nokia N900 made me wonder a bit.
His extensive reviews gave me the impression he really liked it, but in his conclusion he writes it is 'not winning the editor-refuses-to-give-it-back award'.

He is of course right in claiming that it is not without flaws and I fully agree that it is not a phone for the iMasses, but hé, I never aspired to be 'one of them' ;).

Anyway, the more I use it and more importantly the more I get to know it, the more I like it. It is a complicated phone but very handy if you know the controls and shortcuts, so I am happy to see that just 3 days after his 'conclusion' Volker finds that he may have ruled a bit prematurely.

More...

Website unavailable

Vince Schuurman — Tue, 1 Dec 2009 11:17:52 +0200

My internet connection is falling apart, because the modem broke down.
The modem is now continuously rebooting itself allowing for a 20 second window of internet access in between reboots.

So this site will be pretty hard to reach until they replace the modem on Thursday.

Update: It seems to have stabilized itself, but not sure how long it will hold...

My geekphone finally arrived..

Vince Schuurman — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:45:12 +0200

I have been shopping around for a new phone for a while because I could not find what I was looking for.
I wanted a touchscreen phone and a business phone in one with full QWERTY and without any locks or restrictions.
A couple of months ago I found the Nokia N900 and although it wasn't released yet I ordered one immediately.
After a looong wait it finally arrived today.

What makes the phone so special is the use of Maemo as OS. Maemo is open source (a Debian variant) and the software on the phone is totally configurable. You can even replace Maemo with Easy Debian if you prefer that :).
It is not the first Nokia phone using Maemo, but the N900 is the first phone to use Maemo 5, which is considered a major step in the evolution of Maemo.
It comes with it's own Development SDK which allows you to develop and install your own apps.

So the next few weeks I will probably be playing with the software on the phone, like porting Traveler to Maemo.
Allthough you can access the OS via shell (root password is public), there is also an option to SSH into the phone so you don't have to type everything on the phone itself :)

Friday the 13th

Vince Schuurman — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:03:00 +0200

And my little girl turns 13 today.....

Some cultures consider 13 a lucky number, other cultures associate the number with bad luck, but whatever you believe it is certainly a special number

Happy Birthday Elise!

I'm on Google streetview

Vince Schuurman — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 22:33:43 +0200

Well... not quite, but my bike is :)

5 Eerste Rompert, 's-Hertogenbosch, North Brabant, Nederland

Parallels updated to 5

Vince Schuurman — Thu, 5 Nov 2009 12:08:01 +0200

What? Two posts about Parallels in one week?
Yup sorry, just got the new version today and decided to install it right away.

I haven't noticed much difference yet, but they claim it is much faster than Parallels 4. We'll see.
Again a screenshot, this time with Notes 7.0.4, 8.0.2 and 8.51 happilly running together.

One gotcha if you have an XP VM under Parallels 4 you have to reset the number of processors back to 1 until the parallels tools are installed.
If you don't it will just show you blue-screens until you do ;)

Windows 7 in Parallels

Vince Schuurman — Mon, 2 Nov 2009 20:47:44 +0200

As shown by Volker you can run Windows 7 smoothly on Snow Leopard using VMWare Fusion.
I installed it in Parallels instead, but the result is the same; smooth and even responsive....

I was a bit hesitant to install Windows 7 because although people say it is a lot better than Vista I had no idea if it would out perform XP in a VM.
Anyway, here is my new configuration using Parallels 4.03848:

Notes, Designer & Admin 8.0.2 Basic
Notes, Designer & Admin 8.5.1 Standard including Symphony

All running fine and dandy and faster than in my XP configuration.

Update: Netgear VPN client software doesn't work, but there seems to be an issue with Windows 7 rather than Parallels

Dutch User Group meeting (NLLUG 2009)

Vince Schuurman — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 23:51:00 +0200

Unfortunately I had to skip the first day because of prior arrangements, but I had a great time at the Dutch user group meeting yesterday.
This was the first 'big' user group meeting in the Netherlands, we used to have half or one day conferences with only one or two tracks multiple times per year.
This time however the SNUG really went for it with a 2 day conference with 3 simultaneous tracks at the RAI in Amsterdam.
It was very well organized as usual and because of the size (>300 attendees) there were a lot of people I hadn't seen in years.
I was also pleasantly suprised by some of the new initiatives like Lotus Loves People.

Many thanks to Marnix Kemme and the rest of the user group team for a great event.

Removing the default website set by Traveler install

Vince Schuurman — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 14:47:08 +0200

If you know how to remove the default website set by the older versions of Traveler, please let me know.
It is not in any of my website documents, but I still get the message;

when I try to access a website that has not been configured.

Huuuge applet

Vince Schuurman — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 21:13:05 +0200

At a customer's site today one of the consultants asked me if I could explain why a certain database was almost 300 Mb while containing only a few documents.
It wasn't really my problem, but I'm a sucker for these things so I looked into it.
After the normal procedures; like compacting, fixup, creating new copies, deleting the docs etcetc, the database was still quite big, but without any documents.

So this looked like a design problem. After checking and comparing elements we found an IT Factory applet of over 256 Mb.

I always hated applets, now I know why ;)

Oops

Vince Schuurman — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 14:45:17 +0200

Watch out whilst designing with 8.5.1 on a 8.5 server.

Update:
Also when resaving a Custom Control built in 850 you are advised to resave the XPage it contains as well to avoid errors like:

'Upgraded' my BES to Traveler

Vince Schuurman — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 11:16:29 +0200

The high rates of international roaming data traffic in Europe made it impossible for me to use Traveler earlier since the rates could easily go upto 25 Euro per Mb.
In june the OPTA (Dutch independent postage and telecom authority) set maximum rates for the Dutch Teleco's.
This finally made Traveler a valid option for me and the release of 8.5.1 was a excellent opportunity to install Traveler since I had to upgrade the server anyway.
My first impression (only used it for a day now); it looks much better on a Nokia than the BB client, but it is a bit slower and I don't seem to be able to synchronise my contacts, but I am sure I will get that fixed.
Other than that it works flawlessly.

My experiences so far:

The pro's:

No need for (expensive) BES license
It looks like the Traveler server has a much smaller footprint than BES, but that could be dependent on the # of users.
No additional maintenance/administration needed for the BES
I hear it even supports iPhones ;)

The con's:

Much less options to secure the handheld using policy's etc.
No option for timed services (don't want be woken up by e-mail do you?)
In Europe the flatfee for international blackberry use is much cheaper than for data traffic

The above list is incomplete of course and depends on your location and environment, but for me the conclusion was simple:
I am going to discontinue my flatfee BB account and order a flatfee data account instead.

Upgraded to 8.5.1

Vince Schuurman — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 12:05:10 +0200

Just finished upgrading my network to Lotus Notes & Domino 8.5.1 and allthough the installation is still sloooow the performance of the client itself seems to have improved a lot.
I did not take any chances with my macbook however and installed the basic client there since I noticed problems whilst running the Notes client in standard mode both in the Mac and VM at the same time.

One improvement they made on the install process of the client is to give you the option of automatically remove the temp files or save them to a location to reuse later.

The server install however did not change much, it still has the annoying 'Do you want to upgrade design' question stopping the server on startup. They probably haven't noticed how irritating that is if you don't have direct access to the server console :(

Let's see how upgrading OpenNTF goes....

Back from UKLUG

Vince Schuurman — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 16:46:08 +0200

I had a great time; very good sessions, excellent accommodation and the atmosphere was once again friendly and relaxed.
Thanks Warren et. all for another great conference.

What also helped is that Edinburgh itself is a great place to visit, especially since it didn't rain the whole time ;), most of us Dutchies plan to go back there shortly with our family's.

Next stop DNUG in Amsterdam.

P.S. It took me 1 hour from Edinburgh to Amsterdam, and another 3 hours to get to Eindhoven due to 'railroad works' .... go figure :(

Off to Edinburgh

Vince Schuurman — Tue, 6 Oct 2009 21:37:56 +0200

I have been way too busy with work and in fact still am, but .. well... I just had to attend UKLUG.
Lot's of interesting news around 8.5.1 today and expect lots more during the conference :)
I will be hosting a session with Steve Castledine about the OpenNTF alliance, right after the opening session, so see you there!!
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Solved my WiFi problems

Vince Schuurman — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 19:27:23 +0200

I had WiFi problems before, but when even a factory reset did not solve the issues, shelving the router for a couple of days did.
So I concluded it was due to the router running hot, and did not give it a second thought.

This time however I put the router in the freezer to coole it down quickly, but even that did not help. When my backup router also failed I got a bit nervous.
It took me quite some time however to figure out the very simple fact that there were just too many 2.4 GHz routers in the vicinity.
I had the router set to 2.4 GHz mainly because the Macbook Air does not work well with 5 GHz, but if the question is no WiFi for any laptop or a slower connection for the MBA the choice is not that hard ;)

Anyway, good to be back online again!

Back from vacation, and working at 110% again

Vince Schuurman — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 21:15:58 +0200

I have been extremely busy the last couple of months before my vacation, despite (or thanks to) the crisis. I returned 2 weeks ago and immediately had to shift to top gear because I am close to the release date of a large project, and a new project started September 1st.
I expected to take it a bit slower after the release, but I already have several new projects underway.
In fact I had to turn down a project due to lack of time, which never happened to me before (I just worked nights and weekends when necessary).

So it seems to pick up a bit in the Netherlands although the work has changed compared to last year.
I cannot say the same about my US customers however, they do not show any interest in reviving the projects they put on hold last year, but that could be due to the very weak dollar :(

Being busy is good for business of course, but I feel my OpenNTF work is suffering from this. Luckily there is a good team helping out there.
Thanks guys!

Annoying 8.5 designer behaviour

Vince Schuurman — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 07:47:00 +0200

When designing X-Pages you can indent your code by selecting it and pressing TAB.
However doing the same while writing a Java agent, it removes all selected code without an undo option...

So don't get too comfortable using the Eclipse shortcuts as it may cost you more time than it saves :(

OpenNTF in the news

Vince Schuurman — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 19:57:36 +0200

Rereading this entry it seems to me I am just stating the obvious, but in light of all the negative publicity around OpenNTF I decided to post this anyway.

As they say all news is good news in marketing, but in this case the current hype of OpenNTF bashing does not seem very helpful to me.

I know the current situation is frustrating to almost all people involved in OpenNTF, either users, developers and responsible committees.
But, yes BUT, as I said times and times before it is a process we have to go through. I will not go into the details why, you can find them all over the internet.

What really 'surprises' me is that if something did not work previously, even severe problems like downtime on the server, an email was sent or I was pinged and when I had the time I would fix it.
Nobody found it necessary to start a flame war over it (and a good thing they didn't, I can get a bit cranky if I am yelled at) and nobody started counting or suggested that Bruce had a problem with how the site was run when he 'stepped down' a couple of years ago.

Sure OpenNTF bashing is much more fun now, because it attracts more attention, both with the community and within IBM. This may seem like a good time to settle all the cropped up grudge with the way IBM does things, but keep in mind IBM does not run OpenNTF, they only supply resources.
And try to answer the big question first: Does this bashing help OpenNTF in any way? I don't see how.

Please have patients and give OpenNTF the time to come up with a workable or maybe even a good solution.
The current situation may not be of great interest to you (I hate paperwork as well), but be glad that someone else is doing it for you ;)

Fun with referrals in XPages

Vince Schuurman — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 17:17:08 +0200

I added an extra datasource to the XPage pointing to a searchview and pass the query as searchstring.
This functionality can be developed in 'classic Domino' web applications as well, but it feels more natural developing this in XPages.

Always backup your XPage application (twice)

Vince Schuurman — Fri, 5 Jun 2009 09:01:04 +0200

I tried to open one of the Custom Controls this morning and this is the error I get:

Could not open the editor: Index out of bounds

It could be an error on a formula while trying to display the preview, but there doesn't seem to be a way to bypass the preview and go directly to the source to correct the error.

Another observation: I did a search in my workspace last week and it totally corrupted the Designer client. Even deleting the Eclipse workspace files did not resolve this issue.

Update: Copying the Custom Control fixed the error... :)

Admins beware: PW site and Fix Central down on sunday, bad timing IBM

Vince Schuurman — Fri, 15 May 2009 20:45:27 +0200

Most Domino admins will have a Quickr and Sametime server upgrade planned this weekend and so have I.
I already heard the site would be down on sunday, so I decided to download in advance, but it appears I am too late already.

I know the IBM servers have to be upgraded as well, but doing that during the only weekend available for the SameTime upgrade (the fixes have only recently become available) before the applets expire is at least a bit 'clumsy'.
I was lucky Fix Central is still available, although I would have preferred to combine the fix with an upgrade to the latest version.

Please be advised Fix Central is also down on sunday, so be sure to download your fixes asap.

Talk about bad timing :(.

Background on the OpenNTF transition

Vince Schuurman — Thu, 14 May 2009 20:47:44 +0200

After discussions in 'the blogosphere' it appears some clarification was needed on the background of the transition of OpenNTF into the new form.

I just posted the blog post below on the OpenNTF blog, please post your responses there.

There have been questions about the transition of OpenNTF into its new structure, I will try to explain the background and intent of this new initiative.

I have been running this site alone for a couple of years now and although the site 'worked' for a lot of people, I had concerns about the continuity of the site. I felt that I needed feedback from 'the industry' since improving the Notes & Domino community and the market was the main reason for founding OpenNTF.
This led to the formation of the 'Advisory Board' in 2007, a board intended to provide feedback and advise on the direction OpenNTF should take.

Another issue was that as an independent entrepreneur I did not have the resources to improve the site and its content to the level I would like to see. Teaming-up with other organizations seemed the best way to provide these resources.

At the same time IBM was looking for a place to publish their example code, since the Sandbox was being shut down. They wanted exposure for their projects and participation of the Notes & Domino community to improve/extend their code examples.
Obviously OpenNTF was on their radar and they started publishing projects on OpenNTF, for example the composite application directory.

Steve and Niklas of IBM contacted me in December and proposed that we convert OpenNTF into a real non-profit organization. The new organization would be led by a committee and IBM would supply the resources for the conversion and a long overdue site update plus provide support for OpenNTF over a longer period.
They would not take over the site, the site would be run by the committee and IBM would get only one seat, the rest of the committee would consist of people/organizations from the community.
This was exactly what I was looking for, a site run by the community, with resources and guaranteed continuity.

And so it was agreed upon, a new OpenNTF for the Notes & Domino community, by the community with a little help from IBM.

I am convinced this is a good thing for OpenNTF, the community and IBM, but as with all changes there are some drawbacks.
Things like the employers approval for contributors and the Apache license requirement for new projects. There are good (legal) reasons for these formalities, but they will make it a lot harder for people to contribute.
We (the steering committee) are well aware of these issues and we will try to ease the pain as much as possible.
Constructive criticism is always welcome, but please give us a chance to get this new site up and running, before condemning the new alliance.

Although the committee is not currently accepting new members (we need to clear a lot of legal stuff before the alliance is formally founded), you can apply for membership in some time and have a say in any issues concerning the site and the alliance.

New XPages UI for OpenNTF

Vince Schuurman — Tue, 12 May 2009 15:36:29 +0200

Many thanks to Steve and Niklas (IBM) and the Lotus911 guys for the new interface.

Niklas is at this very moment speaking at DNUG about OpenNTF!

Technorati tag: OpenNTF, XPages

Finally going to test Traveler

Vince Schuurman — Sun, 3 May 2009 00:37:00 +0200

Currently the roaming data roaming charges (the cost of surfing the web or downloading movies with a mobile phone/laptop while abroad) are very high in Europe, upto 7 Euro's per Megabyte.
Since Traveler uses the roaming data network and there is no international flat fee available, I never bothered to install Traveler, but use a Blackberry client instead.
However the European Commission ruled that starting July 1st, 2009, the maximum cost for data traffic abroad will be set 1 Euro, and 50 cents in 2010.
That means that switching to Traveler suddenly became a lot more competitive.

So I guess it's time to download Traveler and start playing around with it :)

Technorati tag: Traveler

Improving performance and user experience using XPages on large applications

Vince Schuurman — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 23:07:00 +0200

I am currently working on a new Web UI for a EOM application, in this case a complete solution for invoice processing.
I have done and checked out the demo apps on IBM, the blogs and OpenNTF, and created some applications using XPages (this blog for example), but developing a real production scenario brings up some weird bugs and oddities.
For me that just means more challenge of course and so far it looks like the advantages of XPages are greater than the disadvantages.

The scenario is as follows:
A commercial invoice processing application sold as a standalone solution but with connections to Domino Directory, Active Directory and all kinds of ERP solutions with a web only frontend.
The application is based on Domino/Workflow and I was asked to come up with some ideas to extend the UI with more sorting/searching functionality.
In this case the biggest problem was the fact that the indexes of the database were so huge that although requested by the customers they couldn't really afford to add additional sorting/views.
I decided this was a good test case for ... XPages.

The downside of XPages is that you need a backend view to present data sorted in the manner you require, but the upside is that you only need the sorted columns in a view to create a 'view-like' interface.
What I did was to strip all non-sortable columns from every (web ui) view and calculate the other 'view columns' in XPage based on the DocumentUniqueId read from the new 'sorted only' views.
This not only decreased the view indexes from 54Mb to 23Mb, but also relieved the indexer from updating the views if non-sorted fields where affected, for example status updates will not affect the indexes on any view not sorted on the status.

I decided to use sessionScope variables to set user defined filters (categoryFilters) because that allows the users to open the invoices full screen and after processing the invoice take them back to the subset of documents they were working on.
Other nifty features:

Number of rows per page are user definable
All 'columns' in the views are based on profile documents, allowing the users to personalize the results.
Changes in sorting and filtering are done using partial refresh, which improves the user experience and performance

There is still a lot to be done, but so far it looks very promising.

Technorati tag: XPages

Tiny SNTT on XPage Custom Controls

Vince Schuurman — Thu, 9 Apr 2009 09:03:28 +0200

As you may know Custom Controls are the preferred way to cut up XPage functionality into bits.
What you probably didn't know is that although the 'browser preview' button is greyed out, you can simply 'preview' the controls in the browser by typing it's name and adding .xsp.
For example the menu on this page can be loaded via menu.xsp
Testing the Custom Controls one by one, makes troubleshooting a whole lot easier. :)

Time Capsule failure

Vince Schuurman — Thu, 2 Apr 2009 17:09:00 +0200

Sorry for the outage earlier today, but my 3 months old Time Capsule decided to die on me.
After the recent network upgrade I had to reset it twice already because the Wifi failed, but today even a reset to factory defaults did not get it back online. :(

So temporary reverted to the old router and contemplating whether or not I should buy a new router to replace the Time Capsule.

Update: I realized that I upgraded the firmware to 7.4.1 around the same time. Maybe that causes the problems (that makes more sense to me than a faster connection).
Confirmed: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9146599. Solution: Downgrade to 7.3.2 :(

Download links

Vince Schuurman — Thu, 2 Apr 2009 09:15:28 +0200

Ed reports progress on the filename changes on the IBM partnerworld site, which is encouraging. But maybe there is room for even more improvement.
We are working on a new site design for OpenNTF and one of the ideas we are investigating is faster access to the latest project releases.

We already have a webservice that project managers can build into their application to allow easy check on new releases, but we are looking into improving the user experience for 'normal' users as well.
One of the ideas is to implement a one click access to the release page. We decided against direct access to the download file itself because the release page often contains valuable information regarding the release.
For example the link:
http://www.openntf.org/latestreleases/!!Help!! would directly open http://www.openntf.org/Projects/pmt.nsf/HomeLookup/43056B2655EE82248625732A0056010B?OpenDocument which is the latest stable release for this project.

Now what if IBM could provide similar fast access links like

http://www.ibm.com/partnerworld/latest/lotusdomino

which would show all the latest Lotus Domino releases on all the platforms. Or even implement links like

http://www.ibm.com/partnerworld/latest/lotusdomino/8.5/win64

.
Ok I admit the latter is probably not practical for 'occasional' users, but still, I think it is worth considering improving the user experience by adding 'fast download links' for some of the more popular downloads.

Removing your last comment

Vince Schuurman — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 14:51:04 +0200

This post on vowe.net made me design a new functionality for this blog.
Because making mistakes in a comment on a blog does not only happen more often than in an email, it is a lot more public as well.
So I hereby ask other Blog developers (are you listening Declan ;)) to add this functionality to their design as well.

Note: If your comment has already been replied upon, the comment can no longer be deleted, even if you keep your browser open. That wouldn't be fair.

This blog is now running XPages

Vince Schuurman — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 12:22:00 +0200

To be able to use the full potential of XPages I should have redesigned the website from scratch, but I cheated a bit here and there to speed things up.
Note: Only the blog is running XPages, the rest of the site hasn't been converted yet.

Because there are some minor changes in the way HTML is rendered by XPages, all links to previous posts point to 'traditional' webpages.
So if you want to compare performance just open this post and an older one and see if you can spot the differences....

btw is there a way to disable all the standard css in XPages? It's interfering with my design :(

Some observations:

It only took one day to redesign this site for XPages, so that means it is not difficult to learn (this is my first XPage application :))
It is somewhat confusing mixing JavaScript, LotusScript and @Formula's in the same statement, but it is very powerful.
I enjoyed developing the XPages and to my suprise the 8.5 Designer wasn't even that slow (I did buy a new MBP especially for 8.5 development a few months back so mileage may vary)
It doesn't seem possible to set the window title using custom controls. Which is a shame because if you want a decent (field based) title, you have to link the document you are displaying directly to the (top entry) XPage instead of the custom control you probably use to display the fields themselves.
And why oh why is it not possible to render Fields as HTML in read mode? You need 2 sets of data now if you want to allow passthru HTML use in your (editable) fields.

Concluding: Designing in XPages requires a different approach compared to 'traditional webdevelopment' and it will take some getting used to, but I was really surprised how well thought out the whole XPages design is.

Technorati tag: XPages

IBM downloadsite

Vince Schuurman — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 00:03:00 +0200

The recent comments about the IBM download site triggered some people at IBM to review their internal process and they are currently looking into changing the filename from the partnumber to something more 'meaningful'.
They are also looking into an improvement of the search functionality, but more on that later :)
So your wishes may come true after all.

Warning: May contain disturbing information

Vince Schuurman — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 12:26:48 +0200

Especially people from rural area's like Newark and Melbourne should look the other way ;)

I upgraded my home internet connection today and this is the result:

The upload speed is still too low (it is supposed to be 10Mbps), but download seems pretty good to me :)

Update: The screenshot above was taken on a MBP (standard settings via a Gigabit port on a Time Capsule). On XP (using the same router) the download speed was about 60 Mbps. I am now testing tools like TCPOptimizer to improve the network settings on XP, but cannot get past 70 Mbps at this point.
I guess this is another point for Apple in the Mac vs. Windows competition. At least if it's not a router issue, optimized for Apple and not Windows for example.

Update on Philips Connectmail Performance

Vince Schuurman — Thu, 5 Mar 2009 17:07:39 +0200

As I reported last year there were a 'few' problems with the new mail environment at Philips.
'Edwin' reports that those problems haven't been solved completely and a new apology was delivered to the users today:

Dear Connect Mail user,
┬�
I would like, firstly, to offer my sincere apologies for the limited Connect Mail access that you may have experienced in the past week or may still be experiencing. We are fully aware that email is a business-critical application and that we are not delivering the level of service to you that you should expect.
┬�
We are doing everything we can, in close cooperation with our supplier, to provide a normal service for you again.

I hope they didn't let their Maintenance Licences expire ;)

60.000 registrants on OpenNTF

Vince Schuurman — Mon, 2 Mar 2009 14:47:20 +0200

Who could have predicted that 7 years ago :)

OpenNTF Mail Experience 8.5 Released

Vince Schuurman — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 14:23:21 +0200

General overview of enhancements compared to the Standard Lotus 8.5 mail template:

New Views

Contacts (iNotes contacts)
By Person
By Attachment
By Size
Today's Mail

New Miniviews

Contacts
Calendar today

Other Outline additions

Sticky Notes
Quick Stuff (shortlist of contacts for fast creation/forwarding of email)
Outbox (only on local)

Memo and Reply enhancement

Configurable default reply button optional: set by notes.ini parameter
Configurable maximum message size. Optional: set by notes.ini parameter

Additional Mail Rules

Contact Whitelisting
Tag memo's with contactname
Kspam and SpamAssasin probability

Color coding calendar based on categories
Option to run Out Of Office only on Memo's in the inbox
Option to enable Return Receipts and Delivery Reports on every email
Added option to import additional letterheads

Get it HERE