Notes tone unturned

An Aussie mate of mine, Ethann Castell, has recently published a very nice article that everyone who's involved with Lotus Notes/Domino applications for the Internet should read and heed. You'll find his article here:
Top 10 issues when developing Lotus Notes Domino Internet applications

Ethann's article for some reason triggered a bout of recalling memories about computing hardware and software that I've been involved with.

This is my 39th year in the IT industry (I've been programming for over forty years though). I started with IBM Australia in January 1970, and took an early -- very early -- retirement package offer at the end of February 1992. However, under that early retirement plan it transpired that I didn't need to formally retire from IBM until I reached the 25-year mark in mid 1995, so I managed to qualify as a member of the IBM Quarter Century Club, which is a nice thing (although, along with some other such vintage things at IBM, the QC Club is now a "pale image of its former self").

During my 22+ years active career at IBM, I worked on three or four generations of IBM systems and software platforms. This included the IBM mainframes (System/360, System/370, and later), System/7 (sensor-based, real-time computing, where I spent many months coding low-level assembler language to modify an application suite called PIMS, for the monitoring and control of plastic injection molding machines), IBM mainframe communications (SNA, VTAM, NCP, APPC, the 3741 Communications Controller,etc). Starting in the mid 1970s I got to work with System/3 (from the Rochester Development Lab in Minnesota) and its descendants: System/32, System/34, System/36 ("stick them in a corner and forget about them, they run and run, with minimal IT support") and the RPG programming language (a little weird but extremely effective for running the commercial apps back then, and still so as an enormously-improved language to this day).

In August 1978 I made my first ever Qantas flight across the wide Pacific Ocean to the USA, heading for IBM's Rochester Lab, for an intense two-week briefing on the the system code-named "Pacific" which was released as the IBM System/38. This was one of a two "epiphanies" that I experienced in the commercial IT world (more about the second one a little later). The S/38 was conceived and architected in the earlier 1970s by some brilliant IBMers at Rochester, some of whom had moved there when another leading-edge system architecture project (the FS, or "Future System") was canceled. These architects joined the Rochester L:ab and helped come up with the amazing architecture of the S/38, which later morphed (together with the best features of the highly-popular S/36) into the
Application System/400. In typical IBM product naming fashion, as the AS/400 was improved it was rebranded as "i Series" and currently goes under the moniker "System i". The original outstanding architectural foundations live on in today's models: single-level storage, technology-independent machine interface, object-based architecture, machine-level security implementation, and much more. Oh, if only some of this brilliance could make its way into the stunted PC architecture!

I had a second epiphany when I came across Lotus Notes in early 1993, soon after Release 3 had been announced. I attended a Lotus roadshow event that really opened my eyes: document-oriented architecture, seamless replication of documents across Notes network, and more. Lotus had succeeded in getting working at the PC cost level things that IBM had spent well over a decade in developing for its mainframes and (to a lesser extent) midrange systems, but still hadn't managed to make them all that popular even with its enterprise customers much less the broader constituency. A year or two later IBM took the excellent step of acquiring Lotus, and with IBM's deeper pockets the ongoing development of Notes was assured. Many new features were added in subsequent releases.

For Release 4.1 an experimental Internet capability, called Internotes, was added to the "Lotus Notes Server" and this was seen as such a big deal that, for Release 4.5, the server component was rebranded the "Lotus Domino Server." From then on, when you talk about "Domino" you're essentially referring to the Web-serving capabilities. that is, the terms "Domino apps" and "Web apps" are synonymous.

The term "Notes apps" usually signifies the original rich style of "fat client" applications, which in my opinion to this day are to be preferred since they're usually more functional than Web apps. Yes, of course I can see the side of the argument that talks about the ubiquity of the Web. but any Web application architect/designer will be well aware of the lack of standardization of browsers, the limitations of the architecture for handling applications (issues with handling the browser's "Back" key being just one example), the issues with Web pages that are served out dynamically (via DHTML, or AJAX, or whatever) not being search engine friendly, and a host of other things. Even though it is proprietary, at least the Lotus Notes Client is a single, controlled development target compared with the zoo that is the Web application world!

Well, I've certainly rambled on a bit too far today, eh. I fully understand that Web applications are essential. IBM has been putting much effort into enhancing Lotus Notes and Domino, witness the snazzy Eclipse-based Lotus Notes 8.0 client.

Domino-based Web apps will continue to be developed and deployed for the foreseeable future, therefore again I exhort you to go read Ethann's article for a very nice summary of important considerations.

Labels: AS/400, i Series, IBM, Internet Explorer, Intranet, Lotus Notes Lotus Domino, SNA, System i, System/38, TCP/IP, z Series

I'm still struggling to get my head around Service Oriented Architecture and all that it implies. So far, it has only been very peripheral to what I do, so I'm ever on the outlook for pearls of wisdom about SOA.

Neil Ward-Dutton of Macehiter-Ward-Dutton has come up with a very nice visual summary diagram of the key benefits of an SOA approach at SOA's five benefits in one picture (click on the image there to see a legible enlargement, below is merely a thumbnail).

Labels: Service Oriented Architecture, SOA

Today's snapshot matches pretty well the browser share statistics coming from European countries as measured via XiTiMonitor, published 24 January 2008: Relance de la part de visites de Mozilla Firefox dans Les pays européens fin 2007 (Google translation from French to English here).

I noticed Firefox share fluctuating, with a drop-off starting roughly in the middle of 2007, building up to a regular 25% to 30% towards the end of 2007. Also that a quite large proportion of Internet Explorer visits are still via the rather long-in-the-tooth IE6 rather than IE7.

Labels: Browser Share, Firefox, IE, Internet Explorer

Here's another one of my occasional posts aiming to hopefully reduce other peoples' angst ...

I was happily working away with Firefox version 2.0.0.7 the other day (October 20th), when out of the blue a dialog box popped up informing me that version 2.0.0.8 had been installed and would come into effect next time that I started the browser.

That seemed innocuous enough. I'd seen the update message a number of times before and had no issues with the newly-installed version. But this time, things were different!

When I restarted under version 2.0.0.8 I went looking for tabs at the bottom of the screen -- put there as an option of the nice Tab Mix Plus add-on (extension) -- and was surprised not to find any tabs down there. Then I looked to the top, and this is where the tabs now were to be found (without any directive from me).

Thinking this must have been a minor perturbation, I tried to open the Tab Mix Plus control panel but it was nowhere to be found, nor were any of the controls for various other add-ons that I use. So I opened the add-on manager window, and found that all the add-ons were there but in a strange state, as shown in the first image.

I've started a discussion about it at this posting on ITWire and looking at this page you'll see that some people have no problems with the upgrade while others have the same problem that I encountered. Who knows why, it seems random!

Strangely, the following suggested fix that worked for me doesn't help everybody. You'll find it at mozillaZine under the topic "Corrupt extension files" on the page Unable to install themes or extensions - Firefox

1. Quit Firefox


2. Remove the files extensions.cache, extensions.rdf and extensions.ini from your Firefox profile folder. (Go to the Firefox profile folder and look inside the "extensions" folder. You will probably have to unhide the latter folder in order to locate the three files in question.)


3. Restart Firefox

After I restarted Firefox, there immediately appeared a dialog box stating that three add-ons were incompatible with this version, so I followed the advice and disabled/deleted them, after which the add-ons all appeared as with version 2.0.0.7, thank goodness. (It also prompted me to do some housekeeping by uninstalling various add-ons that I've experimented with but rarely if ever use.)

It beats me why the Firefox v2.0.0.8 installer couldn't identify those problematic add-ons and save me all the pain -- but that's life!

Now I've decided to turn off automatic installation, via Tools > Options > Advanced as follows:

Labels: Add-ons, Extensions, Firefox

For sheer inventiveness, you have to hand it to some of the "darker elements" who use the Internet.

Reportedly, the designers of XXX-rated sex and porn sites are amongst the earliest adopters of new web design techniques, putting some more conventional sites to shame.

This also seems to apply to the scamsters behind "419 fraud" -- named after the relevant section in Nigeria's criminal code , this country being the original centre of such activity.

I've kept copies of typical 419 messages going back to 2003, when such frauds really started getting popular. These messages came thick and fast until about 2005, at which point they seemed to die down and other more obtrusive forms of malware took over (spambots, key loggers, and all the rest of it).

Well, it's a case of "down, but not out" it would seem. Some scammers must still be profiting from this old-hat approach, and a message that arrived overnight tickled my fancy enough for me to want to post a copy of it in its entirety, if only as an appreciation of the scammer's black art.



My apologies to the "Mr John England" sending from an anonymous Hotmail address. Strangely, your client IP address 41.210.24.19 tells me that you're probably in Mauritius rather than Iraq. Anyhow, I felt that others might want to know about your kind offer, so here it is verbatim:

Subject: A massage From John. To You.
Date: Sun, 16 Sep 2007 15:06:21 -0200

Dear Friend,
With due apologies for interference in your privacy ,my name is John England, an Army contractor attached to the US Army corps of engineers in Iraq. The reason why I am explaining my findings to you are to seek for your assistance to enable you contributes immensely to the actualization of my dream.

on the 30th day of August 2007, I and my group of men under my supervision were alerted on the need of some urgent reconstruction works in Haifa Street, a long thoroughfare of high-rise buildings built and occupied by Saddam Hussein when he was alive here in Baghdad. Immediately we proceeded to the site and as we commence work to our utmost surprise we discovered a huge underground bunker in one of the buildings. Upon investigation of the bunker to our surprise we discovered one very lager box safely hidden and sealed together with numerous other boxes filled with different item, However I was attracted to the large box which was the only sealed box of them all, I told my men to open the box in order to find out the contents and when they were opened to our amazement the boxes contained US Dollars which amounted to $46M after time was taken to count them in bundles and rolls.

I however instructed them to keep this in high secrecy so that we can have the money to our selves, they all agreed to the plan, I wisely took the decision for us to share the money between our selves right there in the room to avoid suspicion in moving the very large box and that led me to having US$10.2 Million (US$10,200,000) as my own share of the money after which I concealed it in one box and decided to get the money out of the country but first I hid the money in a safe and untraceable location.


I am now in desperate need of a Reliable and Trustworthy person like you who would receive, secure and protect these boxes containing the US Dollars for me up on till my assignment elapses here. I cannot leave the boxes here in Iraq like most of my men have foolishly done due to many reasons one of which is because Iraq is getting unsafe and dangerous everyday and a full blown civil war among Shittes and Sunni Iraqis may start any moment. I assure and promise to give you 14% of this fund, however feel free to negotiate what you wish to have as your percentage in this deal.

Please assure me of your keeping this topmost secret within you so that my job would not be jeopardized.

My Sincere regards,
John England.

I'm not sure about your reference to the "very lager box" (presumably it contained some beer), and I don't think that the "Shittes" would be very impressed with your message. Your use of the English language certainly belies your surname, Mr English!

By the way, what's your telephone number and street address in Iraq, or even Mauritius, so that I can contact you by regular mail? And may I have your bank account details too, just your credit card logon and password will be okay? Your 14% offer looks a bit low to me, how high are you prepared to go? You can post all of your replies as comments to this Blogger article.

Labels: Innovation, Nigerian 419 fraud

I was sent this classic by my fellow ex-IBMer and good friend Gordon Newell. He was an IBM harwdare specialist, is now proprietor of Chalcot Micro Systems, and builds all my desktop systems for me.

Here it is:


For the sake of the search engine robots, here's the message text:

Thank you!
Your from has been sent.

Need more Tech Support from us?

Click [Yes] to Tech support page, [NO] to Home Page.

[ OK ] [ Cancel ]

Ed Brill, Business Unit Executive of IBM Lotus Notes/Domino sales, worldwide, extols the the next major feature release of Lotus Notes, due to be released any time now.

Understand how these collaborative advances, are helping users work the way they want, for the better. (You can download the presentation slides as a PDF document for later review.)

As earlier pointed out, we have tested our premier product NotesTracker against this year's two public betas of Notes 8, and it passed with flying colors. Not a single change to the NotesTracker code or design was required; that's upwards compatibility for you!

Labels: Lotus Notes

I've written previously about pathetically inane error messages that lurk in dark corners of otherwise good software, waiting to spring out at you when you least desire them.

Today's beauty is one that lives in the current latest release 7.0.2 of the IBM Lotus Notes client (imminently to be replaced by the brand new Notes 8 client based on the IBM Expeditor/Eclipse architecture).





This is all that you're told. No more, no less!

So, there was an error, was there? And one that was encountered while opening a window, was it? What a masterpiece of exposition! What design committee thought up that one?

If you get yourself into this predicament, you'll find that this artfully vague message will be regurgitated every time that you try to relaunch the Notes Client following the crashed session.

As it turns out, the solution is quite simple: open the Task Manager and cancel the ntaskldr.exe Notes task.

Would it not be easy to modify this error message to suggest such a remedy? No, no, of course not: let's leave it there to bamboozle even more users!

MESSAGE FOR ALL SOFTWARE DESIGNERS & DEVELOPERS:
Why not eliminate the stupidities in your old code, and not just plow ahead creating new code?

UPDATE:
There's more info about this situation in IBM support Technote 1224056 which states this "was addressed in Notes/Domino 6.5.6. It is reported as no longer occurring in the Notes/Domino 7 and 8 releases." ... I'm not too sure about that! Time will tell, eh?

Labels: Error Messages, Lotus Notes, Software, Usability Testing

"On a wing and a prayer" ...

• In poor condition, but just managing to get the job done. (from The Phrase Finder)
• In a desperate situation and you’re relying on hope to see you through. (from World Wide Words)

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I've written a few posts about "Web 2.0" during the last year or two, and consider that I have a reasonable understanding of the concept -- even if I reckon, a little dismissively perhaps, that it's sort of like the notion "This is the place to be!" and will inevitably be replaced by some other faddish concept.

Another current favorite term is AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript And XML): not an architecture or a product specification but an approach or very general methodology for designing and developing Web applications. Some of them, like Google Maps, really are very nice! But already there are dozens of incompatible developer toolkits (I've listed a small sampling of them at http://www.asiapac.com.au/Links/WebServices.htm and http://www.asiapac.com.au/Links/Design.htm#AJAX_Asynchronous_JavaScript_And_XML.

Then there's SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) not to forget Web Services, with an "acronym soup" of terms (such as SOAP, WSDL, UDDI, ...) -- indeed so many and varied are they that the pithy catch-all WS-* is generally used for convenience. Some people treat the terms SOA and Web Services synonymously, so there's a degree confusion or misinformation going the rounds. (They're not synonymous, but Web Services can form part of an SOA design.)

Like others, I'm getting annoyed by all this excessive hype about "Web 2.0" and I've already predicted its inevitable demise ... See Web 3.0 is Underway -- but "Web Pi" is unreachable ... I like the graphic so much that I'm repeating it here:


Apparently somebody else quite independently has come up with the same construct. See The we is evolving into web pi (though without having fleshed out the concept very far, only proffering "pi is good as u can C").

All that aside, it was two web interactions earlier today that irritated me top the point that I had to vent some steam in this blog.
To me, the most ridiculous thing about "Web 1.0" (not even Web 2.0) is that it's based on the fragile Web Browser as the delivery vehicle, rather than some sort of session-aware rich client.

And, as often happens, it was only a little thing that drove me over the edge today: I was carrying out two extremely simple browser-based transactions.

Firstly, while doing some Internet banking at the ANZ Bank website, I quite inadvertently pressed the Back button on the left side of my mouse (the result would have been the same if I had pressed the Back button near the top of the browser window). You already can't say what happened, can't you, because it has happened to you too? I got an error message saying, in effect, "You idiot, you are not allowed to use the browser Back button at this time. For your safety, you have been disconnected. Please log in again and restart your transaction. (By the way, did we tell you that you're a moron?"

How repugnant this is! How can they keep getting away with this when another Australian banking institution's site that I also use for Internet banking gracefully takes me back as page, as I expected. Is it not fair to expect that if one bank can do it properly, they all should? (By the way, apart from this fundamental design flaw I find the ANZ Bank's site quite nice to use.)

Secondly, a little later in the day, when three or four pages into filling out a multi-page questionnaire at the Australian government's Centrelink site, I inadvertently did the same thing again. Fancy me being so naive to expect the Back button to take me back one step here, either! The principle is the same, however in this case I was told:

Error 500: Unable to restore flow execution with key '_coed-2907-2533-8831-4187A77DB2BA_k0512D7BE-125B-2129-A2FA-5C769C52F9EB' -- permission denied.; nested exception is org.springframework.webflow.execution.repository.support.InvalidContinuationIdException: The continuation id '0512D7BE-125B-2129-A2FA-5C769C52F9EB' is invalid. Access to flow execution denied.

So until they sort out some simple architectural matters such as proper handling of the browser's Back button, why are they progressing at breakneck speed toward "Web 3.0" or whatever comes next at the bleeding edge of the hype cycle?

The whole issue of browsers (in all their flavors) versus "fat clients" or "thin clients" with their various advantages/disadvantages needs to be more fully worked on. And even if the industry moves toward SaaS (Software as a Service) with centralized Web processing via ultra-fast broadband, there's still no way that I would carry out certain types of activities on anything but a local Rich Client platform, with local control (of backup, security, performance, etc). Well, them's my preferences; I fully understand that yours might be different.

Labels: Browser, SOA, Web 2.0, Web 3.0, Web Pi, Web Services

There's a new (13 July 2007) article over at Dr. Dobb's Agile Modeling Newsletter portal, titled Calculating Documentation Cruft

Here "cruft" is designated as:

• C = The percentage of the document that is currently "correct".
• R = The chance that the document will be read by the intended audience.
• U = The percentage of the document that is actually understood by the intended audience
• F = The chance that the material contained in document will be followed.
• T = The chance that the document will be trusted.

Read the article to find out how the "cruftiness" of your documentation is calculated.

At the bottom of this newsletter there are also some very useful hot links to other agile documentation strategies and approaches, including the following one for general issues surrounding communication.

Labels: Architecture, Communication, Documentation, Web Design