Article: Lost Knowledge of Notes and Domino Administration »
PHILIP STORRY - JUN 15, 2009 (10:49:10 PM)
Given the size and breadth of funcitonality in a Domino/Notes server, it's surprising how little knowledge you ever have to throw away.
This represents a huge return on investment for the Domino/Notes administrator in terms of training. That's especially true when compared with competitors whose roadmaps over the past decade or two have been so much shifting sand and bluster...
In order to help quantify this, I've produced this list of Lost Knowledge Of Notes and Domino...
It works pretty simply. It's a list, and it contains everything I think is obsolete knowledge in Domino/Notes.
- R3 - DOS Client and server retired(?)
- R3 - NSG/NSH database file types retired
- R3 - File attachments now stored in Rich Text fields except in special cases
- R4.6 - UNIX and OS/2 Client retired
- R5 - Re-architected HTTP, performance & advanced settings changed
- R5 - Replaced Reporter task for Statistics & Events Reporting
- R5 - Replaced SMTP MTA with Native Notes SMTP routing
- R5 - NetWare server (NLM) support retired
- R6 - NNTP task retired
- R6 - cc:Mail MTA retired(?)
- R6 - X.400 MTA retired(?)
- R6 - OS/2 Server support retired
- R6 - Cluster Administrator task removed as Clustering was optimised
- R6 - Shared Mail re-architected
- R6 - Re-architected HTTP (again!) - Can now (optionally) use Internet Site documents
- R7 - DDM replaces (enhances, really) Statistics & Events reporting
- R7 - RnRMgr replaces old Rooms & Resources system
- R8 - Out of Office Service can be used instead of the Agent
- R8 - Clustering between R8 servers now uses Streaming Clustering
- R8 - Client (optionally) uses the Eclipse platform
- UNKNOWN - DB2NSF support will end when either Release 8.5 support ends or DB2 9.1 support ends (whichever comes sooner, I guess!)
- UNKNOWN - DAMO (Domino Access for Microsoft Outlook) support will end when the Release 8.0.x product leaves support
(Some items I'm not sure about end with a (?) - please let me know where I made a mistake!)
Now, I'll be the first to admit that this list probably isn't complete, and that some of the items on this list are quite minor.
My goal in compiling it was to find the changes over the years that either removed functionality or changed functionality enough that administration and troubleshooting was significantly impacted.
It wasn't to list new features which required further investment in learning - just to identify which investments turned out to have a shorter lifespan than others. However, I have noted which technologies will have their support ended, in the interests of both fairness and in the hope that it may help some people with their planning.
Despite how it may appear, this list is very short - considering what Domino and Notes can do. And I bet that the same list for developers would be a short one. (Anyone want to produce one? I'll link to it here if you do!)
Naturally, all additions and corrections are welcome, so if I missed something let me know with a comment!
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Revision history:
2009-06-14 - Initial list taken from this blog entry. Tidied up, and added DB2NSF and DAMO to the list.
2009-06-15 - Added details of attachment changes in R3 provided by Carl Tyler - Thanks Carl!
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COMMENT: CARL TYLER
JUN 14, 2009 - 09:23:53 PM
At the time, this meant having to edit the design of quite a few R2 databases to make them work with R3. «
COMMENT: PHILIP STORRY
JUN 15, 2009 - 13:44:25
ETA: Done! «