Lotus Notes Development and Applications
Teamstudio Snapper saves Lotus Notes Developers time and frustration with its automated undo mechanism, which silently records changes to an entire application or individual design elements while developers are working. Developers can move forward with confidence, knowing that they can quickly roll back to any previously saved copy. For more information check out our datasheet, solutions brief, and best practices tips.
Download Datasheet to Learn More about Teamstudio Snapper's Automated Undo Feature
On-Demand Webcast: Automation for Routine Development Tasks
By automating error-prone manual tasks, Teamstudio helps Lotus Notes organizations to increase productivity and improve quality within the development environment.
With Teamstudio Snapper, Profiler and Design Manager routine development tasks are automated, so that bugs and errors crop up less frequently. By reducing the human error factor, developers are able to make better use of their time when maintaining existing applications or developing new ones. Save the date and be on the lookout for the registration link!
Watch the replay of our Webinar: Automation for Routine Development Tasks
Solutions Brief: Automation of Routine Development Tasks
Avoiding Human Error in IBM Lotus Notes/Domino Software Development Environment
With IT budgets directed at compliance issues, software development organizations are forced to maximize their use of existing resources. IBM Lotus Notes/Domino developers, however, are spending too much time pouring through code or recreating new code, using a series of error-prone manual processes. Using Teamstudio tools to automate many of these routine tasks, Notes developers can increase their productivity and the quality of their code, thus freeing them for more critical projects.
Best Practices Tip
Development Best Practices with Teamstudio Snapper
Lotus developers following best practices take the time to make a copy of, for example, a form or view before making changes. This ensures that if something goes wrong, the old version can be recovered. While this is perfectly legitimate way to work, it isn't ideal; it is a slow, manual process which can lead to confusion when working with a number of views or forms at the same time. The developer has to remember to remove all the copies before deploying the new version of the application, and if multiple developers are working on the same database, the level of confusion can get way out of hand. Enter Teamstudio Snapper.
Teamstudio Snapper provides a dynamic, customizable safety net for Lotus Notes developers. With Snapper you always have the option of returning to a previous "snapshot" of your database, eliminating the need for copying elements.
Snapper combines the reliability and security of timed snapshots which track changes with the flexibility of making manual snapshots which take a snapshot of the entire database. Taking a few moments to adhere to best practices for both automated and manual snapshots pays off with peace of mind and optimum system performance.
Teamstudio recommends the following best practices when setting up Snapper:
- Set your Buffer Depth to a reasonable number of snapshots. You can assign any number to the Buffer Depth, but giving it too high a number can decrease performance, and you should avoid unlimited snapshots (zero in the Buffer Depth field) unless you absolutely have to.
- Set your Snapshot Interval to daily or hourly, and if you are not willing to lose even a half hour's work, 30 minutes. Because the automated snapshots are only tracking changes to the previous snapshot, they are not large unless you are making frequent large changes.
- If you are using Snapper Server, and are concerned about snapshots taking up a lot of space on your server, set up an agent that deletes snapshots after 90 days, for example.
Teamstudio Snapper is a straight-forward, time-saving tool, that when used in conjunction with CIAO!, takes many of the headaches out of Lotus Notes development, replacing cumbersome practices with elegant and effective solutions.
Using Teamstudio Snapper to Watch Documents
Using Snapper to watch documents can be a convenient way to keep a backup of all the changes you make to your configuration settings. A typical use for documents in a development environment is to store configuration settings and what not, or even common website pages. However, because they are documents, Snapper does not watch them by default. To enable it you have to check the "Watch Documents" box when editing the settings for a database.
The other requirement is to place a field on the document called $TMSTitle. This is usually a computed text field that is set to contain the same data as the field that is used in most views.
After adding the computed field, run an agent that updates all the documents in the database. Something that runs @Command( [ToolsRefreshAllDocs] ) or something should be sufficient. Now, when you make changes to documents, Snapper will save the previous copy in the Snapper Log, just like with design elements.
Using Wild Cards in Teamstudio Snapper's Configuration Doc
Don't you wish that you didn't have to configure every database for Teamstudio Snapper's Undo feature? Wouldn't it be handy if every template you created or worked on automatically had Snapper's Undo Buffer, to backup any goofs you made?
Keeping on top of new development can sometimes be tricky, especially when you create a lot of databases. By using a little known aspect of Snapper's Undo feature, your new development can be as worry-free as maintaining the databases you already have under Snapper's watchful eye. All you need to do is use an asterisk in the database path, and every database that matches that pattern will be watched by Snapper's Undo Buffer.
For example, say you need to be sure that all templates and databases on your server's development directory are being watched. All you need to do is use the path "Development\*", and voila!-any change you make to any database in the development directory will be captured by the Undo Buffer. You could also use "Development\*.ntf" to set up Snapper to watch all template files, but not databases. Or, "Development\dev_*.nsf" could be used for all NSF files in the development directory that have a file name that begins with "dev_". Simply by using this feature, you can be sure that no changes will go unnoticed by Snapper's Undo Buffer!
