Notes

There are 22 entries for the tag Notes
Where does technical debt come from

Over the past year I’ve been dealing with some technical debt across a couple of different ASP.NET applications that we recently inherited. As part of that work I’ve spent a bit of time thinking about technical debt, how to deal with it, and how to avoid it. Describing the subject of technical debt as interesting might be overstating things a little however it is a subject which is relevant to most developers at some point in their career. So when I read this article (Lotus Notes - a Double Edged Sword) it struck me as a great example of...

posted @ Monday, March 14, 2011 7:40 PM | Feedback (2) Filed Under [ Notes/Domino Web Development Miscellaneous ]

Nothing to see here folks, everything is fine

Whenever a new New Zealand specific freelancer / crowdSPRING type site pops up I like to check it out – it’s an interesting window into your country’s technology trends. Freelancer.co.nz seems to be spending quite a bit of money on Adsense clicks at the moment, so I wandered over and took a look at their site and more specifically at the list of technologies they have current postings for. So from the screenshot below, can you see a couple of technologies which are absent? (Hint: these technologies might appear under either “IBM Tivoli” or under...

posted @ Thursday, October 14, 2010 11:00 PM | Feedback (0)

On Vowe’s recent DNUG posting and similarities in NZ

You only have to glance at my tag cloud or my site introduction paragraph in the sidebar to the right to see that I’ve not called myself “A Notes person” for quite some time – however I still have clients who use the technology, and as such I can’t help keep an eye on things. Vowe’s recent post “Things I learned at the DNUG conference in Berlin” shows that a lot of the things I’ve noticed about the IBM/Lotus market in New Zealand are happening in other places too. New Zealand has always been a stronghold for Microsoft, and...

posted @ Sunday, June 13, 2010 3:12 AM | Feedback (2) Filed Under [ Notes/Domino ]

Fixing an issue where DominoBlog displays categories incorrectly

Issue: One or more of your categories in a DominoBlog isn’t displaying correctly. Instead of seeing the contents of the category you see a set of DX tags, i.e. $DXSubjectLink$ and so forth as shown in the image below: A quick search reveals that there's a few other people who have this issue, but no one mentioning the (rather simple) fix. As I don’t use DominoBlog it took me a little while to find out what was causing it so thought I’d mention it here in case it helps someone. Simply edit the content category...

posted @ Monday, May 31, 2010 6:20 AM | Feedback (0) Filed Under [ Notes/Domino ]

OpenNTF projects for Feb

Yes, I know it’s March – I clicked this link in Feb but haven’t had a chance to sit down and watch the video until now. There’s some very good stuff in here. The widgets I can mostly take or leave (although the File Manager one has some good potential for anyone using a Notes client for day to day use), however xTalk, the Next Gen Discussion template, and the xPages Wiki all look very useful indeed. On the developer’s side of things, part 2 covers some useful XPages controls. These are the...

posted @ Thursday, March 11, 2010 10:06 PM | Feedback (0) Filed Under [ Notes/Domino ]

My Notes Client Setup

After building my new Macbook Pro as well as rebuilding my main rig on its new Intel X25 SSD I wanted to briefly document my client setups for Visual Studio and Lotus Notes/Domino. So to get started, here’s the Notes/Domino post. Firstly.. I install the client! I’m currently using 8.5.1, but ideally would be running 8.5.1 with 8.0.2 basic installed concurrently. Why? 8.5.1 is an utter pig for making quick design changes over slow remote connections – and this is how I do a lot of work for my clients. Setting the project to build automatically often means making...

posted @ Thursday, February 11, 2010 12:07 PM | Feedback (0) Filed Under [ Notes/Domino ]

Asleep at the wheel during a server upgrade

I’ve upgraded a LOT of Domino servers in my time, and so yesterday when I upgraded another one (Windows 2003) to Domino 8.5.1 I was expecting another smooth ride. After running the install wizard it informed me that the computer needed to be restarted – interesting, as I don’t recall needing to do a Windows restart for previous upgrades, but who am I to argue? As the box was coming back up it locked up at “Applying Computer Settings”, meaning logging in via console or RDP was unavailable. It took me a minute to realise what had happened –...

posted @ Wednesday, February 10, 2010 12:45 PM | Feedback (3) Filed Under [ Notes/Domino ]

I have a new favorite Domino Designer error

Yay! It’s awesome! Tags: IBM, Notes, Domino

posted @ Friday, January 29, 2010 2:50 PM | Feedback (0)

Looking back on the past couple of years as a freelancer

It's coming up to the 2 year mark since I resigned from my full time job and went into freelancing / owning my own businesses. After many years of working as an employee, a contractor and doing small bits of freelancing on the side I probably thought that switching to freelancing would be a bit easier than it ended up being, which is part of why I wanted to write a little about my experiences. There's plenty of material out there offering freelancers helpful tips or things to avoid - this post is similar to many of those, but it's...

posted @ Friday, January 08, 2010 12:27 PM | Feedback (3) Filed Under [ ASP.NET Notes/Domino Web Development Miscellaneous Me ]

Notes/Domino refactoring/analysis tools

I’m in need of a refactoring/analysis tool for use on a couple of projects - truth be told I’ve needed one for a while. The main (possibly only) feature I’m after is a global “Find” function to search for a string inside all design elements of a database (equivalent to Visual Studio’s ‘Find in Files’ / ctrl+shift+f function). The obvious contenders are from Ytria, and TeamStudio. Ytria’s product installation had a few issues, and I’m not in the mood to create an account right now so will have to take a look at it later – although looking at...

posted @ Thursday, December 24, 2009 11:40 PM | Feedback (11) Filed Under [ Notes/Domino ]

Interesting bits from Notes/Domino 8.5 and 8.5.1 Redbooks

The other night I spent a bit of time reading a couple of IBM Redbooks on the Domino Wiki, the Upgrade Cookbook:  Upgrading to Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.1 and the Lotus Notes and Domino version 8.5 Deployment Guide. To some people that probably doesn’t sound like a whole lot of fun, but I ended up coming across quite a few useful bits of information that I was surprised to not have already read about elsewhere. A few of the larger examples were: Windows® single sign-on for Web clients You can set up...

posted @ Friday, November 27, 2009 12:23 PM | Feedback (0) Filed Under [ Notes/Domino ]

…and we’re off.

Currently downloading the just released Notes/Domino 8.5.1. Hoping to get it all downloaded before the Americans wake up so I can give it a test drive tomorrow. Very interested to see whether this release fixes some of my current gripes with the full blown Godzilla client. I may finally put Notes on my Mac too, as apparently it’s more Mac like! Tags: IBM,Lotus,Notes

posted @ Monday, October 12, 2009 10:43 PM | Feedback (0) Filed Under [ Notes/Domino ]

A random Domino SoS

Just in case anyone out there glances over this and has some ideas, I’m going to throw up a flare and ask a couple of quick Domino questions. *queue flare sound* Converting Word/Excel attachments to PDF on the fly in a Domino web application. The requirement is that a user clicks on a link which points to a $File attachment, I want to convert it to PDF and spit that out to them. Some of Jake Howlett’s DEXT code using Java and the lowagie packages looks incredibly handy and close to what I’m after, but minus...

posted @ Tuesday, September 29, 2009 8:29 PM | Feedback (0) Filed Under [ Notes/Domino ]

Briefly touching on Notes/Domino 8.5.1

This interesting collection of hints about the potential quality of Notes/Domino 8.5.1 (the NDA has been lifted from beta testers) makes for some interesting if slightly saddening reading. Personally if the bits about improving Domino Designer performance are slightly true then that’s probably going to be enough for me as a casual user only, but at the moment switching between using Visual Studio 90% of the time vs Domino Designer 10% of the time makes for an interesting comparison between the 2 environments. A post about IBM quality control seems like a suitable place to drop in this little...

posted @ Tuesday, September 08, 2009 12:10 AM | Feedback (0) Filed Under [ Notes/Domino ]

Notes/Domino 8.5 FP1

Fixpack 1 for IBM Notes/Domino 8.5 is out now, and fixes a fair few issues which might take the pressure off any administrators who are anxiously waiting for 8.5.1. Some links: 8.5 FP1 Download (requires an IBM ID) 8.5 FP1 Preliminary Fix List (some of those items look “interesting”, and not in a good way) Tags: Lotus,Notes,Domino

posted @ Monday, July 27, 2009 6:21 PM | Feedback (0) Filed Under [ Notes/Domino ]

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...

posted @ Monday, June 29, 2009 10:43 AM | Feedback (0) Filed Under [ Notes/Domino ]

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...

posted @ Tuesday, June 23, 2009 11:47 PM | Feedback (0) Filed Under [ Notes/Domino ]

A couple of quick Notes/Domino links

A few links which are worth a read for those of you still keeping half an eye on the world of Notes/Domino (i.e. not you Doug!). Notes 8.5 – ignore the incredibly descriptive page title, this post contains a nice summary of some of the new features in Notes 8.5. How do you like the DDE? – DDE being Domino Designer on Eclipse. Read the comments for a good cross section of opinion on the updated designer client. What's new in Lotus Notes 8.5? – Official IBM technote, which is the usual overly verbose IBM document. They...

posted @ Saturday, January 17, 2009 6:50 PM | Feedback (0) Filed Under [ Notes/Domino ]

Domino Superior

Meet Domino Superior is a post from Nathan Freeman discussing and demonstrating a few features of Domino XPages. It looks interesting, although I can’t work out if the prospect of having @DbLookup available inside JavaScript is interesting or just scary? Tags: Notes,Domino

posted @ Friday, June 27, 2008 6:01 PM | Feedback (0) Filed Under [ Notes/Domino ]

Notes performance tuning

An excellent tip for all Notes/Domino developers. Indeed. Yeah. Uhm. Sweet. Tags: IBM, Lotus, Notes, Domino, Godzilla

posted @ Sunday, October 28, 2007 10:51 PM | Feedback (1) Filed Under [ Notes/Domino ]

Have you seen Notes 8?

"Have you seen Notes 8? Wow! Seriously, wow," he says. That's what I said when I saw the lack of speed and the excessive RAM consumption too! Link: Some generic piece of PR bullshit Link: A vacuous link to a generic piece of PR bullshit Technorati tags: IBM, Lotus, Notes

posted @ Saturday, August 11, 2007 12:06 AM | Feedback (3) Filed Under [ Amusing Notes/Domino ]

Subtle Lock in - liberating my data from Notes Databases Part 2!

The final part of my data migration involved migrating the site's comments, and placing them against the correct entries in the newly populated SQL Subtext database. I used the same techniques as previously to get the bulk of the SQL script created, with one minor addition. Can you spot it? utcDateTime := @Text(@Year(@Created)) + "-" + @Right("0" + @Text(@Month(@Created)); 2) + "-" + @Right("0" + @Text(@Day(@Created)); 2) + " " + @Right("0" + @Text(@Hour(@Created)); 2) + ":" + @Right("0" + @Text(@Minute(@Created)); 2) + ":00.000"; NewEntryID := "set @newentryid = (select top 1 ID from...

posted @ Sunday, July 08, 2007 6:03 PM | Feedback (0) Filed Under [ ASP.NET Notes/Domino Miscellaneous ]

About me

My name is Ross Hawkins and I'm a developer, consultant, business owner and writer based in Auckland, New Zealand (pictured below!). My current work revolves around ASP.NET, C#, jQuery, Ajax, SQL Server, and a mix of other Microsoft development technologies.

I also have about 15 years of experience with IBM Lotus Notes/Domino and associated technologies. While Notes/Domino is no longer my primary focus I still like to dabble and keep my skills up to date.

I own and run 2 businesses - Hawkins Consulting Services, and Ignition Development.

Bethells Beach, located in sunny West Auckland, New Zealand




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