Great find!!

I wonder if this works for data as well as design elements?

I wonder if it works without rebuild/recompile the lotusscript libraries and/or agents.

given that Configurator has been around for many years and does essentially the same thing.

I trust they are working on some really new stuff based on Eclipse, too. For example, Ciao needs - in my opinion - a complete overhaul in terms of usability.

So I hope that Teamstudio re-engineers their tools so that they are based on Eclipse too, so that they get a much better usability.

If they do that, we would buy more Teamstudio tools.

BTW: I did a quick test my replacing one class name with another in a database with 50 script libraries or so... it basically worked, but at some point Designer threw an exception.

This process uses the DXL export/import process to perform the update. Which means you roll the dice on whether you'll lose design information when you do it until/unless DXL becomes fully round-trip supported.

It will probably generally work okay on Lotusscript libs. But it won't work reliably on views, forms or even agents, depending on the myriad of options you might have on those various elements. Some examples...

Embedded Editors will disappear from forms & pages processed by this technique.

View columns with the Editable flag turned on will have it turned off.

Agents with simple selection formulas will become corrupted.

That's a few examples off the top of my head. The list of possible errata is LOOOOOOONG.

Again, script libs probably won't be too big a deal. But if you use this approach for form or view contents, you're probably going to wreck your template if it's not specifically designed to be DXL processed.

Nathan,

yes, personally I would never try this on forms or views or stuff like that. For me, this is important for script and java libraries.

So, here we have one more motivation for IBM to make DXL fully supported :-)

I've added this feature to the list of new thins in 8.5 in this FAQ { Link } Its a wiki, so please update it as you find new items.

Notes should support more than just renaming classes and variables. We would need refactoring features like they already exist for Java in Eclipse, e.g. moving classes/methods between script libraries and update the USE-clauses and add method parameters to a method's signature would be cool.

Karsten,

IBM is aware of that :-)

And now, since Designer is on Eclipse, it's the first time all those things are even possible.

But before that, the world is waiting for the new Java and LotusScript editors based on Eclipse :-)

Yes, best things from WSAD (WebSphere Application Developer) as well as later RAD (Rational Application Developer) and Eclipse as their ground are moving slowly into Lotus space. I think I was using this functionality already in early days of WSAD 5 in 2004 for my Java code.

These days I only wonder why just Domino JSP tag library was available at that time and not bunch of NotesPeek-like Eclipse plugins to do the same functionality as this one described.

you can also select specific design elements (like 3 agents, or all agents, or all agents and all script libs), choose selected resources in the dialog, and it will search just those.

@7: Does it pop up any warning to back up designs before use? If not, it's not a feature IMHO. It's a priority 1 bug that causes data loss.

@14: When I hear DXL - I always think about something unfinished again and again. It took me several months (please count cost of that yourself) of work (with at least 3 different PMRs opened) to just get fixed one small issue in <par>/<pardef> elements correct handling in DXL output. Finally it was done for Lotus Notes 7.0.2 and our Notes2PDF Converter product (based on DXL export functionality) was able to work the way it was supposed to do from the beginning without any crazy workaround required for earlier versions.

IBM: How long we could wait for that fully working DXL export/roundtripping? Version 9.0/10.0 and year 2015? You may remember that we've asked you to provide base64 encoded binary CD records as part of DXL XML if you cannot handle XML export/import of different elements in reasonable/reliable way.

It sounds like a toy I could play with only one very restricted way, cause in other case I have very high probability to break it.

@4 - the global search and replace is a feature that other development environments have had for years. Likewise, other environments have had source code control and difference-between-files type tools for a long time. The difference is the Teamstudio tools understand Notes design elements, without having to export to XML. As Nathan pointed out, there are some issues with the Eclipse tool that can cause problems when used with standard Notes design elements. But for style sheets and Java, it's fabulous.

There is definitely one unique thing about the Lotus development platform. We are consistently sent to the front line with prototype weaponry and told to work it out in the field. Developer beware!

At the same time, Notes/Domino major releases have generally been rather ambitious (think full backward compatibility, upgrades a monkey could perform etc).

Notes is for special people.