Developers here at work want to add some fields and views to the DOMAIN NAMES.NSF. I personally think it is a BAD idea. I need some input concerning UPDATES/UPGRADES/NEW RELEASES …etc. Do you think it is a bad idea?
Thank you for your comments.
Don Carriere
Subject: Developers want to make chages to NAMES.NSF
My company has some custom Views in names.nsf. They’re always marked as “prohibit design refresh or replace to modify”, and their purpose is well documented. We never (ever) allow any changes to standard Forms and Views, or allow new Forms. Upgrades are never an issue.
…now the Mail template, that’s something different!
Subject: Developers want to make chages to NAMES.NSF
I am currently consulting at a company where we have made changes to the names.nsf and Mail templates. We have added fields to the person docs, created new views and other changes.
In the Mail file we have added different Action buttons and views that notes does not include.
We always carry these changes over to a new tempalte. When they decide to go to R6, we will take teh R6 mail template and incorparate or changes to the template.
Subject: Developer wants to maked chages to NAMES.NSF
I’ve made a few minor changes to our copy however, worth noting that if you do an upgrade to the server, the design of names.nsf is usually replaced so you will need to re-apply your modifications.
Also, if you are in a mixed version environment (for examploe, R5 and R6) your modifications should take this into account
Subject: RE: Developer wants to maked chages to NAMES.NSF
A common practice when you want to add fields into the forms is to make them in subforms. Then it is very easy to include them again in an updated form at upgrade time.
Changing views of the hidden system views is very BAD. Appending columns to non-system views is not so bad, try to preserve the existing sort and origianl column order because you never know what code might be doing lookups.
Adding additional views is OK, the main impact here is the size of the database due to additional view indexes. This will increase disk space usage and time the indexer takes when changes are made to documents in the database. You should use the admin client to check whether your proposed customizations significantly impact the space taken up by view indexes in the database. In the files tab, right click on names.nsf and choose the view info option at the end of the context menu.
For example, I recently saw a directory that was 1.5gb in size (about 80k entries) but 75% was view indexes and quite a few of those views were added for admin-type purposes.