Lotus Dr.

Another way IBM can help the Developers/Business Partners

Denny Russell   June 16 2010 08:31:24 AM

I've stayed pretty much out of the conversations that are going on.  I sent Ed an email and told him of our story. Quite honestly, we are seeing a better year this year than we have in the past 2 and I have my reason for why that is, but that's not what this post is about.

But if they want to know what IBM can do to help, IMHO, they need to help the developers.  A lot of the developers are in fact Business Partners, ISV, whatever you want to call them.  And IBM needs to help them.

Below is just one of many examples that as a Business Partner, we constantly fight against.

DAOS was released and is a good feature.  Customers love it and what it can do.  However, it opens up all new fields for database size once you've enabled DAOS on a database.  The problem is, Business Partners, the Guys & Gals who write the great apps that help make Domino what it is, have no way to get to this.
This has completely changed how a core functionality in our product (that had worked for 10 years prior) works and has caused customer to think there is a problem with our product.  It's not a problem of our product, it's a limitation of what IBM allows us, the Business Partner, the Developer to do.

I've been in contact with IBM from the first release of DAOS and asked about this.  I know I'm not the only one who has asked for the ability to work with DAOS and it's store of information.  Several others have brought this up on the Design Partner calls.

September 09 I got this response
SPR #OAGU7VKPHS is an Enhancement Request to have a new Database Property That Shows the Physical Size of Database.  The might be included in future releases if more customers request the same.  

January at Lotusphere I had several conversations with who I thought were the right people.  In the labs, with people I know and even had the luck of sitting at the lunch table with an IBM'er who told me this was a big request and they were working on it.

June 15th, 2010 I got this response...
As you've found, you won't be able to get the true (smaller) size on a DAOS enabled file, just the logical size.  It is currently a task on our requirements list for a future release, but it is not in plan yet.  I will add your company to the request as an official Partner request to add weight to the requirement.  

One suggestion we have is to try to look up the physical size on disk using script, rather than looking it up in the database properties.  I'm honestly not sure how to do that, possibly using FileLen, though that might be really expensive for a large file.  

This is just one example of the struggles we have had over the years.  I can't tell you how many current issues we have because of issues introduced in 7.03, 8.5 and 8.5.1 that we have no control over.

Typical customer calls go like this.
- Customer calls and says, "I had a server issue and called IBM.  They said the issue is with your code. They also said they have a lot of internal technotes for this product (more on this below)".
- So we investigate and find an issue that we've already talked to IBM about or a bug in Lotusscript code (for example, getdocumentbykey).
- We get on a call with IBM, ask the question, 'Aren't we just exposing an issue in the code that you provide us with?' and then the head scratching starts.
Luckily, our customers understand it is not our issue and are more than patient with us.

But my point is, we are provided no help and no way to effectively troubleshoot.  Then we find out from customers that there are internal tech notes that reference our product, but yet as a Business Partner and the creator of the product, have no access to see or or correct.  Yet IBM Support shares them with their customers.

Maybe we are the only one here with this kind of issue, but I'm sure we are not.  Provide us, the Business Partner, with an advocate for our products, to help us help you succeed.  Give us a go to person to help us get our problems resolved, help us find the answers we need and help us succeed.

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