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Focal Point    Focal Point Forums  Hop To Forum Categories  WebFOCUS/FOCUS Forum on Focal Point     [TECHNIQUE] Setting up WebFocus to communicate with Lotus Notes Domino databases

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[TECHNIQUE] Setting up WebFocus to communicate with Lotus Notes Domino databases
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As a result of nearly a week of frustration, I've created this document in the hopes that it will help someone else in future.

My environment:
Workstation: Windows 8.1
Domino server Domino 8.5 on SUSE Linux 10
WebFocus server WF 7704 on SUSE Linux 10

The first step in getting WebFocus to communicate with the Lotus Notes databases on the Domino server is to make the necessary changes to the Domino Server Document. You will need Domino Administrator privileges to do this.

1)Open the Domino Current Server Document
2)Click the Security tab
1.In the Programmability Restrictions Section, under “Sign or run restricted LotusScript/Java agents” add the user name you wish to use for database access.
3)Click the Ports tab, then Internet Ports, then DIIOP
a TCP/IP port number = 63148
b TCP/IP port status = Enabled
c Enforce server access settings = No
d Authentication options:
d.1 Name & password = Yes
d.2 Anonymous = Yes
4)Click the Internet Protocols tab
a In the R5 Basics section set “Allow HTTP clients to browse databases” to Yes
b Change “Optimize HTTP performance based on the following primary activity” to “Both Mail and Applications”

Test the Domino server setup by opening up a web browser and doing: http://servername:63148/diiop_ior.txt This should display a single very long line of numbers that begins with IOR:

The next steps are to ready the WebFocus server. You will need

5)Locate notes.jar and ncso.jar. I found these on my workstation since I use the Lotus Notes client (and if you are reading this you probaby do too). In Windows, just do a search for them and then copy them to a folder for transfer to the WebFocus server.
6)Copy notes.jar and ncso.jar to a convenient directory on the WebFocus server. I use pscp which you can download for free from here: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.../putty/download.html Make sure that iadmin is the owner of the files on the server.
7)Login to the server as iadmin
8)Add the .jar files to the CLASSPATH. In my case the command was:
export CLASSPATH=$CLASSPATH:/home/iadmin/NotesJDBC/notes.jar:/home/iadmin/NotesJDBC/ncso.jar


The following steps are done via the WebFocus server GUI

9)Start the WebFocus server control panel
10)Click the Workspace tab
11)Expand the Java Services folder and right-click on DEFAULT
12)Expand the Class Path section
13)In the IBI_CLASSPATH box enter the full path to each .jar file
14)Click Save and Restart Java Services



Now we come to configuring the Lotus Notes adapter

15)Choose the Lotus Notes adapter from the list of available adapters
16)Right-click on Lotus Notes and choose Add Connection
17)Enter the URL or IP address of the Domino host. (This is NOT the Domino DomainName/ServerName typical in Lotus Notes environments)
18)Enter the port number you used in step 3.1, typically this is 63148
19)Under Security, choose either Explicit or Password Passthrough. I chose the former.
a Under User, enter the user name in the standard Domino format: User Name/DomainName
b Under Password, enter the Internet Password (NOT the regular Notes client password)
20)Click Configure and then OK at the information prompt.
21)Click Test and you should see a screen with a sample list of databases on the Domino server

The last step is to create a synonym for the datbase you are interested in.

22)Right-click the new connection and choose Create Synonym
23)Choose the object type you are interested in: Forms, Views, Folders or Calendar. In my case I am interested in Form data.
24)Click Next and ONE of the available Domino databases will appear in the drop-down
25)Click the arrow and you will see the rest. Choose the one you are interested in
26)Click Next
27)Put a mark in the check box next to the Form/View/Folder/Calendar you want

NOW COMES TRICKY PART #1 !

Lotus Notes is typically used to store large amounts of textual data, in our case CRM information. The form I'm working with has a field for Comments that can run to 100 lines of text or more. In order to get WebFocus to extract the entire contents of the field the Alpha Field Size must be set to the MAXIMUM number of characters you expect to encounter in any field of your form.

28)Double-click on 127 (the default field size) and change it to the number you want (in my case, 3500)
29)Click Create Synonym and you will receive a confirmation that the Synonym was created successfully

TRICKY PART #2 (almost the end!)

30)Right-click on the Synonym you just created and click on any of the text fields. You will see that ALL of them have the same length – in my case, 3500. So if you do:

TABLE FILE MYDATA
PRINT FIELDA BY FIELDB
END
you will get something incomprehensible. So the final stage is to:

31)Edit each text field in the Synonym to the length that is appropriate. In my case, for example, I set my customer code to length 6. So now if I do:

TABLE FILE MYDATA
PRINT COMMENTS
BY CUSTOMERCODE
ON TABLE PCHOLD FORMAT DOC
END
I get the information in my huge Comments field next to an appropriately-sized CustomerCode field.

As a final note, I have found that printing large text fields with as DOC or WP works fairly well – the line breaks and carriage returns in the original document are preserved. Attempting to save as PDF did not fare well. A selection with a small amount of data produced results, but line breaks were eliminated. Selecting a large amount of data caused I/O errors.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: George Patton,


WebFOCUS 7.7.05 Windows, Linux, DB2, IBM Lotus Notes, Firebird, Lotus Symphony/OpenOffice. Outputs PDF, Excel 2007 (for OpenOffice integration), WP
 
Posts: 674 | Location: Guelph, Ontario, Canada ... In Focus since 1985 | Registered: September 28, 2010Report This Post
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Thanks George! Good One


WebFOCUS 8.0.05
Windows- Excel, PDF
 
Posts: 21 | Location: Crystal City, VA & Kalamazoo, MI | Registered: October 11, 2010Report This Post
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