I wouldn’t normally poll the forum like this, but there is a significant regression bug in ND6/7/8 that still exists in 7.0.3, 8.0.1 and 8.5 Beta 1. The ticket on this SPR (# DCOE6N82TP) has been open a couple of years because it is such a horrific bear to reproduce.
IBM has finally acknowledged that it is a bug, and a fairly significant one. However the fix for it will require an ODS update, meaning that 8.5.1 is the first candidate release for a fix. It needs just a bit more weight added to it though before they’ll commit to the fix, so if you find this bug important please open a PMR ticket and ask to have SPR # DCOE6N82TP fixed.
The Short Story:
Documents can – on rare occasion – remain in a view even though they should no longer be there according to the view’s selection formula.
This problem affects any Domino database with the database property “optimize document table map” enabled. Which happens to be many core Domino databases, including the NAB.
Refreshing an affected view (e.g. F9 in the client) does NOT fix the problem.
Rebuilding the view index via one of the following methods will fix the problem, temporarily:
-
Shift-F9 in the client
-
A Fixup followed by Updall -R on the affected database
-
Ctrl-Shift-F9 in the client
Once fixed, the problem may never manifest in that DB again. Or it may re-manifest in the same view (or a different view) in 5 minutes. It’s very intermittent.
The problem is also extremely rare – we do massive amounts of doc updates daily and are only seeing this problem manifest a couple of times a week. It happens without warning – potentially after years of trouble-free view indexes.
Turning off the database property (followed by a compact) will avoid the problem, but at a massive performance penalty (see below).
Why should you care?
- This is a cornerstone of Domino workflow functionality:
-
doc appears in a view
-
doc’s fields get changed
-
doc should no longer appear in view <<< with this bug, this step is not 100% reliable
-
This property is enabled by default on many core Domino database (including the NAB). Due to the extreme rarity and intermittence of the bug, it is possible that a wide variety of all-around “strange” behavior is related to this obscure problem.
-
If you have any custom apps on Domino, this bug can obviously cause severe problems.
-
Since fixing this bug will require an ODS update, it must get fixed in a major release. This bug has taken literally years to track down so if a plan isn’t made to address it in early 8.5, it will need to wait until N/D 9 or later.
“I’ve seen this property but I don’t know what it does exactly…”
From the Help:
That’s a bit vague, though. Here’s an example that might make things more clear. Picture a database with 100,000 docs:
99,500 form field of “A”
500 form field of "B"
With “Optimize Document Table Map” OFF, A view or NotesDatabase.Search() with a formula of SELECT FORM=“B” will iterate through ALL 100,000 docs looking for matches.
WIth “Optimize Document Table Map” ON, A view or NotesDatabase.Search() with a formula of SELECT FORM=“B” will iterate through ONLY the 500 “B” docs looking for matches. The other 99,500 docs are skipped.
This can result in HUGE performance improvements for large DBs with small subsets of documents. This property worked brilliantly in R5, but has been glitchy since ND 6.0.
Thanks for reading. Without this bug being fixed, we all have two options:
-
Accept “mostly accurate” view indexes throughout many DBs in Domino (including the NAB, which will cause general strangeness on occasion).
-
Avoid using one of the most performance-enhancing options of Domino.