Our Citrix consultant has been doing some research on slimming down the client footprint and has turned his attention to the template files present in the data directory. During a client upgrade the sizes of the templates increase (Bookmarks.ntf, eg, went from 5.6mb to 6.14) and when he tries to ‘share’ templates, the clients need ‘write’ permissions to the shared directory. Subsequent upgrades increase the size further. Unfortunately I do not have time to research this for him, so can anyone tell me what is written back to the templates and if this is going to cause problems if, say, they are used thousands of times?
Subject: What happens to template files in a client upgrade?
Template files at the client are used to initially create databases. In theory, if you never need to create or re-create a local database while disconnected from a Domino server (which also has templates) then there would be no need to have any NTF files on the local machine. In reality it is sometimes convenient to have certain templates stored locally such as pernames.ntf in the off chance that the local names.nsf becomes corrupt and you can’t start the client. Even that’s a stretch since I’ve only had to do that once in ten years of working with Notes.
Just recognize that if you ever need to breakdown a Notes client to reconfigure it then you will need to have access to some of the templates that generate the system databases on the client such as pernames.ntf, cache.ntf, bookmark.ntf, log.ntf, etc.
Subject: RE: What happens to template files in a client upgrade?
I know what they do, and why I need them, but I want to know WHAT is being written back to them when we use them to upgrade a workspace and the implications if I use one template (to upgrade many users) many times.
Will we just end up with enormous template files? Do we risk some kind of corruption?