I just came back from extended medical leave to discover that the PTB upgraded everyone to Notes 7 in my absence, which is good. But now they want to replace the HEAVILY customized Address Book with the v7 ‘canned’ template. Which is bad. 95% of our web applications rely totally upon custom fields and at least three custom views. (The PTB are somehow convinced that we don’t have any ‘major’ applications on Notes, which IS true. What they don’t ‘get’ is that we have LOTS of ‘minor’ applications, and affected users would number in, literally, the tens of thousands.) If the PTB had their way, the plug would have been pulled without warning at close of business today. My head hurts just thinking about it. But as it is, the ‘stay of execution’ is limited, and we’re scrambling for alternatives. Since I haven’t hit all eight cylinders yet, I’m begging the indulgence of any who can tell me if what I’m thinking is possible and/or correct. If I’m on the right track, then the search engines can take over from there, and I’ll be fine. If it turns out I’m not on the right track, though, it’ll save my rather limited energy (and mental resources) so that I can concentrate in another direction.
Our custom views are currently being used as adhoc XML. I experimented with adhoc external XML, but using an agent to rebuild a 35,000 record external XML document every TIME was … not good. So, am I anywhere on the right track in thinking that the following is a feasible approach? 1) Scheduled agent, running overnight or as needed, that will rebuild an external XML document from a SQL database (mimicking the custom view); 2) placing the XML document in a central location (where does one store those things, anyway?) on the Hub server; 3) and then redoing the code in the ‘minor’ applications to reference that XML document instead of the Address Book, at least until the point where the code starts treathing the Address Book views like XML anyway. Any and all advice and/or caveats would be gratefully appreciated. Early retirement is beginning to look like a great option …
Subject: Question re using DXL/Ajax to replace customized views?
Sounds feasible, though I’m not sure how the custom views in the NAB marry together an external SQL database? And I asume your suggestion is based on the fact that re-doing the views is not an option?
When it comes to XML, I normally just get an agent to print XML as it’s response, creating an up-to-date XML file when the agent is called, but it sounds like your usage is a bit heavy for that.
I would put the xml file in domino/html on the server, so it can be referenced with http://my.server.com/myfile.xml. Do some testing and see how long the agent takes to run so that you can schedule it as often as possible; your users won’t hesitate to complain about any delay in the update of the xml I’m sure
Subject: RE: Question re using DXL/Ajax to replace customized views?
The custom views in the NAB are just a way to mimic an XML sheet. It’s adhoc in that the refresh of 32k records happens at the view level, so that when it comes time for an actual access, it doesn’t have an excessive retrieval time. When I experimented with creating adhoc XML on the fly, though, retrieval time skyrocketed. Scratch that idea.
The views can’t be redone, no. Actually, they don’t need to be redone, but they (2 in all) are custom-built views, and the Edict has come down that the address book will no longer have ANY custom views.
So that led to my suggestion that we build an agent so, instead of relying on custom views in the NAB to mimic XML, we can create a DXL export. Actual implementation is where I start getting rocky, though. I’ve only experimented casually with DXL, not nearly enough to be certain about what I’m suggesting.
Building the XML straight from the new ‘official’ SQL name & address book would be a better solution, as I don’t have much hope that the Notes Address book will be maintained quite as religiously as it has in the past. The cracks are showing already.
So if I’m understanding your comments correctly, then I AM on the right track believing that it should be possible to keep our Notes web applications running despite the loss of our custom views, by generating XML by a different method, then modifying our existing code to reference the external XML instead of the views. If so, keep your fingers crossed that I can sell the PTB on the idea. Thanks!!
