IBM Domino version 8 is not all about the client
IBM Domino version 8 is not all about the client
April 2007
We've touched on this in the blog, but it's worth reiterating that apart from the new generation client, Release 8 is going to have a lot of server improvements.
IBM's Domino development team have been releasing details of what we can look forward to (and hopefully try out on the imminent Beta release). Some of the improvements that catch the eye are:
Prevent Simple Search
This is a new database property that allows administrators to prevent users running searches on databases that are not full text indexed. Searching non-indexed databases puts load on the server, so this is a 'positive performance' move.
Design Note Compression
This is a cool new option to compress the design code of a database by as much as 60%, thereby reducing disk usage - given that an R7 mail template is 17MB you could save a lot of space on mail servers!
This seems to be a better approach that the single copy template store facility in R6/7, which had all databases looking to a single template for their design. I never implemented this, as there was always the worry that a corruption (or heavy handed delete key) would impact all mail users.
Streaming Cluster Replication
Although we try to minimize cluster replication overhead from impacting users by using separate ports and backend connections, the actual I/O overhead was high as the server had to keep checking all enabled databases for new changes.
Once it started replicating a database it would process all the changes in it before moving on. We've seen instances where the cluster replicator would get 'stuck' on a database, causing other databases to fall behind until scheduled replication took up the slack.
In R8, cluster replication will be event driven (as opposed to scheduled), so as each change happens it is pushed to the cluster. This reduces I/O activity as only active databases are examined and replicated as and when a change occurs.
IBM's Domino Development team have started a blog where you can follow their progress and new of R8 at www.dominoblog.com
