#Performance
Posts tagged #Performance · 13 posts
- NIFNSF: Move View Indexes Out of the NSF
An NSF bloats from two things: attachments (DAOS moves those out) and view indexes. NIFNSF (moving view indexes out of databases) handles the second — it moves a database's view indexes out of the .nsf into separate .ndx files, making the NSF smaller and backup/restore faster (an .ndx can grow to 1 TB). This piece covers what it does, why — like DAOS — it must have transaction logging enabled first, the ODS 51+ requirement, how to configure it on the Server document's NIFNSF tab in 12.0.2+ (versus the older notes.ini NIFNSFEnable / NIFBasePath / CREATE_NIFNSF_DATABASES), how to enable it per database with load compact -c -nifnsf on, and how to check with show dir -nifnsf — plus why enabling it with -c brings us right back to the DBIID rule.
2026.10.17 - DBMT: One Command Replaces Nightly compact, updall, and fixup
The maintenance-commands piece walks you through compact, updall, and fixup one at a time; but nobody types those by hand at 2 AM in production — the old way was a pile of Program documents running updall nightly plus a separate compact. From Domino 9, dbmt (the database maintenance tool) folds them into one: HCL says it 'relieves the administrator of the need to run the Updall task,' doing compact + updall + (when needed) fixup in a single task, with thread counts, a time window, and a compact-every-n-days cadence to pace it. This piece covers what dbmt does, how to run it from a Program document, the key compact-side options (-ct / -cnd / -tl / -range / -force) and updall-side options (-ut / -ftiNdays), and the one special case — -ods, which does a copy-style compact that reassigns the DBIID — and why that ties back to transaction logging and ODS upgrades.
2026.10.16 - DAOS: Move Attachments Out of the NSF
The same attachment stored in dozens of documents, even across several databases, is how an NSF bloats. DAOS moves attachments out of the NSF and stores them, de-duplicated, as a single .nlo file on the server, leaving a reference called a 'ticket' in the document. This piece covers how it works (de-dup happens at save time, not in a later maintenance task), why you must enable transaction logging before it, how to set the Server document DAOS tab (base path, minimum size, deferred deletion) and add databases, and tier 2 moving cold attachments to S3; plus the reminder that after the attachments move out, you still compact the NSF to actually reclaim the space.
2026.10.14 - XPages Performance: Why Computed Values Run Many Times per Submit
Drop a println in a computed value or a rendered formula, click a button once, and it runs five or six times — not a bug, but XPages running the whole JSF lifecycle on every submit, where a #{} (compute dynamically) value binding is re-evaluated every time it's read, adding up to several runs across the phases. This piece covers three knobs that cut that repetition: #{} (re-evaluated each time) vs ${} (computed once at load, static), rendered (in the tree, evaluated across phases) vs loaded (never built into the tree, skipped entirely), when to use each, and the ${} caveat.
2026.10.12 - partial refresh vs partial execution: the XPages JSF Lifecycle, and Why Refreshing One Area Still Recomputes the Whole Page
You click one button in XPages and a validator on a completely unrelated field blocks you — because by default the whole page runs a round of the JSF lifecycle, not just your button's area. XPages has two independent 'partial' knobs: partial refresh (refreshMode/refreshId) controls which HTML fragment goes back to the client; partial execution (execMode/execId) controls which components run the server-side lifecycle. This uses the six JSF phases to explain the difference, why partial refresh alone still recomputes the whole page on the server, and how partial execution scopes the server work down.
2026.10.01 - Field Notes from panagenda's MakeNotesFaster Webinar: Slow Notes Is Usually Configuration, Not Old Laptops
In panagenda's MakeNotesFaster webinar, Christoph Adler breaks HCL Notes 14.5.1 FP1 client performance on Windows down to two decisions: run the right version, configure it right. Here are the points most useful to admins — one brutal real-world customer number, why ODS quietly steals startup time on every open, whether you should delete cache.ndk regularly (he debunks the myth outright), keeping the data directory off network shares, the three traps in an antivirus exclusion set, and the Monday-morning checklist he closes with.
2026.09.26 - NotesView AutoUpdate=False: Why Modifying Documents in a View Loop Slows Down and Throws 'Entry not found in index'
An agent loops a view, tweaks each document, and gets slower and slower — sometimes even throwing 'Entry not found in index.' The culprit: NotesView refreshes itself by default, so when your loop modifies the very documents the view indexes, the view keeps re-sorting under your feet — killing performance and invalidating your navigation position. The fix is one line before the loop: view.AutoUpdate = False. This piece explains the mechanism, the correct 'grab the next handle before modifying' pattern, and three side effects to know (snapshot, current-code-only, must Refresh to see updates).
2026.09.15 - Rewrote LotusScript in Java and Memory Blew Up? You Forgot recycle()
The same logic runs forever in LotusScript, then blows up the agent's memory the first time you loop it over tens of thousands of documents in Java. The reason is that every Java Domino object is backed by a native handle the garbage collector can't see. A field report on the mechanism, the four official rules, the loop leak pattern and its fix, NotesThread's role, and how local vs remote sessions change the cost.
2026.08.07 - @DbLookup and @DbColumn: the Cache Keyword You're Not Passing, and the 64K Wall
You update a keyword document, reload the form, and the dropdown still shows the old value. Or a keyword list quietly stops growing at a few thousand entries. Both are @DbLookup / @DbColumn behaviours hiding in the argument most formulas leave empty: the cache keyword. A field report on the three cache options (default / NoCache / ReCache) and the hard 64KB limit on what these functions can return — with the classic-web cases where each one bites.
2026.08.04 - NotesViewEntry × NotesViewEntryCollection: Reading Every Row of a View Fast, Without Opening Documents
To read a few field values from every document in a view, many people loop the documents and GetItemValue each one — but that opens every document, and a few thousand rows is painfully slow. NotesViewEntry reads the view's already-computed ColumnValues without opening a document at all; NotesViewEntryCollection is the collection of those rows, skips category/total rows, and supports set operations and StampAll batch updates. This article covers the 'read the view fast' pair, why ColumnValues is the performance key, and an entry's identity and hierarchy properties.
2026.06.22 - DQL Production-Ready: Catalog Maintenance, Permissions, and sessionAsSigner
The two real walls when shipping DQL to production: how the Design Catalog gets maintained automatically (bootstrapping brand-new NSFs, incremental refresh after design changes), and why regular users hit the 'You don't have permission' error — plus the sessionAsSigner / scheduled-agent solutions. The final pattern is verified against Domino 12 production logs, with a production-ready Java helper class to drop in.
2026.05.03 - NotesViewNavigator: navigate views the proper way, not GetFirstDocument loops
NotesViewNavigator is the LotusScript tool for non-trivial view traversal: it returns ViewEntry objects (which carry view metadata GetFirstDocument doesn't), it can be built over a subset of the view (a single category, all unread, descendants of an entry, a max level), and it's faster than the naive document loop — provided you remember to switch AutoUpdate off first. This post catalogues the 4 properties, ~36 methods, 7 CreateViewNav* variants, and the caveats worth knowing.
2026.04.29 - Getting Started with NotesQueryResultsProcessor: Life After DQL
NQRP is a LotusScript class added in Domino V12 that lets you re-sort, categorise, project, and serialise the results of a DQL query (or any NotesDocumentCollection) — straight to JSON or to a temporary view. Walks through the create flow, every method signature, the official examples, and the safety knobs.
2026.04.28