Notes/Domino 8.x maintenance release plans

I’ve had this link regarding the maintenance release plans for the Notes/Domino 8.0x stream in my browser for quite some time, as I’ve wanted to make a quick comment on it.

8.0.2 is the last planned/scheduled maintenance release (MR) for the 8.0x codestream. Notes/Domino 8.0.x will continue to be supported for a minimum of 5+3 years (following IBM SWG policy).  In lieu of producing a Notes/Domino 8.0.3 MR, more frequent 8.0.2 FixPacks will be provided.  IBM will continue producing both maintenance releases and fix packs for Notes/Domino 8.5.x, and customers who have deployed Notes/Domino 8.0.2 should evaluate the benefits of the 8.5.1 maintenance release (when available).

Unfortunately I don’t have the time right now to make the comment as detailed as I want, but I wanted to throw the link up here anyway along with a couple of quick thoughts.

In general, removing 8.0x from the “current” stream of releases is a good thing. However as all of my customers are already on 8.5 – I might feel differently here if I had a couple of larger customers with deal breaking reasons to need to stay on 8.02 or below.

There’s a list of third party products (mostly around backup and archiving) which don’t yet officially support Domino 8.5. That possibly makes a few people feel slightly nervy about this announcement.

Timing around Sametime 8.5 is also possibly making a few people nervous (even though you can probably do what you need using 8.02).

Finally, a lot of people are having issues with 8.5 Domino Designer. Personally,  I’ve been making an effort to use 8.5 as much as possible, and have been finding it a bit of a dog to use. It might be that most of my Domino development these days is done over remote connections, and that with multiple customers I need to switch locations frequently (I’m using Working Sets, but things don’t feel as user friendly as they could be for developers who work across multiple locations/identities), but I find it feels painfully slow – and on a quad core with 4gb of RAM, I’m pretty sure it’s not the PC which is at fault. For the most part it feels sluggish and cumbersome to use – and not just the initial opening of a database, it’s changing between forms to views, and navigating/loading design elements in general. I’ve had some weird issues when trying to copy/paste design elements, and in general just find that if I’m in a hurry to get a quick change done then I’ll flick back to 8.02 in a heartbeat. Others have reported actual bugs and issues with 8.5 but most of my whining is related to speed. Here’s hoping that 8.51 will improve some of this, but for now I can identify with anyone who finds the state of the current designer client as cause for concern.

On another note, I missed the announcement that DAMO is being retired. Ed Brill has a bit more background around the reasons for this, and they all make sense, but it’s still a bit sad. DAMO was a useful tool for any mixed environment.

Tags: Lotus,Notes,Domino

posted @ Monday, June 29, 2009 10:43 AM | Feedback (0)

AJAX – it’s not just for drinking.

Simone from Codeclimber posted some interesting results from his survey around which flavours of AJAX ASP.NET developers are drinking using. Read the results here: Ajax survey 2009: jQuery and MS Ajax are almost tied among .NET developers

A few quick thoughts of my own:

It’s a pretty interesting/telling statistic to see the incredibly high percentage of MS Ajax users who are using partial rendering. It’s accessibility is also a large part of what makes it dangerous.

I agree with Simone’s thoughts about peoples difficulty in knowing the difference between the AJAX Control Toolkit and MS Ajax. It’d be interesting to have access to a set of clarified statistics there – one would have to assume that given the popularity of partial rendering, that a lot of those who responded saying they’re using MS AJAX should probably be listed under the AJAX Control Toolkit category (in that they’re more after asp:Controls and extenders, and less about using the JS libraries in their rawer forms).

jQuery’s rise in popularity is a good thing to see reflected in the statistics. Certainly from the amount of jQuery related talk observed across popular sites you’d have to assume that it’s being taken up, but it’s always nice to see assumptions reflected in statistics.

As a developer, commenting from the perspective of a few active projects, I should probably mention just how much I love jQuery. Because, well, I really really do love jQuery.

posted @ Sunday, June 28, 2009 10:58 PM | Feedback (0)

LINQ to SQL resources

From the “slightly delayed echo chamber” department, I’ve meant to link to Damien G’s recently posted list of LINQ to SQL resources. It’s a useful collection of stuff for anyone using L2S.

Tags: LINQ to SQL

posted @ Sunday, June 28, 2009 10:38 PM | Feedback (0)

The future of complaining online

I’m not really paying attention to the subject of the petition, rather I’m looking at the style of the petition itself. Check out http://fixoutlook.org/ for a glimpse of the interactive nature of future online complaining!

posted @ Wednesday, June 24, 2009 10:36 PM | Feedback (0)

About time to install a code syntax highligher.

It's taken me ages to get around to it, and really I can't say why.

This is a test post to check that everything is working.

            XDocument doc = GetCachedFeed(TimePeriod.Day);
            var items = from item in doc.Descendants("item")
                        select new
                        {
                            Title = item.Element("title").Value,
                            Url = item.Element("link").Value,
                            GigDate = DateTime.Parse(item.Element("sdate").Value, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture),
                            GigVenue = item.Element("venue").Value,
                            Description = item.Element("description").Value
                        };

posted @ Wednesday, June 24, 2009 6:00 PM | Feedback (0)

Windows Home Server for Business

An interesting Microsoft marketing page for Windows Home Server says WHS offers Peace of mind for the Home Office and Small Office.

Don’t be fooled by the name. Windows Home Server was designed as a solution that is as functional in a small office setting as it is in your home. Windows Home Server is a dependable and affordable way to organize and safeguard your work for up to 10 computers.

Windows home server is an incredibly useful and simple approach to servers. So useful and so simple that it seems quite a few business are indeed not being fooled by the name and are using it for their small business scenarios.

Lets face it, anything has to be better than SBS.

Tags: Windows Home Server

posted @ Wednesday, June 24, 2009 4:35 PM | Feedback (0)

Bulk importing from a filesystem into Notes

Last week I needed to bulk import a large number of files into a Notes document library. The client had already organised the files, and so they wanted that file system structure (which was many levels deep) duplicated when the files were imported into the document library.

Sounds simple, but I was quite surprised that I couldn’t find a code snippet out there which did what I was after – surely this is a fairly common requirement? So after a few minutes of looking I gave up searching and wrote my own 10 minute bulk import agent in Java.

Here it is in case anyone else finds it useful.

I’ve never actually written any Java before so I’m sure it’s not ideal in some ways, and it’s a bit rough around the edges, but it did the job in my case.

Why did I choose Java? Well, I’ve been curious for a while about how much my C# skills translate into Java, and the fact that it took me 10 minutes to do what I needed sort of proves that the translation is indeed simple. I initially started writing this in LotusScript, but it just seemed smarter and easier to do it using Java’s file I/O classes compared to the LotusScript approach.

Hope someone else out there finds it useful.

Tags: Lotus, Notes, Domino, Data import

posted @ Tuesday, June 23, 2009 11:47 PM | Feedback (0)

The tale of the burnt out programmer

A Burnt Out Programmer is the tale of a coder who lost his passion for coding, and it’s a story that anyone who has worked or who does work with computers can identify with in some way, shape or form.

I’ve always thought that most IT people are incredibly lucky because they do what they do mainly because they’re passionate about it – the getting paid part is a side effect. When you lose that passion then it simply becomes another job, and slowly but surely you drive yourself miserable as things just don’t feel right. I’ve interview many people before who just don’t come across as passionate about what they do, and it’s a pretty scary reminder as to why the passion is so important.

The point being that reading about being able to reboot that passion (even if it does take a nomadic journey around the world to do so) is pretty inspiring.

posted @ Tuesday, June 23, 2009 11:29 PM | Feedback (0)

From the department of redundancy department department department etc

Setting up a Subversion server in Windows using VisualSVN – the whole beauty of VisualSVN is that all you need to do is click ‘next next next finish’ and you’re done. You want points for writing an article about that? Woooo.

posted @ Saturday, June 20, 2009 11:37 PM | Feedback (0)

IIS ARR Documentation

I’m searching for a bit of documentation around one of the new IIS modules, Application Request Routing (or ARR).

I know that what I want to do (use IIS to provide external access to an ‘internal’ Apache server running TRAC) can be done, and it’s mostly working for me apart from authentication. Works fine from the local network, but falls down as soon as IIS/ARR is in the mix. I’ve tried the 1.0 release, as well as the latest 2.0 beta of ARR and both of them appear to do the same thing. I’ve spent a bit of time reading through various things on the IIS site, and have skimmed through one of the videos, but it doesn’t really offer any insights.

Any thoughts, suggestions or random pirate jokes (ARR ME HEARTIES!) welcomed!

posted @ Wednesday, June 17, 2009 12:07 AM | Feedback (0)