02
Sat, Nov
2 New Articles

Taming the Notes Development Jungle

Collaboration & Messaging
Typography
  • Smaller Small Medium Big Bigger
  • Default Helvetica Segoe Georgia Times

Lotus Notes and Domino ease application development for many organizations. Unfortunately, some organizations lack the management and techniques needed to keep their application development from raging out of control. Evidence of this is readily apparent. For example, some large installations have thousands of Notes databases, but their development teams lack the standards enforced in other application development environments. In addition, the data and efforts of developers are too often duplicated.

The result of this lack of discipline, regardless of the cause, is that the very promise of Notes is negated. Instead of making it easier to organize and share information, it gets harder. Organizations begin to drown in data, information becomes fragmented and harder to find, user frustration rises, applications are abandoned, and development takes more time and money.

Gaining Control

The TeamStudio Design System, from Lotus Premium Business Partner Ives Development, is a suite of interrelated modules that perform functions that enhance the inherent capabilities of the Notes development environment. TeamStudio is based entirely in the Notes client and works with all Notes versions. The TeamStudio modules are TeamStudio Analyzer, TeamStudio CIAO!, TeamStudio Configurator, TeamStudio Delta, and TeamStudio Librarian. Here is a look at some development issues that apply particularly to the Notes environment and how TeamStudio components can help you deal with it.

Team Development

By its very definition, Notes empowers teams to work together. The Notes replication model means that users get the same access and can add data to a database regardless of time or location.

Notes developers, of course, enjoy the same benefits because the database design resides with the Notes data and conforms to the same replication model. The problem is that software development rarely follows this additive transaction model, especially when


an application is in maintenance mode. It often happens that different developers make changes to the same elements at the same time.

Therefore, Notes development teams don’t always know who’s working on a design element at a particular time. In addition, Notes has no inherent mechanism to lock design elements. If two developers working on the same application on the same server make changes to a form, a save conflict results, and the problem is even worse on an application that resides on different servers. If the developers are unaware that they’re working on the same element, it could result in a replication conflict, which can cause problems in the application and can be difficult to resolve. One element may even appear twice in the design with no indication of a conflict. Furthermore, you can’t resolve the conflict by merging changes through the “difference of two documents” feature in Notes.

Non-Notes development environments commonly use source code control (SCC) systems to manage this problem. Some organizations actually try to control their Notes environments with these standard SCC systems, but the results aren’t very satisfactory. TeamStudio CIAO! is an SCC system that allows Notes development teams to work on the same database design at the same time. Because TeamStudio CIAO! is Notes-based, it fully understands the internal structure of a Notes database. TeamStudio CIAO! allows you to lock all database design elements, including forms, views, folders, subforms, navigators, shared fields, and agents. TeamStudio CIAO! also controls access to design elements (meaning that only authorized developers can check elements out), keeps an audit trail of changes made to the elements, and allows you to roll back to previous versions. If someone checks out an element but makes changes that have a bug, you can easily roll back to the version that didn’t have the bug.

Version Control

Keeping abreast of application versions and changes can be challenging for any development team. In well-managed development environments, it’s common to see three distinct environments: the development environment, where you work on the next release of the application; the test environment, where the application design is tested before release; and the production environment, which has the usable version of the application. To make this work well, you must know two key things: which version of the application design is in which environment and that the version of the application in production is the same one developed and tested.

These issues are difficult to answer in Notes development for several reasons. First, there’s no way to reliably “stamp” a database application with a version number. Second, there’s no way to be sure that changes haven’t been made to an application before it went into production. Third, it’s possible to link individual design elements to different templates, with the elements identified only by their names. Fourth, it’s easy to switch off template inheritance for individual design elements by checking the design attribute “Do not allow design refresh/ replace to modify.” All this means that the version of a Notes application in production may vary considerably from the one originally developed and tested.

Also, in a controlled development environment, the goal is to split and manage specific development tasks, such as maintenance, bug repair, and development of new features. Before the next version of an application is released, all development threads must be merged. Consider the development cycle, as illustrated in Figure 1. Version 1.0 of an application is tested and released to users in the production release. However, as soon as the version is released, the development team begins to work on new features. In addition, bugs begin to appear in the application. To fix the bugs without disrupting the first development team, a separate team works on a release called Version 1.1. This makes sure that the production schedule doesn’t fall behind and that bugs get fixed quicker. However, the two versions must be merged before the new production version, called Version 2.0, can be released.


There are two challenges: to make sure that all versions match up and to merge changes between versions. Two TeamStudio products can help in the Notes environment. TeamStudio CIAO!, for example, can be used for version control, keeping copies of all released templates. Better yet, though, you can use TeamStudio Delta to find all the differences between two versions of a database design. TeamStudio Delta allows you to compare two versions of a database design or two versions of the same design element quickly and easily. Once you find the differences between Version 1.0 and Version 1.1, you can quickly merge the versions to make Version 2.0.

Debugging

Testing and debugging present particular challenges for the Notes developer. Although it’s quite easy to build an application with Notes forms and other design elements, it’s not quite so easy to modularize the code and test and debug each module separately. For example, code that runs when you open a Notes form may be associated with many fields or events on the form, making it difficult to isolate and test code fragments. To debug problems with the element, you need to find all references to the element in the application.

TeamStudio Analyzer allows you to do this quickly and efficiently. Analyzer scans a database design and generates a Notes database that displays all elements in the database design. Figure 2 shows the information about a form that the Analyzer module displays. Say you have a field on the form that gets updated with a wrong value every time the form displays. There could be many places in the form definition where the field gets updated, and you need to pinpoint the one supplying the wrong value. TeamStudio Analyzer allows you to identify all references to the field and thereby solve the problem in a matter of minutes.

Code Reuse

As Notes applications become more complex, it makes sense to reuse certain blocks of code. Notes developers have always had the ability to reuse some code, first with the shared form and subsequently with the subform, but both of these were somewhat limited. They had to be used in a single database or had to be copied and pasted from a template to a database.

TeamStudio Librarian truly enables code reuse in Notes applications by allowing you to build and share libraries of design elements. You can browse, categorize, sort, and search the library, and you can preview design elements before copying them into any database design. The library also keeps track of all dependencies for each element (for example, a form with a keyword list field). When you add the element from the library to a database design, TeamStudio Librarian makes sure that all dependencies are present. Without TeamStudio Librarian, you would have to inspect each design element for its dependencies manually.

Code Maintenance

Many Notes applications need continual maintenance. Forms change, functions are added or subtracted, and so on. However, code maintenance can be a time-consuming and laborious task. Take the simple example of changing a field name, a common Notes task. Changing the field name itself is easy, but finding and changing all the references is not. One way to find and change references is to open every single design element and inspect each line of code, looking for all references to the field name.

A quicker method for finding and changing field name references is to search for and replace all field name references automatically. TeamStudio Configurator finds and replaces every reference automatically or lets you step through each match and decide whether to make the change. This feature can save you programming time and ensures that every reference is covered. TeamStudio Configurator brings the simplicity of a standard word processing search-and-replace function to the Notes environment.


No Substitute

No set of tools can substitute for sound application programming techniques, but, without the tools, it becomes that much harder to put these techniques into practice. The Notes development environment has come a long way and allows you to build complex, mission- critical applications. The TeamStudio Design System complements the Notes environment and makes it possible to improve Notes application development.

For more information about TeamStudio, visit the Ives Development Web site at www.teamstudio.com.

Version 1.0 release to production Version 1.0 with new features and old bugs

Version 2.0 release to production

Taming_the_Notes_Development_Jungle04-00.png 352x266

Copy of Version 1.0

Fix bugs

Add new features Make new copy Merge new features and bug fixes to create Version 2.0

Version 1.1 release to production

Figure 1: This is an example of a Notes development cycle.

Taming_the_Notes_Development_Jungle04-01.png 395x319


Figure 2: TeamStudio Analyzer displays all the information about a Notes form.


BLOG COMMENTS POWERED BY DISQUS

LATEST COMMENTS

Support MC Press Online

$

Book Reviews

Resource Center

  • SB Profound WC 5536 Have you been wondering about Node.js? Our free Node.js Webinar Series takes you from total beginner to creating a fully-functional IBM i Node.js business application. You can find Part 1 here. In Part 2 of our free Node.js Webinar Series, Brian May teaches you the different tooling options available for writing code, debugging, and using Git for version control. Brian will briefly discuss the different tools available, and demonstrate his preferred setup for Node development on IBM i or any platform. Attend this webinar to learn:

  • SB Profound WP 5539More than ever, there is a demand for IT to deliver innovation. Your IBM i has been an essential part of your business operations for years. However, your organization may struggle to maintain the current system and implement new projects. The thousands of customers we've worked with and surveyed state that expectations regarding the digital footprint and vision of the company are not aligned with the current IT environment.

  • SB HelpSystems ROBOT Generic IBM announced the E1080 servers using the latest Power10 processor in September 2021. The most powerful processor from IBM to date, Power10 is designed to handle the demands of doing business in today’s high-tech atmosphere, including running cloud applications, supporting big data, and managing AI workloads. But what does Power10 mean for your data center? In this recorded webinar, IBMers Dan Sundt and Dylan Boday join IBM Power Champion Tom Huntington for a discussion on why Power10 technology is the right strategic investment if you run IBM i, AIX, or Linux. In this action-packed hour, Tom will share trends from the IBM i and AIX user communities while Dan and Dylan dive into the tech specs for key hardware, including:

  • Magic MarkTRY the one package that solves all your document design and printing challenges on all your platforms. Produce bar code labels, electronic forms, ad hoc reports, and RFID tags – without programming! MarkMagic is the only document design and print solution that combines report writing, WYSIWYG label and forms design, and conditional printing in one integrated product. Make sure your data survives when catastrophe hits. Request your trial now!  Request Now.

  • SB HelpSystems ROBOT GenericForms of ransomware has been around for over 30 years, and with more and more organizations suffering attacks each year, it continues to endure. What has made ransomware such a durable threat and what is the best way to combat it? In order to prevent ransomware, organizations must first understand how it works.

  • SB HelpSystems ROBOT GenericIT security is a top priority for businesses around the world, but most IBM i pros don’t know where to begin—and most cybersecurity experts don’t know IBM i. In this session, Robin Tatam explores the business impact of lax IBM i security, the top vulnerabilities putting IBM i at risk, and the steps you can take to protect your organization. If you’re looking to avoid unexpected downtime or corrupted data, you don’t want to miss this session.

  • SB HelpSystems ROBOT GenericCan you trust all of your users all of the time? A typical end user receives 16 malicious emails each month, but only 17 percent of these phishing campaigns are reported to IT. Once an attack is underway, most organizations won’t discover the breach until six months later. A staggering amount of damage can occur in that time. Despite these risks, 93 percent of organizations are leaving their IBM i systems vulnerable to cybercrime. In this on-demand webinar, IBM i security experts Robin Tatam and Sandi Moore will reveal:

  • FORTRA Disaster protection is vital to every business. Yet, it often consists of patched together procedures that are prone to error. From automatic backups to data encryption to media management, Robot automates the routine (yet often complex) tasks of iSeries backup and recovery, saving you time and money and making the process safer and more reliable. Automate your backups with the Robot Backup and Recovery Solution. Key features include:

  • FORTRAManaging messages on your IBM i can be more than a full-time job if you have to do it manually. Messages need a response and resources must be monitored—often over multiple systems and across platforms. How can you be sure you won’t miss important system events? Automate your message center with the Robot Message Management Solution. Key features include:

  • FORTRAThe thought of printing, distributing, and storing iSeries reports manually may reduce you to tears. Paper and labor costs associated with report generation can spiral out of control. Mountains of paper threaten to swamp your files. Robot automates report bursting, distribution, bundling, and archiving, and offers secure, selective online report viewing. Manage your reports with the Robot Report Management Solution. Key features include:

  • FORTRAFor over 30 years, Robot has been a leader in systems management for IBM i. With batch job creation and scheduling at its core, the Robot Job Scheduling Solution reduces the opportunity for human error and helps you maintain service levels, automating even the biggest, most complex runbooks. Manage your job schedule with the Robot Job Scheduling Solution. Key features include:

  • LANSA Business users want new applications now. Market and regulatory pressures require faster application updates and delivery into production. Your IBM i developers may be approaching retirement, and you see no sure way to fill their positions with experienced developers. In addition, you may be caught between maintaining your existing applications and the uncertainty of moving to something new.

  • LANSAWhen it comes to creating your business applications, there are hundreds of coding platforms and programming languages to choose from. These options range from very complex traditional programming languages to Low-Code platforms where sometimes no traditional coding experience is needed. Download our whitepaper, The Power of Writing Code in a Low-Code Solution, and:

  • LANSASupply Chain is becoming increasingly complex and unpredictable. From raw materials for manufacturing to food supply chains, the journey from source to production to delivery to consumers is marred with inefficiencies, manual processes, shortages, recalls, counterfeits, and scandals. In this webinar, we discuss how:

  • The MC Resource Centers bring you the widest selection of white papers, trial software, and on-demand webcasts for you to choose from. >> Review the list of White Papers, Trial Software or On-Demand Webcast at the MC Press Resource Center. >> Add the items to yru Cart and complet he checkout process and submit

  • Profound Logic Have you been wondering about Node.js? Our free Node.js Webinar Series takes you from total beginner to creating a fully-functional IBM i Node.js business application.

  • SB Profound WC 5536Join us for this hour-long webcast that will explore:

  • Fortra IT managers hoping to find new IBM i talent are discovering that the pool of experienced RPG programmers and operators or administrators with intimate knowledge of the operating system and the applications that run on it is small. This begs the question: How will you manage the platform that supports such a big part of your business? This guide offers strategies and software suggestions to help you plan IT staffing and resources and smooth the transition after your AS/400 talent retires. Read on to learn: