CIB306

Lotus Notes and Domino 8:

What's New in LotusScript
and Formula Language
Rocky Oliver
Template 2.0 Architect
Lotus Software/IBM
rock@notesdev.ibm.com

Advisor.com

Before we begin…

Please turn off:

 Pagers
 Cellphones
 Anything else that buzzes, sings, beeps, chirps, barks,
etc.

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CIB306: What’s New in Formulas and LotusScript in ND8 - Page 1

2007 ADVISOR MEDIA, Inc. and Speaker. All Rights Reserved.
Who am I?

Began my Notes/Domino life with Lotus - Word Processing
Division in 1992; re-joined IBM/Lotus Software June 2005

Co-author, Notes and Domino 6 Programming Bible

(Wiley, April 2003)

Contributing author, Special Edition: Using Notes/Domino

6 (Que, 2001)

Co-author, Teach Yourself…LotusScript for Notes/Domino

4.6 (MIS Press, 1997)

Written many articles for Lotus ADVISOR & WebSphere

ADVISOR; technical editor for Lotus ADVISOR

Speak at numerous technology conventions, such as

Lotusphere, Lotus Devcon/IBM DeveloperWorks Live,
ADVISOR Devcons, and various European conferences

Lotus Geek (blog): www.LotusGeek.com Advisor.com

Purpose

This session is designed to introduce you to the

new features found in LotusScript and Formulas
in Lotus Notes and Domino 8

It should convince you that LotusScript continues

to be an important part of the Domino
development environment

Hopefully it will also convince you that formulas

continue to be an important part of your
development toolkit

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CIB306: What’s New in Formulas and LotusScript in ND8 - Page 2

2007 ADVISOR MEDIA, Inc. and Speaker. All Rights Reserved.
Agenda

Why are formulas still important?

Review of what’s new in Formulas in ND8

New features in LotusScript in ND8

Questions

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Why are formulas still important?

Given like functionality, formulas are ALWAYS
faster

All languages map to the same core functionality

Formulas are highly optimized

LotusScript and Java are “higher level”
languages

Formulas are “closer to the iron”

LotuScript Java @FORMULAS

Bytecode Interpreter Formula Engine
Core API
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CIB306: What’s New in Formulas and LotusScript in ND8 - Page 3

2007 ADVISOR MEDIA, Inc. and Speaker. All Rights Reserved.
New Formulas in ND8

@AbstractSimple
 Creates a short abstract of a text or rich text
field, but is a lot easier to use than the old
@Abstract function

@GetViewInfo (new attribute)
 [IsViewFiltered]
 Returns True (1) if the @SetViewInfo command
has been used to filter which documents are
displayed in the view, False (0) otherwise

@IsUsingJavaElement
 Indicates if a view or outline is using the new
Java interface

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New Formulas in ND8

@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

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CIB306: What’s New in Formulas and LotusScript in ND8 - Page 4

2007 ADVISOR MEDIA, Inc. and Speaker. All Rights Reserved.
New @Commands in ND8

@Command ([CalendarFormat])
 added two work week and one work month
formats

@Command([CopySelectedAsTable])
 Mimics the menu command

@Command([OpenInNewWindow])
 Mimics the menu command

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New in ND 8.0.1 (MAYBE)

Off the record, what I heard, could be…

 You can guess at what these may do

@GetComponentViewPreference

@IsInCompositeApp

@ManageECL

@Now ([NoCache]) – more on this in a minute

@ShowParentPreview

@RecoverIDFile

@WhichFolders

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CIB306: What’s New in Formulas and LotusScript in ND8 - Page 5

2007 ADVISOR MEDIA, Inc. and Speaker. All Rights Reserved.
New in ND8.0.1- @Now([NoCache])

@Now([NoCache]) - when checking the time

on a server forces a server transaction to fetch
the time.

Without this keyword, @Now would cache the
server time on the first call, and compute the
current time by adding the cached time and
elapsed time.

This causes problems if the system time on the
client or server machine changes once the server
time is cached.

Note that using [NoCache] adds the significant
overhead of doing a server transaction on each
call.
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What’s New in LotusScript?

New Classes
 NotesDirectory, NotesDirectoryNavigator,
NotesPropertyBroker, NotesProperty

New Properties and Methods in…

 NotesDatabase, NotesDocumentCollection,
NotesDocument, NotesDXLExporter,
NotesViewEntryCollection, NotesView, and more…

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CIB306: What’s New in Formulas and LotusScript in ND8 - Page 6

2007 ADVISOR MEDIA, Inc. and Speaker. All Rights Reserved.
Directory Searching

The new NotesDirectory object represents the

Domino Directory (ies) on the specified server

Allows for Directory searching and navigation

NOT available in Java

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Directory Searching

NotesDirectory.GetMailInfo
 For a given username, returns the following:
 Mail server
 Mail file
 Mail domain
 Internet mail address
 Out of Office status
 …and more

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CIB306: What’s New in Formulas and LotusScript in ND8 - Page 7

2007 ADVISOR MEDIA, Inc. and Speaker. All Rights Reserved.
Directory Searching

NotesDirectory.LookupNames
 Creates a NotesDirectoryNavigator with the
results of the search
 You specify the view, the name(s), and the
item(s) to return
 Iterate the results using FindNextMatch and/or
FindNextName navigator methods
 Retrieve items using GetFirstItemValue and/or
GetNextItemValue methods of the navigator

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Working with Composite Apps

NotesPropertyBroker
 Supports the new Composite Application
functionality
 Intermediary for communication between
components (Notes-to-Notes or Notes-to-Java)
 Instantiated through the NotesSession object
 NOT available in Java

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CIB306: What’s New in Formulas and LotusScript in ND8 - Page 8

2007 ADVISOR MEDIA, Inc. and Speaker. All Rights Reserved.
Using NotesPropertyBroker

Use the InputPropertyContext to retrieve an

array of NotesProperty objects
 Read the property value(s) using the
NotesProperty methods

Use the Publish method to publish back to the
Property Broker
 Set the property value using the NotesProperty
method SetPropertyValue

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Example of NotesProperyBroker

You have an example of NotesPropertyBroker

that you can look at right now

It is a part of Notes 8 Mail

Provided to you as basic functionality for PIM
connectivity in Composite Apps, and as basic
examples for creating actions in Composite Apps

Review of Actions in Mail file

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CIB306: What’s New in Formulas and LotusScript in ND8 - Page 9

2007 ADVISOR MEDIA, Inc. and Speaker. All Rights Reserved.
NotesDocumentCollection

Some interesting new methods
 Clone – returns a NotesDocumentCollection
object which is a copy of the original
 Contains – you provide either a NoteID (string),
various other objects (such as NotesDocument,
NotesDocumentCollection, etc.) and it tells you if
the NotesDocumentCollection contains all of the
specified documents
 Intersect – you provide either a NoteID (string),
various other objects (such as NotesDocument,
NotesDocumentCollection, etc.) , and it removes
all docs not a member of both the collection and
the provided docs

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NotesDocumentCollection

Some more interesting new methods
 Merge – you provide either a NoteID (string),
various other objects (such as NotesDocument,
NotesDocumentCollection, etc.) , and this merges
the provided objects with the collection
 Subtract - you provide either a NoteID (string),
various other objects (such as NotesDocument,
NotesDocumentCollection, etc.), and it removes
them from the collection

 Same methods in the NotesViewEntryCollection

class
 NOT available in Java

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CIB306: What’s New in Formulas and LotusScript in ND8 - Page 10

2007 ADVISOR MEDIA, Inc. and Speaker. All Rights Reserved.
Changes to Web Services

ND7 introduced a new design element to make it

easier to surface web services

Consuming a web service from the client
required some hoop jumping

With ND8 there is a new design element to make
it easier
 Web service enabled script library

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Web Service-Enabled Script Library

Can be either Java or LotusScript

Creates a class that can be used in other scripts

All of the over-the-wire communication with the

web service is obfuscated
 Hidden, wrapped in a class

Simply call the desired method

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CIB306: What’s New in Formulas and LotusScript in ND8 - Page 11

2007 ADVISOR MEDIA, Inc. and Speaker. All Rights Reserved.
Creating a Web Service Script Lib

First, have the WSDL file on your machine

Create a new script library

Click the new button at the bottom labeled

“WSDL...”

Import the WSDL file

This operation creates a class that represents the

service

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Using a Web Service Script Lib

Include in the agent/action

 LotusScript: Use “MyScriptLibrary”
 Java: Edit Project – Shared Java Libraries

Create an object of the class defined in the script

library
 You may need to use the XSD data types to pass
data

Call the desired method

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CIB306: What’s New in Formulas and LotusScript in ND8 - Page 12

2007 ADVISOR MEDIA, Inc. and Speaker. All Rights Reserved.
More Interesting Toys

ReadViewEntries URL command

 &Outputformat=JSON
 JSON text instead of XML
 &EndView=1
 Used with &Count=n to view the last n documents
in the view
 &KeyType
 Specifies the type of StartKey
 text/time/number

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And Finally…

New CGI variable

 Request_Content_nnn (000, 001, etc)
 Allows HTTP POST requests to exceed 64 K

Expands on the existing Request_Content

variable
 Set doc = session.DocumentContext
 sRequest =
doc.GetItemValue(“Request_Content_000”)(0)

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CIB306: What’s New in Formulas and LotusScript in ND8 - Page 13

2007 ADVISOR MEDIA, Inc. and Speaker. All Rights Reserved.
BIG THANKS!!

To TROY REIMER of SNAPPS for help with these

slides
We did this deck together

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Resources

Lotus Developer Domain (formerly Notes.Net)
 www.lotus.com/ldd or www.notes.net

Notes/Domino Gold Forum
 ND6 - ND8: www.lotus.com/ldd/nd6forum.nsf

Lotus Notes FAQ
 www.keysolutions.com/NotesFAQ

Advisor Forum
 www.advisor.com/dNotes002.nsf

Bob Balaban’s Blog
 www.BobzBlog.com

My blog – Lotus Geek
 www.LotusGeek.com

BPs ONLY: BP Forum 2007 (via LNN)
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CIB306: What’s New in Formulas and LotusScript in ND8 - Page 14

2007 ADVISOR MEDIA, Inc. and Speaker. All Rights Reserved.
Q & A (aka “Stump the Chump”)

Ask anything about Formulas or LotusScript

Ask anything else about development in general

Thanks, and remember to fill out your
evaluations!

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ADVISOR SUMMIT Web

Update Page

advisor.com/cte0710p.nsf/w/cte0710ud

This session WILL NOT

have updates.

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CIB306: What’s New in Formulas and LotusScript in ND8 - Page 15

2007 ADVISOR MEDIA, Inc. and Speaker. All Rights Reserved.