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I find it more than a little astounding to even imagine that the same people who wrote Domino, a truly av ante garde and wonderous product, also wrote DDE. Maybe they didn’t? That would explain a lot!
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I can’t use DDE for five minutes without hitting another bug. Most lot of them are “trivial”, like right-clicking a frame in a frameset gives a little context menu, which the first click on that menu simply repaints it slightly down and to the right, so the same selection must be done twice in a row to recognized. This only happens for frames in framesets, but it’s right annoying.
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Thing is all the “trivial” issues add up, when they are encountered numerous dozens upon dozens upon dozens of times per day, all day, every day, without recourse. It gets really old having context menus work fine EXCEPT for frames in framesets, so one clicks the selection and then sits there waiting, thinking perhaps the dog-slow system simply hasn’t deigned to respond yet.
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As just mentioned horrid dog-slow response time for everything, during which time the system doesn’t even capture mouse clicks to act upon when it finally gets around to finishing what it’s doing. This is compared to R-prior, any version. It’s bad enough that it takes thirty seconds to open a database in DDE, but after it’s finally done loading it still often takes many, many seconds to do things that used to be near instant in R-prior.
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If it would stop tossing out the clicks I make while waiting interminably for it to respond that would, sadly, be an advantage. Instead I get to click on things two and sometimes three times, all of which are utterly ignored. It pretty much takes the concept of “useless clicks” (you know, twice as many clicks in R8 to do nearly everything compared to R-prior) to whole new level.
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And consistency. I could write an entire novel about the sheer unbridled flakiness in DDE. I read somewhere here on the Forum that one dude uses R8.0.2 for all non-Xpage work, and only uses DDE because he has no choice for XPages. I think he’s onto something.
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I know many people that slam OSS for being unpolished and lacking in functionality. I’ve been using OSS for over twenty years (back when it was called “shareware”), including Eclipse (my favorite IDE, btw, which is instantaneously responsive compared to DDE). I can say with absolute conviction that, until DDE, ANYTHING that was as flat-out poorly implemented and hideously unusable as DDE has been erased from my hard drive in very short order.
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Regardless, since I’m shackled with this travesty, I’d like to be able to tell someone who tracks issues about the many, many myriads of things I encounter every day. I’m pretty sure this Forum isn’t the place, but whatever that place is seems to be a secret, at least from the Forum. I see hundreds of references to SPRs, but not a single link that indicates how one would search them to prevent a duplicate, or how one would create them. It comes across that IBM could care less.
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It rankles to think of huge quantity of time I’m going to squander to provide feedback that the ALPHA testers at IBM should have provided, but there it is. I’d rather give that feedback and hope for improvement rather than think I must continue to use the DDE I have now. I used to think Designer was as bad as it could get, but DDE makes Designer look like a shining example of IDE-ness, such that I jones for Designer once again. DDE is really and truly THAT heinous.
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Thanks for your time…
Subject: No, that’s not what we’re talking about.
Thanks, but the first link (Fix List db) doesn’t show known SPRs unless they’ve been fixed, or will be fixed in the next upcoming minor version and/or Fix Pack.
For example:
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no way to see known bugs in 8.5.0 that are slated to be fixed in 8.5.1
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no way to see known bugs in 8.5.0 that are slated to be fixed in 8.5 FP1
The last point changed (just) recently, when a few weeks ago the 8.5 FP1 proposed fix list was posted in the “Notices” section. Besides that not being an intuitive place to look, you’re still talking about 6 months of 8.5.0 being out with absolutely no way for us end-user-admins to know problem areas to examine, things to look for, test, etc.
The second link you posted is slightly better - you can search for an SPR # (assuming you actually know it) and you might find it.
But I just searched there for a known crash in 8.5.0 that revolves around the NotesViewNavigator class. I know the SPR number (I’ve got a hotfix for it), it is a known crash, and yet I can’t find it online anywhere. It’s slated to be fixed in 8.5.1, according to support. Where/how can I see that myself without opening a PMR ticket?
What we really want is a complete list of known SPRs for a current release, and the fix status. Not a partial list of current SPRs that are slated to be fixed in an upcoming release.
Subject: Look at the APARs
The APAR is normally what details an issue in relation to an SPR which may or may not be fixed. Should give the status if it is closed/fixed.
If the SPR doesn’t have an APAR it is normally an internally reported issue so would not always relate to a shipped build.
“- no way to see known bugs in 8.5.0 that are slated to be fixed in 8.5.1…”
That is unlikely to happen. Until the product ships there is no guarantee an SPR marked as fixed will be released. When fixed the SPR has go through testing/risk assessment.
The pre-release notes is the best indicator of what is upcoming.
Subject: I understand your points, but…
"If the SPR doesn’t have an APAR it is normally an internally reported issue so would not always relate to a shipped build. "
Are you saying that any SPR created from a PMR I submit (which is several) results in an APAR? I’ve caused many SPRs to be reported, and only received a couple APAR numbers from support, and of those only one ever make it into the published APAR list.
I just opened the APARs view in the Fix List database and searched for anything reported against 8.5. There’s nothing.
"That is unlikely to happen. Until the product ships there is no guarantee an SPR marked as fixed will be released. When fixed the SPR has go through testing/risk assessment. "
Understood, but we’re looking for slated to be fixed. There’s legalese and red (!) icons all over the Fix List database saying “this fix hasn’t been verified, don’t base irreversable business decisions on this etc etc”.
But that’s only for upcoming, about-to-be-released versions. There’s no list of 8.5.1 “tentative” fixes yet, just us here in the forum and blog-world conversing with each other. E.g. Maureen has responded to posts of many UI-related bugs, stating “This is fixed in 8.5.1!” Or “This is much better in 8.5.1!”
Heck, I’d take a list of SPRs in “investigating” or even simply “reported” status.
The point is this: As it stands we don’t even know of the existence of a potential problem unless we find it during our own testing or hear about it on a blog, etc.
My most recent example: We’re testing (and finding serious problems with) the NotesViewNavigator class internally here, but only under load and/or with large views. This is a ten-year-old LotusScript class from R5 that should have been unit-tested and load-tested to hell and back with whatever refactoring took place internally, but even as I type this there’s absoultely no way somebody would have knowledge of the problems unless they happened to read this forum.
I hope everybody’s testing as heavily as we are.
Complex software has bugs. That’s unavoidable. But at least we can know how business-impacting those bugs are, and where to focus testing/workaround efforts if we have a list available.
I know that my company is not going to deploying 8.5.0 until 8.5.1’s list of fixes is out, just so we can see what 8.5.0 regression bugs exist and where to focus our testing/workaround efforts.
“The pre-release notes is the best indicator of what is upcoming.”
Cool! Are 8.5.1’s pre-release notes out there yet? I’ll take anything I can get.
Subject: OK thanks for the clarification.
What you have requested is beyond my scope to help with though. 
I’d recommend creating an IdeaJam and getting more people to add to it.
There are no 8.5.1 prerelease notes out yet that I am aware of. 8.5FP1 is out though.
Subject: Yes, Thank you Simon!..
- And thank you Eric for picking this up and running with it. You (and nearly anyone) is significantly better at presentation than I am. I greatly appreciate your efforts at describing precisely what I meant.
Subject: ditto, bug list needed
Thanks guys. Ditto everything. I wish we could just TRUST that new versions are SAFE TO INSTALL!
Subject: Thanks, Simon. The help is always appreciated.
Subject: A couple of options.
Hi,
To log SPRs for development you can it a number of ways.
- Open a PMR with support. More details on it here:
http://www14.software.ibm.com/webapp/set2/sas/f/handbook/getsupport.html
Support normally try to reproduce the issue and document for an SPR. We also create a customer report which adds further weight to an SPR. Please note that it is not possible to get a hotfix for the client though unless you have a PSP contract (or through an exception).
- You can post on this forum.
This is a community forum but support and development do read it from time to time. An SPR is normally created if the issue is well documented in the post. However no customer report is put against the SPR.
In both instances you should document as well as possible the steps to recreate the issue and setup to help speed things up.
If you are creating an enhancement request you can create an SPR or use IdeaJam.
With regards to your comments. I recommend getting onto the 8.5.1 beta program if you can. A lot of your issues mentioned appear to be resolved.
Subject: Thanks Simon…
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The browser decided to totally squander all of the time spent responding and toss it in the bit bucket when I clicked “Post”. Sort of like DDE does when I try to update a Jar in a Java Project, and just as annoying. Nice start to the day, that.
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In short I appreciate the link but it’s more than heinously inefficient to expect the customer to spend hours fully documenting MYRIADS of defects that IBM is most likely already aware of, and as you yourself indicate, may already be addressed in 8.5.1.
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IBM needs to provide a mechanism whereby the customer can determine if a defect is known, and its status. Not full SPR data, even, simply that IBM is aware of it and some indication of what they intend to do about it, even if what they intend to do is ignore it for now.
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I find it vanishingly unlikely that this mechanism does not exist already. I simply don’t know how to access it. Could you tell me?
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Thanks for your time…
Subject: How to search for known issues.
You can use the following website.
http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/r5fixlist.nsf/APAR?OpenView
It details SPRs known and state.
You can also search the technotes as they will reference related issues and work arounds if any.
Subject: YES - this would definitely save time.
- IBM needs to provide a mechanism whereby the customer can determine if a defect is known, and its status. Not full SPR data, even, simply that IBM is aware of it and some indication of what they intend to do about it, even if what they intend to do is ignore it for now.
Technotes help sometimes, but there’s tons of stuff that I’ve been uncovering in 8.5 that simply isn’t available to the public.
Here’s a related post from me regarding Fix Packs and awareness of SPRs: