What's new in Domino Designer 8?

This section lists the new features for IBM Lotus Domino Designer Release 8.
Periodic updates to Lotus Domino Designer 8 Help are available on the Web. To download the latest Designer Help file, go to the Documentation Library section of the Lotus Developer Domain at http://www.lotus.com/ldd/doc. Click "Documentation Library,"  then "by product," then "Domino Designer," and finally "Release 8."
Click any of these section links to see documentation about new features:
What's new in application design
What's new in programming
In addition, the AgentRunner utility is no longer supported, and all references to it have been removed from the documentation.

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Application design

A major new enhancement in Lotus Notes 8 is the support for composite applications, a key element within IBM's service oriented architecture (SOA) and contextual collaboration strategy. By creating composite applications, you can loosely couple IBM® Lotus® Notes applications NSF components, Eclipse components, and Lotus Component Designer components in context as part of one user experience. The ability to combine multiple technologies into a single application provides significant business value: It enables companies to protect and extend their existing assets with increasing degrees of flexibility, and to respond quickly and cost effectively to their emerging business requirements, with applications that are significantly easier to assemble than alternative application development environments.
New with Release 8, a wide range of metadata about the Notes database previously only accessible via Notes formula language are available to the DB2 Access View (DAV). Metadata about the DAV itself is also available. These fields include the previous advanced options UNID, OID, and modified time, and new fields listing the date when the document was added to the database, when the document was created, NSF name, full path and NSF name, $Ref, ReplicaID, parent note id, child count, child note ids, OID sequence number, and server CN. Another special field enables Public Access Notes behavior.
Notes 8 standard configuration offers the ability to display narrow views, which have a vertical orientation rather than a horizontal orientation, as well as tiled views, where each document in the view is formatted and displayed as a discrete object (a tile). These views are only available in composite applications. Additional options on the column properties allow you to control how a view is handled in a narrow or tiled display.
With Release 8, Notes adds the ability to change the HTML generated at both the form and individual field level. New form-level HTML options include disabling passthru HTML and treating the HTML as plain text, forcing all sections to be expanded regardless of their expansion in the Notes rich text fields, forcing all outlines to be expanded regardless of their expansion in the Notes rich text, and forcing alternate formatting of tables with tabbed sections.
A view in a Domino application may contain more than one index, created for each possible user-sorted column when the view is built. With Release 8, Notes offers an option to reduce overhead and processing loads by deferring the creation of these sort indices until they are needed.
The following feature documentation is new in the Application Design section of online help.
Planning an application
Planning a composite application
This short introduction of composite applications links to more detailed information in the composite applications section.
Table of Notes and Domino known limits
The known limits for characters used in names has increased for view names, form names, and agent names, also incorporating cascaded names, and the limit for field names now allows for 32 characters regardless of character set. A new length limit of 2048 bytes has been added for a macro language string literal.
Designing forms
Controlling HTML options for a form
New HTML options allow generated HTML to be controlled at the form level as well as the individual field level. Field-level HTML options will override form-level HTML options.
Creating an embedded scheduler
Embedded schedulers can now be created with an option to show check boxes.
Designing fields
Using rich text lite fields
There is a new rich text lite field type of Thumbnail. Also, rich text lite fields are not available on the Web.
Controlling HTML options for a field
New HTML options allow generated HTML to be controlled at the individual field level as well as the form level. Field-level HTML options will override form-level HTML options. Specific instructions are given for Disabling passthru HTML in a field.
Creating fields that inherit values
The description of field inheritance has been completely revised, to avoid confusing inheritance of values from parent document to child document with populating a field with a default value based upon a field value from within the existing document.
Designing views
Displaying numbers in columns
A new display type of Bytes can display numbers as bytes, kilobytes, megabytes, and terabytes.
Advanced options for columns
When extending the columns of a view to fill the available space, Notes now offers the ability to select which column is extended. Views can be optimized for vertical layouts, by designating individual columns as wrapping to a second row or hidden when viewed vertically. Views can be optimized for tiled layouts, by designating individual columns as belonging to the top, header section of the tile, belonging to the bottom, attributes section of the tile, or hidden when viewed as tiles. New column options are also available to specify composite application properties used for communication between application components.
Deferred sort index creation
The creation of additional indices for each possible user-sorted column within a view can now be deferred until used.
Display options for views in composite applications
New options to control the behavior of views incorporated in composite applications offer the ability to hide column headers, create missing roots of partial threads to display response trees for all messages, enable inline thread expansion, allow switching between message and conversation mode of threads, show icons to switch between horizontal and vertical preview layouts, show the tab navigator, and select between Table (Vertical or Narrow), Calendar, Tile, and third party viewers.
Navigating an application
Selecting outline entry properties
A new option will display a horizontal separator line between selected entries when viewed in Notes Standard configuration.
Adding automation to applications
Creating a form, subform, page, or view action
A new option allows actions to be created as split buttons that can either show an entire menu of actions or invoke the topmost action on the menu with a single click.
Action bar
A new option allows actions to be included in the right-mouse context menu
Creating and inserting shared actions
Shared actions can also be created as split buttons or included in the right-mouse context menu.
Triggering an agent on an event
Agents can now be triggered when the server starts.
Optimizing and troubleshooting databases
Properties that improve database performance
Two new options have been added to improve database performance. Support Response Thread History adds information fields allowing new documents to be sorted into a document response hierarchy. Don't allow simple search disables the DbSearch function for the database.
Working with Data in DB2 Enabled Notes Databases
Special Fields for the DAV
A wide range of metadata about the Notes database previously only accessible via Notes formula language is now available to the DB2 Access View via special fields.
Composite applications - design and management
There is a new subsection of application design, devoted entirely to the design and management of composite applications.
Composite applications in IBM Lotus Domino Designer
Composite application creation process
Designing your application components
Building your components
Generating portlets and deploying to Websphere Portal
Assembling and wiring your composite application
Deploying and testing your composite application
Working with composite applications in Domino Designer
Reference documentation for composite applications
Example: Simple composite application creation
Using the Notes 8 mail template in a composite application

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Programming

A major new enhancement in Lotus Notes Release 8 is the support for composite applications, a key element within IBM's service oriented architecture (SOA) and contextual collaboration strategy. By creating composite applications, you can loosely couple IBM® Lotus® Notes applications NSF components, Eclipse components, and Lotus Component Designer components in context as part of one user experience. Two new Notes classes were created to allow this coupling, NotesProperty and NotesPropertyBroker. Additionally, the new event OnSelect was added to the NotesUIView class to allow the selecting of documents within one component to affect the information displayed within the other components.
Building on the concept of script libraries, new with Release 8, Domino Web services can be made available to applications through Web service enabled script libraries. Each Web service enabled LotusScript or Java script library contains a single Web service. Once a Web service enabled script library is created, it can be used in many different contexts, such as agents and event handling code, within Domino applications. Also known as Web service consumers, they let an agent or other code call Web services hosted elsewhere by Using the Web service consumer script library. A Web service consumer does not use a Web Service design element, which is still used only for publishing.
Two new classes in Release 8, NotesDirectory and NotesDirectoryNavigator, allow you to perform Lookups and navigate the database files of a server programmatically from within LotusScript. Many new methods and properties have also been added, to make it easier to work with document and view entry collections.
The following documentation is new in the Programming section of online help.
Programming overview and user interface
Web service enabled script libraries or Web service consumers
Web services can be made available to applications through Web service enabled script libraries, known as Web service consumers, each of which calls a single Web service hosted elsewhere. Once created, a Web service enabled script library can be used in many different contexts within Domino applications.
Programming Domino for Web applications
Web services in Domino Designer
Web services can be made available to applications through Web service enabled script libraries. The "Warn if the WSDL interface is modified" option is automatically selected when an Import WSDL action is performed. The option "Include operation name in SOAP action" is enabled by default.
Previewing Web services
Web services can now be previewed locally before they are released, in the same way that forms and views can be previewed locally.
RSS feeds
A new database template, rss_generator.ntf, contains a collection of agents and script libraries designed to produce RSS feeds for views in Domino databases
Domino Web logs (blogs)
A new Domino blog template, dominoblog.ntf, can be used to create personal Web logs with Notes. Content can be added using either Lotus Notes or a Web browser.
Managing blog HTML templates
HTML templates for blogs control how the blog looks and feels. The Page, Item, Block, and Web client templates combine HTML with special system tags to display the end result in a browser.
LotusScript language
Lotus Domino Designer 8 adds the following:
Date statement -- not valid on UNIX or Macintosh OS X operating systems
Time statement -- not valid on UNIX or Macintosh OS X operating systems
Limits on file operations in LotusScript -- no limit to the line length of a Write statement
Spaces in LotusScript file names -- which file handling routines preserve leading spaces and which remove them
Formula language
Lotus Domino Designer 8 adds the following:
@GetViewInfo -- added new attribute IsViewFiltered
@PasswordQuality examples -- added examples using @PasswordQuality with password encryption
@URLQueryString -- now allows dynamic DB2 Query Views
@UserRoles -- no database location limit
@Version -- added new version numbers
CalendarFormat @Command -- added two work week and one work month formats
CopySelectedAsTable @Command -- new command
OpenInNewWindow @Command -- new command
LotusScript/COM/OLE classes
Lotus Domino Designer 8 adds the following:
NotesAdministrationProcess.AddInternetCertificateToUser method -- now available for use with the CA process
NotesDatabase.GetAllReadDocuments method -- new method
NotesDatabase.GetAllUnreadDocuments method -- new method
NotesDatabase.GetProfileDocCollection method -- profilename parameter is now optional
NotesDatabase.UnprocessedDocuments property -- can now run Before New Mail Arrives and After New Mail Arrives
NotesDirectory -- new class
NotesDirectoryNavigator -- new class
NotesDocument.MarkRead method -- new method
NotesDocument.MarkUnread method -- new method
NotesDocumentCollection.Clone method -- new method
NotesDocumentCollection.Contains method -- new method
NotesDocumentCollection.Intersect method -- new method
NotesDocumentCollection.MarkAllRead method -- new method
NotesDocumentCollection.MarkAllUnread method -- new method
NotesDocumentCollection.Merge method -- new method
NotesDocumentCollection.Subtract method -- new method
NotesDXLExporter. AttachmentOmittedText property -- new property
NotesDXLExporter.MIMEOption property -- new property
NotesDXLExporter.OLEObjectOmittedText property -- new property
NotesDXLExporter.OmitItemNames property -- new property
NotesDXLExporter.OmitMiscFileObject property -- new property
NotesDXLExporter.OmitOLEObjects property -- new property
NotesDXLExporter.OmitRichtextAttachments property -- new property
NotesDXLExporter.OmitRichtextPictures property -- new property
NotesDXLExporter.PictureOmittedText property -- new property
NotesDXLExporter.RestrictToItemNames property -- new property
NotesDXLExporter.RichTextOption property -- new property
NotesDXLExporter.UncompressAttachments property -- new property
NotesDXLImporter.CompileLotusScript property -- new property
NotesProperty -- new class
NotesPropertyBroker -- new class
NotesSession.GetDirectory method -- new method
NotesSession.GetPropertyBroker method -- new method
NotesUIScheduler.DisplayCheckboxes property -- new property
NotesUIView.Onselect event -- new event
NotesUIWorkspace.OutlineReload method -- new method
NotesView.CreateViewNavFromAllRead method -- new method
NotesView.CreateViewNavFromAllUnread method -- new method
NotesView.GetAllReadEntries method -- new method
NotesView.GetAllUnreadEntries method -- new method
NotesView.MarkAllRead method -- new method
NotesView.MarkAllUnread method -- new method
NotesViewEntryCollection.Clone method -- new method
NotesViewEntryCollection.Contains method -- new method
NotesViewEntryCollection.Intersect method -- new method
NotesViewEntryCollection.MarkAllRead method -- new method
NotesViewEntryCollection.MarkAllUnread method -- new method
NotesViewEntryCollection.Merge method -- new method
NotesViewEntryCollection.Subtract method -- new method
NotesViewNavigator.MarkAllRead method -- new method
NotesViewNavigator.MarkAllUnread method -- new method
Java/CORBA classes
Lotus Domino Designer 8 adds the following:
Running a Java program -- Release 8 supports the Sun Java 2 Platform, Technology Edition, v 1.4.2.
AdministrationProcess.addInternetCertificateToUser method -- now available for use with the CA process
AgentContext.unprocessedDocuments property -- can now run Before New Mail Arrives and After New Mail Arrives
Database.getAllReadDocuments method -- new method
Database.getAllUnreadDocuments method -- new method
Document.markRead method -- new method
Document.markUnread method -- new method
DocumentCollection.markAllRead method -- new method
DocumentCollection.markAllUnread method -- new method
DXLExporter.attachmentOmittedText property -- new property
DXLExporter.MIMEOption property -- new property
DXLExporter.OLEObjectOmittedText property -- new property
DXLExporter.omitItemNames property -- new property
DXLExporter.omitMiscFileObjects property -- new property
DXLExporter.omitOLEObjects property -- new property
DXLExporter.omitRichtextAttachments property -- new property
DXLExporter.omitRichtextPictures property -- new property
DXLExporter.pictureOmittedText property -- new property
DXLExporter.restrictToItemNames property -- new property
DXLExporter.richTextOption property -- new property
DXLImporter.compileLotusScript property -- new property
View.createViewNavFromAllRead method -- new method
View.createViewNavFromAllUnread method -- new method
View.getAllReadEntries method -- new method
View.getAllUnreadEntries method -- new method
View.markAllRead method -- new method
View.markAllUnread method -- new method