ND 8.5.1. install - third time right

After experiencing the slow 8.5. DDE I wanted to upgrade to DDE 8.5.1. (and the client of course) asap after the official release.
And yes, as you can guess for the title of this post I ran into some trouble. The first time I installed 8.5.1., as I was used to from the past, over the 8.5 installation.
After the install finished I enthousiastically double clicked the Client icon, but to my suprise after the 8.5 splash image disappeared nothing seemed to happen for a while. Until well after 10 minutes, the client window appeared. I eagerly clicked on to the DDE, but no results.
Found on Planet Lotus some hints to first uninstalling the old client before installing the new one. Did that, but still no fast opening client. In fact still over 10 minutes before the client opened and no results on the DDE.

As a last resort, I removed the installed 8.5.1. clients again, did a cleanup of the registry, rebooted the pc and reinstalled again.
After successfull install, rebooted the pc (better safe than sorry) and clicked the client icon again.
And again *sigh* it took over 10 minutes before the client loaded. This time though I had the fortune to be away from my desk to fetch the collegues some coffee.
And when I came back to my pc, a dialog was hovering over the 8.5.1. client with a message: "Client Setup completed, click ok to restart". This dialog probably also displayed on the previous 2 attempts, but was probably hidden behind active windows.

Now the client opens just fine, as does the 8.5.1 DDE. And lightning fast compared to the 8.5 version.
So beware if the client opens slowly the first time after the install and wait for that dialog setup complete message.
From the comments on various blogs, it appear I ma no alone in my experience and IBM should at least hint to a slow first startup on the install screens/instructions to avoid this confusion.

Good luck with your installs.

NL LUG 09 29-30 october in Amsterdam

The registration for the NL LUG 09 on 29/30 october in Amsterdam is going fast.
The agenda is set and it has a pick for everyone in almost every timeslot and as always it has some difficult choices to make on which sessions to go to.
Interesting are some of the subjects in the "alternative" track which even has a session by Microsoft !!
The location is now also set, the RAI congress centre, which is a good choice as it very accesible by public transport and by car.

The SNUG (Dutch IBM/Lotus User Group) have succeeded in creating a packed and interesting agenda, getting a good venue and sponsors.
More information can be found on the NL-LUG 2009 website: http://www.lug2009.nl.

See you there.

Unsupported trigger on agent after server upgrade to R8.5

For ages we have had agents running called by one central scheduled agent, the "daily scheduled agent launcher" as we call it.
The trigger of these called agents is set to "On event - Agent List selection" and the target is set to "None".
The code used to call the agents from within the "daily scheduled agent launcher" is:
Set agent = db.GetAgent(AgentName)
Call agent.run()


After migrating the server that runs the agents to R8.5, we discovered that one agent in particular was no longer running and produced the "Unsupported trigger and search in background agent" error. In the past we had come across such problems before, where doing the application/server housekeeping like compact & fixup used to help and make the problem go away. But not this time.

Searching the Lotus Developer Domain made me find a response by Julie Kadashevich to look at a troubleshooting agents document in the developer domain. This document gives some clue to the target of the agent being wrong.
This should be set to "None" or "All documents in application (database)" for agents of this event. Which technically means the agent should run as we had set it to "None".
The first attempt to make it run again was resaving the agent. But that still did not make it run. So we changed the target to "All documents in app" and suprise, the agent runs again.
Appearantly "None" is also not a good target for "Agent list" agents.

Any ideas ?

Interesting reading/tutorials about Xpages on the web

For me working with Xpages is not near what I am used to in the Domino Designer. It is a bit like starting from scratch again using a couple of sources on the web to learn.
As I am probably not alone in that, I thought it might be nice to share the list of sites I have been using so far. This list will be far from complete (only 4), but so far I have been reading (part, whole or just started to) the following sources on the Xpages subject on the web.
And maybe you can add your additional favorite sites on Xpages in a comment and build a full list of usefull Xpages sites (which I will repost at a later date).

- Learning Xpages by Declan Sciolla-Lynch
- The Xpages Blog by various authors
- Domino Designer Wiki: "Introduction to XPages" by Stephan H Wissel, Tim Clark (and others)
- XPages Drag and Drop Tutorial by Jake Ochs

- and of course the Xpages Tutorial in the Lotus Domino Designer /Info Center help is a good starting point.

Dutch Lotus User Group Conference 29-30 october

The SNUG (Dutch IBM/Lotus User Group) have planned a two day conference on 29 and 30 october 2009.
The site for the conference is shaping up and can be found here. They are still looking for speakers to fill up the agenda. So if you are interested in presenting one or more sessions during this conference, contact the SNUG (Details can be found below the table on the sponsoring page).

I have already pencilled the days in my agenda and will bring my poken to connect.

You just gotta love Notes backward compatibility

While making some small amendments to an application that required a controlled access section, I noticed this compatibility functionality for Notes R3.
How is that for maintaining backward compatibility !!

Working my way through Declan Lynch's XPages series

I am working my way through Declan Lynch's tutorial series on XPages, everytime I have a couple of minutes to spare.
I am about to start with part 26. Declan has done a great job in providing us with a very comprehensible step-by-step guide to create a proper working application in XPages. The steps are very well divided into 10-15 minutes pieces of work, which make it very managable (even in between tasks at work).

So far I find the stuff provided very usefull and a realistic scenario. In fact in paralell to working on series' phonebook app I am also trying to build a XPages frontend to an existing (similar) application inside the company. So far so good.

Great job Declan! Thanx.