Re: Text field lengths and external DataBases.

Roger,

I think you will have to upgrade to Notes/Domino 6 to get what you want.
It offers some events at the field level that will help you handle what you
need.  I think the events are there in 5, but they are only available to
Javascript in a browser.  In 6, they are made available to the client and
lotusscript, if I remember correctly.  I am heading to Lotusphere next week
to learn all I can on 6.  Can't wait until we get it installed at work so
that I can start "playing".

My project has a need for "real-time" update.  Or at least as close as I
can get.  I have tried DECS, LS:DO, and LSX LC.  I can get them to "talk"
just fine across the wire to a different box. Our back-end Product data is
in such a way that it is not an one to one type of thing.  Changing one
field in Notes may mean I have to update that field in 1-250 records in the
back-end.  My first thought was to just keep the data in the Notes database
and then 'publish' it to the back-end when they make changes.  Sounds great
in theory.  The problem is that there is the possibility that one or more
of the fields maintained in Notes can be changed by a program running in
the back-end.  The data then gets out of sync.  My solution to that is to
put triggers on the file(s) to handle the changes and then 'publish' them
back into Notes. Not quite sure how I would handle that though.  I like the
looks of LEI 6, but I am not sure if it would work for this project and the
way our data is structured.

-- Scott Johnson




Scott,

I'll check the Sandbox again. We are looking for something that will
either limit the amount of input during typing or at least give a
character counter keystroke by keystroke like some web page inputs. An
overview of Notes 6 said that there were almost twice as many classes
available as Notes 5.

As far as communications we looked at LEI but it was too expensive for
the size of the project. DECs was a possibility but some of the mapping
ended up needing agents anyway so we went with the native ODBC. The
agent loads the server copies each evening and copies the new server
data to DB2 each morning. The users replicate to their notebooks first
and last thing each day. The user are not allowed to update only create
documents so the agents are somewhat simpler. If it had been a full
update in both implementations with the Notes side being disconnected
things would have been a lot more complicated even with Domino's great
replication and conflict handling.

I am not sure if the native ODBC will talk to a system other than the
one the agent is running on. If it won't can you set up DDM files on the
host system that point to the actual data hosting system?

Roger Vicker, CCP