Best Practice for Sharing Documents: Attachments or OLE?

HCL Domino Domino Forum
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We have Notes applications where Excel and Word documents are embedded in Notes documents to allow users to update and share information in that embedded data. Updating the embedded data is the only function of OLE that we are using.

With the new ease of editing attachments in Notes 6 would it be better to use attachments rather that Object Linking and Embedding?

My reasons for wanting to avoid OLE:

  • We have many experiences with OLE failing due to the way applications were installed. It works for a while, then it fails, and we have to resolve how to correct it.

  • OLE does not currently work on the Macs in our graphics department.

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Subject: Best Practice for Sharing Documents: Attachments or OLE?

I agree with Ben. But attachments have their own problems.

Have a look at why you are embedding/attaching in the first place. Maybe there is a better way altogether.

For example, using Excel as a Graphing tool can be replaced by a Java Applet for doing the Graphs. Another alternative may be to use SVG.

Both the above are more modern ways of handling the problem.

Regards

Rolf Pfotenhauer

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Subject: Best Practice for Sharing Documents: Attachments or OLE? Attachments have their own problems

Rolf,Yes, it does appear attachments have their own problems. See “Serious annomalies with in-place editing” in this formum. That conversation points out some problems, but IMHO may not be totally accurate. Im my testing with 6.5.1 client I find that users can be mislead into thinking they can edit attachements in documents they do not have authority to edit, but fortunately they are prevented from making changes.

Like most tools it’s not foolproof; you have to learn how to use it.

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Subject: RE: Best Practice for Sharing Documents: Attachments or OLE?

Thanks, Rolf.Our reason for embedding/attaching is that we are doing some basic document management. We are using a Notes application for a document repository, not a full blown document manager. We are storing several document formats Excel, Word, PowerPoint, Visio, pdf, etc.

  • Larry
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Subject: Best Practice for Sharing Documents: Attachments or OLE?

We moved away from OLE in the 4.5x days because (a) embedded objects frequently corrupted and (b) they took up a lot of diskspace. In-place attachment editing addresses the ease of use issue with editing and updating OLE stuff, so unless OLE has suddenly become more efficient and stable, I see no reason to use it in favour of attachments. YMMV of course!

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Subject: Best Practice for Sharing Documents: Attachments or OLE? and YMMV

Thanks for your response.

Thank you also for your use of “YMMV”. That sent me on a tangent to understand it’s meaning in this situation. I found "Commonly stated as a caveat when the person’s experience is subjective and without hard numbers to back up a statement. In use as a flame retardant.

Example of a comment one might make which is so obviously wrong and provocative that a war would surely ensue if it weren’t for the YMMV caveat: I find EMACS to be a much more effective editor than vi, but YMMV." at http://c2.com/cgi/wiki. Along with a lot of other new language.