IdeaJam(tm) feed for Philip Storry

Notes Client / Mail: Attachment Warning

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 12:56:29 +0000

Author: Philip Storry
Tags: mail attachment files
Idea:

Notes should be able to warn users when they try to send an email with certain words that could indicate an attachment, but there is no file attached.

(This has already been implemented by the Gnome team with Evolution, and works quite well.)

This works by checking for words and phrases like "attachment" and "attached file" in the text of the mail, and then checks to see if there is actually a file is attached. If there isn't a file, it warns the user that they may have meant to attach a file but did not.

(Come on, we've all done it!)

This feature should (like the spellchecker) not bother with the history text in replies or forwarded messages, to avoid tripping over the text put in place of stripped attachments.

re: Attachment Warning

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 17:32:40 +0000

Author: Grant Lindsay
Comment: I might have done this. No confessions.

The search word, "attachment," would need to be translated, too, I suppose. Or, since the text of the body can be flagged with a particular language (or languages,) the right spelling could be used, based on that flag.

re: Attachment Warning

Fri, 30 Nov 2007 22:10:27 +0000

Author: Ragnar Schierholz
Comment: I really don't like it too much if my applications try to outsmart me. How often do I find myself undoing an automatic "correction" MS Office does because it "thinks" it knows better than me what I try to do? I doubt that a reasonable success rate could be reached for English, let alone other languages. Try to imagine in how many ways you may refer to an attachment that should be there and how many other ways there could be to use the same words without attachment.

Considering these chances of real success, I guess the resources to develop this could be put to better use.

Domino Server / Data Storage and Management: Fixup/Compact should automatically mark clustered databases as Out Of Service

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 08:38:58 +0000

Author: Philip Storry
Tags: fixup compact domino server cluster clustering
Idea:

When a server that is a member of a cluster performs consistency checks on a database, or compacts a database, it should automatically mark the database as Out of Service in the Cluster Database Directory for the duration of the operation.

(In the case of compact, it will only happen during copy-style compacts.)

This will allow users opening the database to fail over to another cluster member. It also means that compact won't be terminated by users opening the database halfway through the operation.

Ideally this behaviour would be automatic, but could be overridden with a command line option on fixup/compact if needed.

If a database is already marked as Out of Service, then fixup/compact should not mark it as available at the end of the operation.

It may also be a good idea to control this behaviour with an INI variable - MarkOutOfServiceDuringMaintenance={On|Off} - in case an Administrator wants to override this behaviour.

re: Fixup/Compact should automatically mark clustered databases as Out Of Service

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:23:00 +0000

Author: Craig Wiseman
Comment: [ASIDE: I tried posting to your blog, btw, but it's erroring out....]

I thought about various approaches to address this before posting my idea, and the alternate solution does not fully address things.

The point of email is that the <client can access it>. That sounds silly, eh?

There are situations where the mailfile on the server is too slow to respond due to performance or network issues that --> the server doesn't know about <--, and therefore can't actually address.

Suppose you have a cluster pair, one in New Orleans, one in Dallas.

The user typically uses the one in New Orleans, but for whatever reason, the link to NOLA is too slow and times-out. (what with all the partying last night)

In this scenario, the client should NOT display an error about "not responding", it should either automatically or prompt the user to fail over to Dallas.

The New Orleans server really can't be expected to know that the client is having trouble in this scenario.

BUT, unlike stupid web-browsers, we have SMART client that can figure things out, if we design it such.

{ Link }

re: Fixup/Compact should automatically mark clustered databases as Out Of Service

Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:30:06 +0000

Author: Craig Wiseman
Comment: I really should say that I agree with this idea and have promoted it.

There are just certain other situations that it doesn't fully address.

re: Fixup/Compact should automatically mark clustered databases as Out Of Service

Thu, 11 Feb 2010 09:12:32 +0000

Author: Philip Storry
Comment: Craig,

I'm not saying that this is the whole solution.

But it's probably easier to put a shared library in which checks if the server is a cluster, and if it is then marks the DB as Out of Service before working on it. They can then just call that library before fixup/compact works.

This is the kind of small improvement that could be put into an incremental release (albeit turned off by default).

Re-writing the client failover code would be more of a next-big-release job, I'd have thought. It needs a lot of testing, and probably requires more hassle.

I see your point about widely distributed clusters over a WAN, but 95% of these failover issues are likely caused by compact/fixup. Why not fix those the obvious, easy way? Then the last 5% can be dealt with by your suggestion (which I voted for, by the way).

A smart client would be great. I'd like the server to be smart too, though. I can't help that - I'm an Administrator, after all! ;-)

re: Fixup/Compact should automatically mark clustered databases as Out Of Service

Mon, 01 Mar 2010 12:43:19 +0000

Author: Bill Malchisky
Comment: Why not just use the -o or -z (depending upon your needs) with Fixup to take the DBs offline? That should solve half of this problem.

For compact, that's different, and I could see Lotus expanding the capability to add an offline option for that feature. Know that as @2 mentioned, there are some circumstances where one wants the DB to remain on-line--even in a cluster. Particularly if the time to switch over is longer than the time the Domino server would be touching the file.