Month: March 2007

Display Statistics for !!HELP!! On The Web

Last week I got a phone call from Richard Hogan of 6w Systems. Richard asked if I would like to add functionality to !!HELP!! to create charts, graphs or even dashboards. Hence I receive a lot of questions about the statistics in !HELP!!, I was glad to hear that 6w Systems offer an easy to use solution to achieve the aim.

ddCharts - Create Charts For !!HELP!!

ddCharts, which is 100% Notes, allows Notes developers & administrators to easily, and quickly, create drill down charts / graphs / dashboards of live Notes data. There is no data export and charts always display the latest data. You can click on a chart to drill down, and even into Notes documents (if enabled).

ddcharts It can be used as a standalone db, or one can use the DDchart object with Lotusscript to create one’s own charts.

To allow ddCharts to chart the information in !!Help!! would only require the creation of one or two views for the !!HELP!! db, and then creating the chart definition documents (these are simply Notes documents in a ddCharts db, and they store the name of the data db, name of view, and chart settings, etc).

ddCharts is neither Open Source nor it is free of charge but a (single server-) license is available at a very fair rate.


Composite Applications Blog

Bring information and collaboration into the context of your daily business processes using composite applications
This web log is a joint effort by the key technical architects and user experience professionals to open a direct line of communication with developers about the capabilities of user facing composite applications. The primary focus will be on Lotus Notes/Domino, WebSphere Portal, Lotus Expeditor, and future Lotus products to be named later. We will also be commenting on composite application trends that we see in the broader market.


Vor Oder Zurück?

Sommerzeit - Winterzeit“Same procedure as every year”. Es ist mal wieder soweit. In der Nacht zum Sonntag werden die Uhren auf Sommerzeit umgestellt.
Aber wird die Uhr nun eine Stunde vorgestellt, oder schenkt man uns eine Stunde Schlaf zusätzlich dadurch, daÃ? die Uhrzeit quasi “eingefroren” wird und es in der Nacht gleich 2 x 2:00 Uhr schlägt?

Alljährlich stellen sich diese Frage unzählige Mitmenschen. Die verzweifelten Versuche, auf die Frage nach dem Vor oder Zurück eine Antwort zusammen zu stümpern, kann man dann all abendlich in den Nachrichten belächeln. Dabei ist die Antwort eigentlich ganz einfach , und mit der passenden Eselsbrücke weiss man auch nächstes mal wieder Bescheid, ohne erst bei GOOGLE nachzuschlagen.

  • Zur Sommerzeit werden die Gartenmöbel vor das Haus gestellt.
  • Zur Winterzeit werden die Möbel wieder zurück ins Haus geholt.

Also, am Sonntag die Uhren eine Stunde vorstellen! 🙂


jXLS – Excel Reports from XLS templates

A common requirement for many reporting applications is to provide the ability to export reports to Microsoft Excel format. This can be challenging for a number of reasons, including:

  • Most reporting engines require the use of a report design tool to develop reports.
  • Reports designed to be exported to PDF or HTML do not always translate well to XLS format.
  • Advanced Excel functionality such as complex forumlas, macros, and charts are not always available through the reporting engines.
jXLS - Excel Reports from XLS templates

jXLS is an open source Java library that greatly simplies this process by providing the ability to use XLS templates as the basis for generating reports in Excel format.
You only need a few lines of code to generate the output … And ( this my favourite ), you do not need to have MS Excel installed on the machine running the code.


public class JavaAgent extends AgentBase {

public void NotesMain() {
try {

Session session = getSession();
AgentContext agentContext = session.getAgentContext();

List staff = new ArrayList();
staff.add(new Employee("Derek", 35, 3000, 0.30));
staff.add(new Employee("Elsa", 28, 1500, 0.15));
staff.add(new Employee("Oleg", 32, 2300, 0.25));
staff.add(new Employee("Neil", 34, 2500, 0.00));
staff.add(new Employee("Maria", 34, 1700, 0.15));
staff.add(new Employee("John", 35, 2800, 0.20));
staff.add(new Employee("Leonid", 29, 1700, 0.20));
Map beans = new HashMap();
beans.put("employee", staff);
XLSTransformer transformer = new XLSTransformer();
transformer.transformXLS("c:\\in.xls", beans, "c:\\out.xls");

} catch (Exception ex) {
ex.printStackTrace();
}
}
}


Make Attractive Exports Of Categorized Views

While there are plenty of Excel export routines for Notes posted in places like the Notes.net Sandbox, OpenNTF,and several blogs, I wanted a routine that was relatively simple code-wisebut had the ability to produce clean-looking exports even or views withmultiple levels of categorization, hidden columns, and even total columns. ( Kevin Pettitt )

{ Link }


View Navigation

I was looking for a solution to replace the standard view navigation by something more “stylish”. And the solution should be easy to implement.

Domino Web Navigation - old style

I googled and came across an old article written by Bob Obringer ( The Ultimate Domino View Navigator ). His solution can be implemented with just a basic understanding of Domino Web Development.
I built it into an existing database in just a few minutes and the result is impressive.

Domino Web Navigation - new

The navigator can be customized using CSS. So jump over and download the needed files to “pimp” your web views 😉


Coding faster lookups in IBM Lotus Notes and Domino

Level: Intermediate

Raphael Savir, Principal Developer, LS Development Corporation

13 Mar 2007

Read about 11 tips for coding faster lookups in IBM Lotus Notes and Domino. The author looks at the @DbLookup @Formula in Lotus Notes and Domino and describes some new tips for developers to use when coding new applications or troubleshooting performance problems in existing applications.

Read the full article


Comments of Andre Guirard on Designer wishlist items

Hynek Kobelka posted his list of all the items which he likes or dislikes so far in Notes 8. Amongst this list are 2 features, I expected to see in the new Notes 8 client. Computed view headers and embedded views from another database.

Obviously these features will not make it into the Notes 8 codestream. Andre Guirard ( the Project Lead for the Domino Designer client ) posted his comments on this in the Notes/Domino 8 Public Beta Forum.

No computed â??View Titlesâ??. Many have asked for this for years. We really need these to create multi-language applications. Instead we get a new option â??Do not display column titleâ??. What good is this for ? (And is it different from having a blank title ?)

Agreed, this is a much-requested feature that did not make it into 8.0 (we’re not adding more features at this point). We understand the importance of this in creating multilingual apps that have reasonable performance (you don’t want a separate view for each language). This is high on my list of next things I’d like to get into the product. (note: it’s not like I get to decide, but I do get a vote, and I can also bug the decision makers. 🙂 )

If you insert an â??Embedded-Viewâ?? into a Form/Page, then you can select the view from any other database. However once you do this the replica-ID of the target database seems to be â??hardcodedâ??. There is still no option to insert an â??embedded viewâ?? where the source database would be computed. After all these years where we are only such a small step from our goal, we still donâ??t get it. Sorry but that is a REAL disappointment.

Here again, we understand why this is important and it’s high on my personal list. We had to focus on composite application features first, and this got edged out. We had hoped to have time for it.

Seems that we have to wait for another decade …


Undocumented @GetViewInfo Attribute in 7.0.2

There is a new attribute for the @GetViewInfo in the Notes and Domino 8 Public Beta 2.

[IsViewFiltered]
Returns True (1) if the @SetViewInfo command has been used to limit which documents are displayed in the view, False (0) otherwise. This is useful in hide formulas for view actions.

It is not documented in the Notes 7 Designer Help, but it is used in the mailtemplate I’ m using with my 7.0.2 client. According to the Hide-When formula of the “Unfilter” action in the ($Calendar) view, the attribute should work with Notes versions from 7.0.1 and above.

OkToShow := @If(@Version < @Text(258);  0; @GetViewInfo([IsViewFiltered]); 1; 0);