Real World Computing

I've been meaning to write this post for at least a year but these days I'm always too busy for blogging. Last year, we embarked on a project in which we wanted to regularly exchange data between Domino and a SQL server database on Azure.  We looked at several third party options before realizing that HCL Domino had what we needed built-in and out of the box - even better, HCL also had a "codeless" solution (Foundry) available to us to do the whole transfer.  This post will most likely be the first part of a series that covers the REST API and a bit of Foundry. I'm no expert on either but there's not a lot of information out there so anything is better than nothing.  Prepping the Environment Before embarking on our API journey, we upgraded our servers to Domino 12.0.2. It's something of a sore point with me that people think that it's fine to leave Domino on much older versions, for example, release 9. It isn't. Old versions of any software have se...

It's been a long while since I've posted on this blog. It's not because there's no domino news. There is heaps of domino news and it's been coming in leaps and bounds. If anything, the lack of posts indicates that life has gotten busier than ever.  Over the weekend, there was a question on Domino on Facebook which I felt needed answering - have I mentioned Domino on Facebook before?  Try some of these groups: HCL Notes Domino Administrators HCL Notes Domino Developers HCL Notes Domino Etc Enthusiasts I'm sure there are plenty of others. Anyway, the question was on exchanging Domino data and I mentioned the REST API. My original intention was to cover it in this post but I've decided to use this post to catch you all up on where we are with Domino first.  Image by Rudy and Peter Skitterians from Pixabay Domino Not Notes We don't generally talk about Notes at work. We try not to create new Notes accounts but we still have to because we have one key (wide...

Lotus Notes is old software and I should know, I've been using it for 30 years. It's so old that it pre-dates the internet and it's considered to be one of the first popular "email" platforms. It's still widely in use today but many users simply don't want to talk about it. A Quick Apology I want to begin with a quick apology for the inflammatory title and the use of the word "Lotus". After all, we don't call PowerPoint "Forethought Presenter" anymore do we? There's a very specific audience that I'm talking to with this post and if you're not calling it HCL Domino, then that's you.  Wormhole Image generated by Stable Diffusion AI Are you still on the platform? A lot of people who believe that they migrated off the Notes/Domino platform many years ago are still using the software. It's so capable that it's hard to replace. It's quite often still running major operations from dusty unloved servers in back r...

I don't generally use Macs but other people do. There's a macOS upgrade (Monterey 12.6) in the works and you might find that it's already installed on your system - or that it installs automatically at the next available opportunity. Turns out that this upgrade scuttles Notes 12 (and apparently older versions) in spectacular fashion.  As usual, the good folks at HCL are already on this and have a fix ready.  Image by Michal Jarmoluk from Pixabay Fixing the Problem I'm not quite sure when the fix packs are cumulative vs incremental. From memory, the fix packs are cumulative and the interim fixes are not. (please correct me if I'm wrong).  In any case, go to HCL's download site to get them.  In our case, the affected user was running Notes 12.0.0 for Mac so I needed to download 12.0.1 then Fix Pack 1 and then the two interim fixes.  Since Notes was already installed, Installation is pretty quick and there's no post-install configuration to do.  Install Notes...

Yesterday, I posted about attending a Domino Jam for the first time in six years and my feelings on how HCL has turned the product around. Today I want to touch on the security aspect discussed at the Jam and add my thoughts to the mix.  Secure by Design Immediately following the roadmap presentation, the jam looked at Domino's legacy and where it is today. One of the key takeaways from this was a discussion of the incredible security in Domino. We have seen this in our organization but it was nice to hear HCL and other organizations (via quotes and stories) saying the same thing. There are many good reasons for the high security score but two of the best are  Multi-layered security from the very beginning of the product. Domino being "on-prem" rather than web hosted.  There were a couple of interesting stories and observations, including one about a penetration test on one of the new tools (Volt) where the auditors talked about the many layers of security in the Domino ...

 If you'd told me back in 2018 that I'd be attending a Domino Jam in 2022, I wouldn't have believed you - and yet, that's exactly what happened.  Even more incredibly, I left the jam feeling reinvigorated and excited for the future of this 30+ year old system. I've talked before about how our departure from the platform was fueled by largely emotional reactions to the dated mail UI and a resistance to change for new users unused to anything but Microsoft Outlook. We picked the low hanging fruit (mail migration to outlook) and we also tried converting a more complex system.  See:  New Year, New Directions (January 2017) Our Domino State of Play 2022 (February 2022) Far from abandonment, our strategy for moving to Azure demonstrated the versatility, reliability, security and ROI of domino and resulted in recognition of its value as a platform and an abrupt U-turn in our strategy.  Fresh out of the Sydney Domino Jam, I want to talk about some of the revelations f...