Author Archives: Karl-Henry Martinsson

Notes and Domino v12 is here!

Posted on by Posted in Formula, HCL, Lotusscript, node.js, Notes/Domino, Sametime, Volt, Web Development, XPages Leave a comment

HCL Software is launching the new version of the collaboration platform HCL Domino on June 7, together with the latest version of the meeting platform Sametime. If you already are a customer with entitlement to the products, you can already download them from FlexNet today.

Some of the new features in Domino v12:

  • Support for storing DAOS files in Amazon S3, to offload your own servers
  • Active directory password sync
  • Two-factor authentication and additional enhancements to internet security
  • New mobile capabilities
  • New icons and view list styling options
  • Hide fields or view columns on devices with lower resolution
  • Bootstrap 4 for XPages
  • Support for formula language in DQL queries
  • Aggregate document collections (e.g. from a search) across Domino databases
  • Button in Administrator client to find all groups a user belongs to
  • Enhancements to mail-in databases

And much more. Find out at the launch!

It is not only the Domino server and the Notes client that is being launched. The latest version of HCL’s no-code/low-code development tool Domino Volt is also available, as is a new version of the AppDev Pack that allows node.js developers to work directly with data stored in the Domino NoSQL-database. But wait, there is more!

A very exciting product HCL will present at the launch is Nomad Web, a client for Domino built for the browser with no downloads or plugins required. The client is written in Web Assembly, so it runs native in modern browsers. It can execute formulas and Lotusscript code, everything you can do in the regular client can be done (with a few exceptions like XPages). There has even been new classes added to Lotusscript to access hardware common in mobile devices and laptops, e.g. the camera and GPS. Nomad for iOS and Android has already been released, but with this zero footprint web client it is incredibly easy to deploy existing Domino application without having to convert them to true web applications. They will simply work as-is. This is truly an impressive engineering feat by HCL.

If you haven’t done it yet, sign up for the launch of the new Domino and Sametime on June 7.

NTF Needs Your Help

Posted on by Posted in Community, IBM/Lotus, Notes/Domino 1 Comment

Anyone who has been in the Notes/Domino community for some time knows Nathan T Freeman, also known as NTF. He was one of the founders of OpenNTF back in 2001, and has been blogging and presenting on Notes and Domino related subjects for many years. I have learned a lot from him over the years.

Nathan T Freeman (center) at ConnectED 2015.

Nathan has always been a very colorful person in the community. I just found out that Nathan is having some serious health issues. His wife Lisa created a GoFundMe to get some help with the medical cost. If you have ever benefitted from something Nathan wrote on his blog or talked about at one of his many presentations over the years, or if you used OpenNTF as a source for code, consider donating to help Nathan and Lisa.

Update on 04/11/2021 by Bob Kadrie: “Nathan was readmitted to the hospital today with unstable vitals, including low blood pressure and oxygen. His heartbeat is also unstable, so they cannot transport him to a larger hospital that may be better equipped to treat him at this point. His doctors are now saying he most likely has a week or less to live.”

Update 2 on 04/12/2021 by Bob Kadrie: “Nathan has was moved to a larger hospital earlier Sunday evening in order to receive more specialized care. Once he was examined, it was determined he was experiencing complete organ failure.
He was then given Fentanyl and placed in a medically induced coma to make him comfortable,
Nathan just passed with his family by his side. He was an incredibly dedicated husband and father. He was also generous, funny. and the best intellectual sparring partner I’ve ever had.
He touched a lot of people in his short time here. He will be missed by many.
Please continue your generous donations in order to assist his family with the massive medical expenses they’ve incurred and in their transition during the days ahead.
Thank you all for bringing a little security to Lisa, Lillian, Meta, Axiom, and Ira Belle. Sandy and I are so sorry for everyone’s loss.”

The GoFundMe goal has been increased, to help Lisa and the children. They will need all the support they can get.

Helpful Tools – Ytria EZ Suite (part 2)

Posted on by Posted in Administration, Notes/Domino, Reviews, Software, Utilities Leave a comment

Two weeks ago I wrote about Ytria EZ Suite, a set of tools for HCL Domino that I have been using for years. Unfortunately there were so much to write about the tools that I had to split it up into multiple blog posts. This is the second article about the tools that comprise EZ Suite. In that first post I covered scanEZ, consoleEZ, actionBarEZ and viewEZ, and if you haven’t read it yet, you can find it here.

Most of the tools I previously covered were aimed more towards developers, especially actionBarEZ and viewEZ. The consoleEZ tools can also be very useful for a developer who needs to keep an eye on the server console for potential error messages from agents being executed on the server. But Ytria offer tools directly geared towards administrators as well, so today we will take a look at them.

The first of these tools is aclEZ, and as the name indicates it is used to manager the ACL (Access Control List) of Domino databases. You get an overview of who has access to the databases, and you can modify, create and of course delete entries. You are of course not limited to displaying one database, you can select multiple databases and compare the ACL settings between the different databases. You can also copy ACL settings between databases, so you can setup one database with the proper security settings and then copy them to as many databases as you like on your server.

Ytria is using a configurable grid to display columns in all their tools. This is making it easy to view just the info you are looking for. Columns can be hidden or displayed, sorting can be set, and much more. I find this flexibility very helpful, there are often columns I am not even remotely interested in and now I can just prevent them from being displayed.

In addition you can sort the columns in the grid, and also apply filters so only values matching a specific criteria are displayed.

This is just a couple of examples of the many details I enjoy with the Ytria tools. They have over 20 years of experience creating tools for Notes and Domino professionals, and that shows. Everything is well thought through, and the tools offers great flexibility.

A tool I find extremely useful is databaseEZ. It allows me to get a high level view of all databases on a server, check things like the ODS version, if they are full-text indexed or not, the database size,, when they were last compacted, and also look at the size of the view index for each view in a database.

All this information helps me for example if I need to find out why a Domino application is slow, or which databases needs maintenance first. Almost this information can be accessed from the Domino Administrator client, but not in this easy to read format. Instead you need to open a number of different views and dialog boxes in each database. This is a huge time saver!

The last tool I want to mention today is replicationEZ. As the name states, this is a tool to locate and compare replicas of databases on different servers. Like in the other tools from Ytria, there are too many functions to list them all. I would like to mention a few that I find very useful.

Here I have loaded two of my servers into the replicationEZ grid, and it is now easy to see that there are a couple of databases I don’t have replicas of on my secondary server. I am also loading and comparing the number of documents and deletion stubs in two replicas of a database, and you can see there is a discrepancy on the number of deletion stubs between them (highlighted in red).

It is of course easy to create new replicas, or rather a replication stub. This is another example of how Ytria added functionality that I miss in the native Domino Administrator. Instead of having to sit and wait for a new replica to be created and all documents replicated to the new server (or start the replication, cancel out after a few documents have been replicated, and then let the Domino server finish the replication in the background), replicationEZ creates a replication stub, and I can continue to work while the full replica is created.

There are a few more tools from EZ Suite that I want to talk about, so check back in a few days for the last blog post.

Busy, busy – But wait: There is help!

Posted on by Posted in #DominoForever, App Modernization, AppDev, Design, Reviews, Software, Web Development 2 Comments

For the last year and a half I have been very busy with different projects, and this blog had to be put on the back burner. And no, despite a number of blog posts about Microsoft Flight Simulator, I have actually not had much time to play it, less than 10 hours since it was released last August. But this leads me to today’s topic: tools that can help you save time.

As a Notes/Domino developer, administrator or power user, you often need to go deeper into the Domino database. This could be tasks like finding and resolving replication contacts, look closer at the fields (including hidden fields) in a document, or quickly locate all documents of a particular type, or matching a particular criteria that you don’t already have a view for. As an administrator you maybe would like to keep several Domino consoles visible side by side, so you can watch what is happening on all your servers at the same time. As a developer, what if you could copy the design of a view or an action bar to numerous other views to make all views look consistent, without having to edit and update every single view manually? Things like that makes your life easier and makes you more efficient, but you don’t have that in the native product.

One set of tools that stands in a class by itself is EZ Suite from Ytria. The EZ Suite tools are extremely powerful, and there is no way I will be able to cover all of them in one blog post. I will focus on some of the functions that have been useful to me, and even with that limitation I have to split this up in multiple blog posts.

The first tool from Ytria I ever tried was scanEZ. We had some issues with a database at my old work (I don’t remember the details anymore), so we purchased a time limited version of scanEZ. I think it was valid for a week, enough for us to salvage the documents in the database. My boss thought the tool could be useful in the future, so he immediately purchased a full license of it for himself. Eventually he purchased a license of EZ Suite for me, and I made frequent use of the tools, both while doing development and server administration, as well as when I had to troubleshoot database issues or replication conflicts.

You can purchase the full suite , or one of several bundles of tools geared to different types of users (developers, administrators or developer with some administration needs). Each tool can also be purchased individually.

The latest version is EZ Suite 20. This version contains a number of new functions and enhancements. Since I haven’t used the tool in the last couple of years, after my license expired, I have not been keeping up with all the new features, but as always Ytria is supporting the latest version of Notes and Domino.
Disclaimer: Ytria generously provided me with a license for the latest version, but I was previously a paying customer, and I have recommended their products for many years.

Let’s start with the first tool from Ytria I was ever exposed to, scanEZ. This tool makes it possible to explore a Domino database in depth, not only the documents but design elements, settings and even deletion stubs (the remains of deleted documents used to delete the document in replicas). Fields can be added, deleted and their content can be changed. You can even change the data type of a field, as well as many other attributes.

In scanEZ you can also look at and modify profile documents and replication conflicts, which often comes in very handy. But there is also a dedicated Conflict Solver tool within scanEZ. It will analyze the database, which can take a little bit of time, but then you can compare the conflict document with the parent and see which fields differs. This may even help you figuring out how the conflict was created, and how you can prevent that in the future.

This only scratched the surface of what scanEZ is capable of. I have not even mentioned the different ways to view and analyze data. You can for example dynamically categorize the documents through drag-and-drop, and even present the data in charts, thanks to the extensive capabilities of scanEZ.

The next tool I want to mention is consoleEZ. The easiest way to describe it is the Domino server console on steroids. You can view multiple consoles simultaneously, and also see a list of the tasks running on them. Your console commands are saved, and you can view them later if you like. It has many features you wish were in Domino Administrator out of the box, and even more features you did not even know you wanted.

You don’t have to be a hard-core administrator to appreciate consoleEZ. It was first released about six years ago, so it is one of the latest additions to EZ Suite. It quickly became one of my favorite tools.

I do quite a bit of modernization of Notes and Domino applications. Often this involves web enabling them, including creating a modern UI using HTML, CSS, and often a framework like Bootstrap. But there are still many Notes databases that works well, and instead of rewriting a lot of the existing logic for the web, a refresh of the Notes client UI is sufficient. This often involves adding a nicer background to the action bars, as well as changes to the views. Just a few small changes can make a huge difference, and make an old application look fresh again.

But even after you come up with a nice, more modern looking design, you have to duplicate it across all the action bars and views in your application. This is where actionBarEZ and viewEZ comes in. Those two tools makes it a breeze to apply a design to many action bars or views or copy the design from one view/action bar and apply it to any view or action bar you want.

Using actionBarEZ you select a number of view, pages or form, and change the properties across all the elements just like you would have done in Domino Designer, but there you can only make the changes on one view, form or page at a time. But the function I found the most useful function is that you can design a nice action bar in one view, then select that design and with the click of one button apply it to any views, forms or pages you like. This has saved me countless hours of work. The functionality of viewEZ is pretty much identical.

Stay tuned for the next part to be published in the next few days.

Semantic UI – An alternative to Bootstrap?

Posted on by Posted in Frameworks, UI/UX, Web Development 1 Comment

Bootstrap is currently undisputedly the most popular CSS library. I have been using Bootstrap since 2012, starting with version 2.3. The current version is 4.5, with version 5 is under development and expected at the end of this year.

So why is Bootstrap so popular? There are several reasons, but perhaps the most important one is that it is very easy to get started and create attractive webpages, most components you need are available out-of-the-box, and there are  number of different themes to change the visual look of the sites. But perhaps the biggest reason for the popularity is its popularity. There are countless code snippets, samples and plugins available, as well as tutorial and a huge community you can tap into for help. There are currently over 98,000 questions on Stack Overflow for all versions of Bootstrap, and over 21,000 for the latest version.

But Bootstrap is of course not unchallenged. There are a number of other CSS frameworks available today, some more complete than others. One interesting framework I recently found is Semantic UI. It uses simple phrases, called behaviors, to trigger functions. Below is an example with a select box where the code is selecting two values from the list.

$('select.dropdown')
    .dropdown('set selected', ['meteor', 'ember'])
;

<select class="ui fluid dropdown" multiple="multiple" name="skills">
   <option value="">Skills</option>
   <option value="angular">Angular</option>
   <option value="css">CSS</option>
   <option value="ember">Ember</option>
   <option value="html">HTML</option>
   <option value="javascript">Javascript</option>
   <option value="meteor">Meteor</option>
   <option value="node">NodeJS</option>
   </select>

The resulting website looks very similar to one created in Bootstrap, if you use the default theme. One difference you might notice quickly is that the grid system is using 16 as the base, not 12 as Bootstrap does.

Semantic UI also contains several component you will not find natively in Bootstrap. On of them is dividers, which are available in horizontal and vertical variants.

The list component can very easily be configured in a multitude of different ways.

To create the horizontal list, the markup looks like this:

<div class="ui horizontal list">
  <div class="item">
    <img class="ui avatar image" src="/images/avatar/small/tom.jpg">
    <div class="content">
      <div class="header">Tom</div>
      Top Contributor
    </div>
  </div>
  <div class="item">
    <img class="ui avatar image" src="/images/avatar/small/christian.jpg">
    <div class="content">
      <div class="header">Christian Rocha</div>
      Admin
    </div>
  </div>
  <div class="item">
    <img class="ui avatar image" src="/images/avatar/small/matt.jpg">
    <div class="content">
      <div class="header">Matt</div>
      Top Rated User
    </div>
  </div>
</div>

Take a look at Semantic UI, maybe it will come in handy for your next web project!

Microsoft Flight Simulator – First Impressions

Posted on by Posted in Flight Simulator, Games Leave a comment

The highly anticipated new version of Microsoft Flight Simulator was released on August 18,, and I have been playing with it for a few days in my spare time, and I wanted to share my first impression.

This simulator is impressive. You can fly anywhere you like on Earth, thanks to Bing Maps. Microsoft partnered with Austria-based Blackshark.ai to enhance the satellite images using AI software. The result is a great looking world. The AI is taking 2D satellite images and trying to figure out what the buildings would look like in 3D, and it will of course not always get it right. But as long as you fly at a realistic altitude (say above 1000 ft), it looks very real.

There are certain cities where photogrammetry is available, for example New York City, and there the result is astounding. Many famous landmarks and buildings around the world received manual attention, and a number of iconic airports have been handcrafted to look extremely realistic. The Basic Edition contains 30 of those airports, the Deluxe Edition contains 5 additional airports, and finally the Premium Deluxe Edition (which is the one I purchased) contains 10 more airports.

You can change the tail number of the planes, and even change your call-sign used by the Air Traffic Control. You can fly a number of different airplanes and variants of them, everything from Cessna 152 to Boeing 747.  The airliners in the game (Airbus 320Neo, Boeing 747 and Boeing 787 Dreamliner) all come with a company livery, but there are already liveries to download for free, created by the Flight Simulator community. As I write this there are 40 liveries to Airbus A320Neo available for free, including the British Airways one you can see in the screenshot below. Update: a new version was released during the afternoon and evening, while I was still working on this review. There are now 70 liveries, including several for other airplanes in the game. Download it here: https://www.msfsaddons.org/liveries/liveries-megapack-v6

The simulator also includes a store where you can purchase add-ons like additional airplanes, airports and buildings. There were a handful products available already at launch, and I choose to purchase the London Landmark pack, with about 200 buildings for $7.95. If you viewed Buckingham Palace as it appears by default, it looks like an office building, and HMS Belfast, next to Tower Bridge, is flat and appears to be under the water in the original scenery. After installing the add-on, London looks much better.

What about the hardware needed? Surely you need a top-of-the-line computer? Yes, if you want to fly in 4K in Ultra settings (the best quality), you need a top-of-the-line graphics card. But my 4 year old system with an Intel i7-6700K and AMD Radeon RX 580 can play using the high settings, even if certain areas with a lot of buildings gets a low frame rate. Lowering the resolution from 4K would help, as well as setting the quality settings to medium, improves the framerate, but I really like the 4K experience on my 43″ monitor, so I see myself getting a new graphics card in the near future.

 

There are  many details in the game that amazes me. On the airliners you see the heat distortion from the engines, the sun reflects in the aircraft, and when you change the time, the sun, moon and stars move. When the sun moves, you can see the shadows from buildings move. Clouds casts shadows as well.

If you are interested in flying, or if you just want to do virtual sightseeing, Microsoft Flight Simulator is a great piece of software.

 

HCL Volt – A real life use case

Posted on by Posted in AppDev, Domino 11, HCL, Notes/Domino, Programming, Volt, Web Development 3 Comments

The first update to HCL Volt is now available for download. In version 1.0.1 there are a number of improvements, so if you already have Volt installed, get this update from Flexnet. But this post is not about the technical details of Volt. No, it is an example of how I used the product the other day to quickly put together a small application to help with a very specific task.

Last month my wife and I went on a trip to Estes Park in Colorado, where we enjoyed sleeping with open windows, enjoying the fresh cool mountain air. We started talking about getting an RV, to allow us to leave the Texas heat during the summer. My wife started doing some research on different camping trailers, but soon there was too many models, weights, dimensions and features to keep track of easily. I started to create a spreadsheet in Excel to keep track of everything, but a few minutes later I realized I had a much better tool available: HCL Volt.

I started my browser and went to the Volt Application Manager, where I created a new application by importing the Excel spreadsheet I had started on.

Within a few seconds I had the beginning of my application. I added some additional fields, for example to upload images of the floorplans and to store links to the manufacturers webpages with more information.

It took me about 10 minutes to put the whole thing together. I sent my wife the links, and she logged in and started entering data, as she was researching. A little bit later she asked if it would be possible to add some more checkboxes to the list of features I had created. I gave her the access to modify the application, showed her where she needed to go, and she fixed it herself without me having to show her anything. That’s how intuitive Volt is!

We now have a simple but functional tool to record details about any camping trailer we find, and where we can later go back and review the different alternatives.

There is even a built-in summary page where we can see statistics of the different trailers. This is created automatically from the data entered, no code needed. As a matter of fact, I have not written one single line of code in this application.

This is just one example of how you can create a useful application in a few minutes. But don’t take my word for it. Try it yourself for free, no download required!

If you want to get this very affordable add-on product to HCL Domino, contact your HCL Business Partner.

Microsoft Flight Simulator – Arriving August 18

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In June 2019 I blogged about the upcoming Microsoft Flight Simulator, often dubbed Flight Simulator 2020. I have been following the development, even if I have not been part of the alpha testing group.

Microsoft worked closely with the Flight Sim community, and posted a series of videos where they talk about different aspects of the game. I think most people (including me) expected the game to be released in late November or early December, to coincide with the holiday season.

But just a two weeks ago, it was announced that the game will be available on August 18.

There will be three different editions: Standard ($60), Deluxe ($90) and Premium Deluxe ($120). The more expensive editions contains more airplanes and additional handcrafted Airports. Pre-orders are already open.

Airplanes available in the different editions
Available hand crafted airports

The graphics is spectacular, Microsoft has recreated the whole Earth using satellite images and aerial photography, together with AI to create 3D buildings and trees from flat images. Weather is simulated in detail, and you can even get real-time weather. The airplanes are simulated in detail, in one of the videos from the developers they said that when you turn on landing lights, you see the Ampere meter move.

You can also fly together with other people, and in the most realistic settings real life air traffic will be available in the simulator.

I started playing Flight Simulator 3.0 back in 1988, and I don’t think I could even imagine backbthen what the game would look like 32 years later…

Flight Simulator 3.0 (1988)
Flight Simulator (2020)

HCL Volt – A new Leap for Domino!

Posted on by Posted in AppDev, Domino 11, HCL 4 Comments

This Monday HCL released HCL Volt for Domino, their entry into the no-code/low-code market. This is a tool that allows the non-developers (a.k.a. Citizen Developers) at a company to build their own applications without having to write any code at all. Later the application can be enhanced with code, perhaps by someone in IT, but a power user, or even a regular user with some knowledge of Excel will quickly feel at home in Volt.

Volt for Domino requires a server with Domino 11 or higher, but the user and developer only needs a web browser, no development tools needs to be installed.

I have created a short video where I am demonstrating how you in a few minutes can take a spreadsheet someone sent you and automagically transform it into a real database application, without one single line of code!

Please let me know what you think about the video, it is my first attempt in this format. I was originally planning comments as voice-over, but I was unable to get my microphone to be loud enough. So I decided to put my comments as sub-titles instead.