Posts Tagged With: Templates

Shared Action Confusion in Notes

My co-worker, Virginia Tauss, just ran across the most annoying thing in an “Old Notes” database. The database has a number of Shared Actions, some of which are used on forms and views that are inherited explicitly from one of our templates. In our system, each of the projects we support gets a database to manage their project, built off a base design, then modified to meet their needs. Thus, the database does not inherit it’s entire design from the template. In fact, there are some design elements that are drawn from a second template (our Field Operations Manual has several forms and views that are used in all databases).

In my recent design changes, I started using Shared Actions in the Field Operations Manual design, for all the reasons everyone likes Shared Actions – code reusability, simplicity and space savings.

Unfortunately, when a form or view inherited from the Field Operations Manual uses a Shared Action, the inheriting database would not display the same action as had been designated in the template.

Shared Actions rely upon something called a ‘share-id’, which has nothing to do with the name of the action, the order in which it appears in the list of actions in the database or the Note ID of the design element. That is to say, unique to each implementation, rendering Shared Actions far less useful in our multi-template inheritance environment.

From the IBM TechNote

This issue is related to how Shared Actions are referenced. They are not referenced by Note ID, by name, or by their order in the Shared Actions list. They are referenced by a property called ‘share-id’. If a Shared Action is copied to another database the share-id for the action is not necessarily preserved. The issue typically occurs after a design element is updated and the design of the database is refreshed.

Needless to say, this was an eye-opener. I’d never had databases using multiple templates before and hadn’t a lot of experience with Shared Actions in templates. One of my friends, Greg Ehrig, was a ski instructor at one point and he always said, “If you aren’t falling down, you aren’t learning.” Notes and XPages give us all plenty of chances to fall down, so plenty of chances to learn!

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Categories: Old Notes | Tags: , , , | 2 Comments

Java still vexing me in #xpages

So, as I noted in my last post about Java in XPages, things have not been smooth for me. Updates to my Java class files don’t always seem to work.

I’ve got a database that’s called Shared Resources and contains mostly XPages and configuration documents for our project. Data is stored in Main, workflow configuration and tracking goes into Workflow, and Attachments is self-explanatory. Our intention is that this will be mostly used via XPiNC, since many laptops will be in remote locations without server access.

I’m using templates, creating new ones incrementally so I don’t lose any of my intermediate changes, plus creating roll-backs in case changes snuck in somehow. I’ve got my own ID and a Development Admin ID that I use for signing. The Development Admin ID is required for the production servers, so it’s possible that signing issues have been a part of the problem. I have three database suites that I push the design to, two of those being on my development server (my Sandbox and our test copy) and the third being in production (but not yet even as a pilot, just validation testing in that environment).

I’m not currently changing any code, but trying to determine whether having custom Java code in 8.5.3 can work in either Code/Java or WebComponents/WEB-INF/src and finding that it doesn’t seem to matter. It seems to fail in either place almost at random. I know there must be a pattern, but I have had difficulty finding that pattern and need some help.

So, steps that I have followed….

  1. Clean & Build on template
  2. Refresh design of production database
  3. Marvel at failure of DebugToolbar or partial succcess (load first page, but not requisition page) or complete success on XPiNC (with complete or partial failure in IE)
  1. Clean & Build on local replica of production database
  2. Replicate with server
  3. Marvel at over-write of class files on local from server
  1. Clean & Build on server (go walk dog, practice French in Pimsleur, or contemplate fine wines)
  2. Restart Notes client since it will have cached the XPages
  3. Usually marvel at success but agonize over the idea of knocking everyone off the database while I build
Error while executing JavaScript action expression
javax.faces.FacesException: Can't instantiate class: 'eu.linqed.debugtoolbar.DebugToolbar'.. java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: class java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: eu.linqed.debugtoolbar.DebugToolbar
Can't instantiate class: 'eu.linqed.debugtoolbar.DebugToolbar'.. java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: class java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: eu.linqed.debugtoolbar.DebugToolbar
java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: class java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: eu.linqed.debugtoolbar.DebugToolbar
class java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: eu.linqed.debugtoolbar.DebugToolbar

Expression

   1: #{javascript:if (typeof dBar != "undefined") {
   2: 	dBar.init(compositeData.defaultCollapsed, compositeData.toolbarColor);
   3: }}

It does seem almost random. Since it sometimes works, I know it’s not a problem with the code that is in the files. I know from Stack Overflow links in the last post that Java residing in Code/Java does not always behave, but I seem to have problems in both locations. There are few people who do have designer rights to the database, but they’ve all been staying out of it in Designer since I started reporting problems. We all have de-selected Build Automatically, but some registration of components seems to occur if I open the production database in Designer using my personal ID. I don’t know if that is adding to the problem or not.

I’ve read some people suggest that the problem goes away in Notes 9, but since it shouldn’t have been there in 8.5.3, I don’t know if I should believe that. I also would rather not toss the additional variable of moving to Notes 9 in when we think we’re less than a month from a pilot deployment.

Right now, it works in XPiNC and IE in both of my development instances, and in XPiNC in production, but fails in browsers there. I leave for two weeks in the south of France on Thursday and they can’t really cope with something that breaks for no apparent reason while I’m gone.

Categories: IDE, Java, Xpages | Tags: , , , | 11 Comments

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