At one of my clients we are currently revamping a large notes db to work with a new back end (java via web services), during that period of quiet that comes between PT and UAT the idea of getting some performance improvements done raised its head, as the db was 13 gig, 11gig of which were view indexes the starting place seemed ovious, but with 343 views to look at, it seemed it was going to be a dull old time, initially we did the traditional “Admin Client” –> Files Tab, select database, right hand “Database” tab –> “Manage Views”, which shows you the size of all the view indexes, this told us the worst offenders which we could pick off, but still, it would be nice to cure nearly all the bad bits quickly and easily, enter viewEZ

update: Peter from Ytria has also writen a blog entry on this subject which you can read Here as an alternative (and probably a better way) end update

There are lots of things that are considered “best avoided” on views, this is a nice article with good links but we were aiming squarely at the following:

a) Look up views with re-sort click-ables at the top
b) Any already sorted column, that has click-ables for the same order, eg. a column that is ordered to ascending, but with a re-sort set to “both” rather than “descending”
c) Views with too many categorised columns (threshold of 4)

sooo

1) select your db, click viewEZ

2) Just click all the views and select the “Columns” button

3) ensure Options –> Display –> re-sort is ticked

You can see all of the views in the database and their columns spread out scrolling left to right, with icons showing you pertinent info (whether its hidden or sorted etc etc), now, look at the following picture, see the left hand view, we don’t want any re-sorts in a look up view, because no one is ever going to click them, so select a box that contains “Re-sort = XXXX “, right click and select “column properties” you will see the normal sort of options you would expect for a column in the notes designer, we will set the re-sort to “none”, click “apply” and move on to the next column, it should be noted that you don’t have to shut down the properties box you can just click on the next column which is a nice touch and greatly speeds up the whole process.

following this method we quick removed all of the unessasery view sorts, and even found the views with excessive categorised columns, such as this one

343 views checked and 7 gig in view indexes saved, in about a hour,

nuff said…………

Disclaimer: I get a free copy of ViewEZ from Ytria as part their agreement with LDC, but I had it before then anyway. oh and i did this on ViewEZ 8.5 but I know they are up to 9.13 by now so there might be even more fancy stuff in there.

Those of you that want an extra chunk of power to take anywhere may have looked at the power gorilla by power traveller before, a very well made product and one that promises a great deal, there is one problem, you cant really use it for desktop replacement laptops, as its amperage is seldom up to the task, for example most clone power laptops require 19v at 4.5amps, and the power gorilla only provides a max of 2.5amps when on its 19v setting, a strange situation as its precisely these kind of power greedy laptops that would benefit from an extra source of power, this is not a reflection of the power gorilla its self, i have one and love it, I use it to charge my phone, net book and AA/AAA batteries when on the go, but my main laptop (a Compal FL92) sulks and flashes power lights at me if its plugged in when already turned on, though it is happy to charge when turned off (power traveller do make this plain on the FAQ for the power gorilla, and it should be noted that power laptops with smarter power management’s systems such as the macbooks seem happy, although they still only ‘run’ rather than ‘run and charge’ ).

I was however browsing the power traveller site and discovered the soon to be released powergorilla silverback, a monster of a portable power supply that made me drool, but it did look a tad big even for me to lug around the place (though im willing to try it), and it would be a sod to explain at an airport, enter power travellers twitter account, I asked them about the problem, and was told that you can run 2 power gorillas in parallel with a y-spliter cable, much excitement, a travesty to my credit card latter, and im the proud owner of 2 power gorillas and an extra cable, and you know what, it worked, instead of the normal 2.5 amps, I’m providing with 5 amps~, I still seem to need to have them plugged in on start up, but this turns out to a spike drain that my laptop makes when a power supply is first plugged in rather than anything I can attribute to the power gorillas, now I have a full 2.5 charges to my laptop before its own battery is even touched, enough for a serious days work at full power, all for just over a kilo and without a reboot to swap batteries in sight (happy sigh)

I would have considered this tip a bit old school but as there still seems to be a huge number of us using XP in one way or another it might be worth a mention.

Like many of us I use multiple versions of Notes on my machine at the same time (7.0.3 for speed, 8.0.2 for clients server compatibility , 8.5.1 for preferred development), for a good and complete blog on this see Tony Austins blog post ,however i dislike the hacking around needed to get the change buttons to be enabled when you are installing the second/third version, I recently discovered, Windows Install Clean up which you can just run to remove the install information for lotus notes without removing the installation its self, this enables you to treat each installation a fresh which i think is far easier, As Microsoft has recently retired it, i thought i would just keep a copy hosted here in case anyone needed it