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Twitter: Instant Updates | This Blog Has Moved...Ruth Jarvis March 1 2010 01:59:23 PMThank you for being a loyal follower of our blog!We hope you will continue to follow on our new location: http://davalenllc.wordpress.com/ Don't forget to subscribe to our feed at: http://davalenllc.wordpress.com/feed/ Thank you and see you at the new location: The Tech Connection where you will find past and present articles on the technology that fits best into your daily life. All the best, The Davalen Contributors
Managing Search Complexity through SimplicityPeter Wilkerson February 17 2010 10:58:44 AMby Peter Wilkerson, Search & Discovery Practice ManagerAt the heart of any search solution is a good understanding of the business problem to be solved as well as knowledge of the available content and metadata. You have to work within the confines of the content you have (or can add with content enhancement). You have to analyze that content and be able to describe how you can identify some documents as being relevant for solving a business problem and why other documents are not relevant. That is just the beginning. Developing an effective search solution is a complex space by it's very nature. It brings many different pieces together to accomplish specific business objectives. Managing the complexity of search is no simple matter. One of the top challenges faced by businesses is managing this complexity. The key is managing solution complexity and providing an effective solution to simplify the scope of the solution by dividing the space into meaningful layers: Business Problem to Solve The end goal is to provide a space where employees, customers and contractors can search for and find accurate and timely information. After all, their job is not to search but to complete some other business process or transaction. Search is a tool for helping people complete their tasks successfully. Understanding the business problem to be solved and how it relates to the larger strategic plan of the business is vital for creating a successful search space. User Environment Understanding how many people will be using the system, how they will access it (web, intranet, internet, mobile devices, embedded applications, etc.), and the business processes to be supported. Search Application Consists of the Query and Results sub-layers. It is a user interface which consists of various search tooling functionalities. People's impression of the effectiveness of a search solution is often based on the search interface alone. After all, that is what people see and use. Too often businesses use an out-of-the-box interface without evaluating whether it is designed to solve the business problems driving the need to update search. Search Tooling Search tooling is the tool set that a search platform provides to build search applications. Tooling may include search word boosting, relevance tuning, thesaurus, synonyms, stopword lists, facets, taxonomies, search analytics, knowledge extraction tooling, and more. Also included are how content sources are crawled, parsed and indexed. Different search platforms provide different tool sets. Understanding what tooling is available and how they work is key to being able to architect an effective search solution. Search Platform/Engine The software that provides the search tooling; whether it is IBM OmniFind Enterprise Edition, Endeca, Autonomy, FAST, Lucene/SOLR or some proprietary solution. In addition to search tooling you also want to pay attention to a platform's scalability, fail-over, disaster recovery, system management, configuration management, system security and availability. Content Enhancement Content enhancement or enrichment is sometimes required in order to develop a search solution that will solve a specific business need. This may mean that third-party data needs to be added to existing data. It may mean that knowledge extraction tools need to be used for unstructured (that is, non-fielded data) data like that found in emails, reports and memo fields in databases. Content & Metadata It is important to know the number of documents, content types (email, reports, database records, etc.), average size of documents, annual growth of your data stores, multi-lingual requirements, governance strategy. It is also important to know the types of information that is explicitly available or can be extrapolated via content enhancement. This information will be the basis for building an effective search solution. Security Security is a vital piece of any enterprise project. In the case of search, there is user authentication & authorization for accessing the search application and for the data that will be displayed in search results lists. (You don't want just anybody to view HR data.) Search engine crawlers also require authentication and authorization for access to different data stores at the collection level. And then there is security digital rights management at the individual document level within a given data store. In many cases this is the most complex IT piece of the search puzzle. However, solving this layer alone does not guarantee an effective search solution. Storage Environment Knowing the number and types of data stores (portal, file system, FileNet8, Domino, Quickr, Documentum, etc.) is vital. Knowing how frequently the stores are updated and will need to be searched is another key piece of information. It is also know the format that data is stored in (PDF, database, flat files, etc.). IT Infrastructure All of the above occurs within an IT framework of many layers in its own right and can include the following layers: network, hardware, operating system, system software and more depending on the environment. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WebSphere in Q1Dave Jacob February 2 2010 12:01:18 PMfrom Dave Jacob, Managing Partner, WebSphereWe've been working recently to expand the Portlet Factory Top Gun class to a wider audience through the use of the Davalen Virtual classroom. Our goal is to offer the class to students in any worldwide location utilizing our worldwide instructors. In the last month, we have run the TG916/WPC42 class twice utilizing our Brazil office for instructors to students located across North America. After some initial connection issues, which we resolved, we found that the class was well received and we expect to continue expanding the capability to future classes. This approach minimizes our cost since we can utilize any available instructor/consultant who may be available and there is no travel cost. As a result we can offer private Top Gun Portlet Factory courses to any of our clients with a minimum student count of two We plan to expand this approach to other IBM classes we offer in the future. Read more about our WebSphere Portlet Factory services and resources. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Search and WorkForce Integration Initiatives: Two PathsPeter Wilkerson February 2 2010 11:14:36 AMfrom Peter Wilkerson, Practice Area Manager, Search & DiscoveryIncreasingly I see more projects focusing on "Search and WorkForce Integration". Search plays a key part in WorkForce Integration. Search provides accurate and timely information such that: Workers find the information needed, else they have to reinvent it or decide without it. During a typical business cycle, a company may find itself at a point where people rely on stale data because search "just doesn't work right." Companies respond to this by taking one of two paths. One path leads them deeper into the forest where relevant data continues to elude workers; Another path leads them out of the woods where search is intuitive and data is easily consumed. Path 1 . A common IT response is to increase hardware capacity and software complexity. This response can be valid if search is slow and unable to handle indexing multiple file formats, meeting security needs, and similar issues. However, the problem is often not an IT problem but a business problem. If you treat search as an IT problem, then search is unlikely ever to work well. This path only leads deeper into the forest. Path 2 .Another path understands that a worker's job is NOT to search for information. Their job is to complete tasks such as analysis, evaluation, support, processing, etc. Workers search for information to find current information, identify reusable resources, solve problems, and make decisions. If you want to know why workers aren't using intranet resources, data silos, etc., the search related answer is straight-forward: An information retrieval system will tend not to be used whenever it is more painful and troublesome for a customer to have information than for him not to have it." Calvin Mooers (aka Mooers' Law, 1959) To resolve search problems, decision makers must understand the business problem and design search implementations to meet those needs - to make it easy for people to use their search tool as a means to an end. This is the area in which Davalen shines. Our experience goes much farther than the ability to install, configure and manage the OmniFind Enterprise Edition search application. We know how to adapt the tooling to solve business problems. Learn more about our Retail and Enterprise Search & Discovery expertise. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Happy New Year from Deborah Corcoran, National Practice Manager for Resource Deployment!Deborah Corcoran February 2 2010 11:04:15 AMTo kick off the first Davalen Newsletter of 2010, we are showcasing an exciting addition to the Davalen portfolio of business, - Technical Staffing Services. Our offerings to you now include:* Technical Staffing Services to support your various projects * A-Z Total Solutions for all IBM Software products * Education/Training and mentoring of those products I would like to take this opportunity to introduce myself to everyone and share with you highlights of our new practice area. A bit of background....my career in Technical Staffing began 15+ years ago, in supporting the IBM account - specifically the Software Services Consulting arm. I began working as Business Partner with Dave Jacob and Len Barker almost 6 years ago, and we all found a tremendous synergy between us. We often discussed my joining Davalen, and as of October 1 2009, it became official! The Davalen Technical Staffing Practice provides high level senior technologists to support our customer requirements, including IBM's software consulting arm for their clients, too. Our consultants have years of solid experience along with keeping up with most recent software versions, product certifications, and newest IBM product offerings. Their skills cover all software portfolios i.e.; all things Lotus, WebSphere, Rational and Tivoli. But there is more! We can support almost any client request that falls outside of the IBM Software portfolio too, through our highly experienced technical consultant pool. Over 90% of our Technical consultants have been with me for 10+ years, and some are former IBM'ers - all are extremely pleased to be represented by Davalen. In 2009, Q4, we were all pleasantly surprised to see a huge uptic in technical services requirements from IBM and our own clients. Fourth quarter, thankfully, had good activity and turned out to be quite busy for us. We supported many of IBM's clients who were in need of securing highly skilled individuals for myriad of needs. Projects included basic Domino Administration and Development to Notes upgrades to 8.5.1 to Expeditor Widget development, to Lotus Connections, WebSphere and Portlet Factory projects, to OmniFind solutions. We provided services to our direct customers too, who were seeking additional expertise in most of the same areas, including scheduling educational training for their teams on the "latest" releases of various software. Looking forward to 2010, I am in the process of reaching out to all of you to say a "live" hello, and to discuss any of the projects that you may be thinking of or working on that we could provide you with additional subject matter expertise or support. Please feel free to reach to me as well.. Let's make 2010, a great comeback year for all! Contact Deborah Corcorcan ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What’s next for Domino developersDave Jacob January 22 2010 11:23:09 AMMet a lot of Domino developers at Lotusphere this week who were concerned about their opportunities in the future. I also saw many postings on the Lotus LinkedIn site advising a recent computer science college graduate to pursue Microsoft because there are no new jobs for Lotus developers.I have a different opinion. One of the best selling products in the world is IBM portal. I know most people say that is for java developers and there is nothing for me as a Domino developer. Have you considered Portlet Factory. Its a domino like tool that generates java code much like the @functions generate code in domino. A domino developer can quickly learn Portlet Factory, just like they learned domino and be more productive than straight java developers using RAD or Eclipse. Here is a link to a short video on YouTube, I put together to demonstrate what I am talking about. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXyiFLKLFRk As an IBM Premier consulting partner, this is the skill our domino developers have learned (including me) which has led to many opportunities. Not so fast Microsoft!
Portlet Factory AdoptionDave Jacob January 18 2010 06:53:49 AMYesterday on the bus to Lotusphere, I was seated next to a Portlet Factory developer who was using Eclipse for development. I asked if he had considered RAD or Portlet Factory for his development . His take was that RAD was too expensive and Portlet Factory had too steep a learning curve for Java developers.To me, it shows the disconnect between the tactical needs of a developer under the gun and the strategic needs of an organization to improve productivity. So, how do we match the strategic productivity gains of these tools required by IT management with the tactical needs of the developer who can't spend the time to go back and learn a new tool which hinders short term productivity?
Lotus Traveler - User Data Storage InformationLen Barker January 17 2010 04:00:00 PMI am currently working with a client to roll out Lotus Traveler to thousands of users. Many of you have probably already deployed Lotus Traveler in smaller environments and have received great feedback on how easy it is to setup and how well it works with the supported devices: Apple's iPhone, Windows Mobile devices and Nokia devices. One of the many special considerations for large deployments is the fact that all users will not be able to be served by a single Traveler server. Because of the way that user data is stored on each Traveler server, load balancing between Traveler servers is not an option. Below is a description of the databases used to store Traveler data. This should give the Traveler administrator a good idea of why user data cannot be maintained if a user switches the url on his device to a new Traveler server.LotusTraveler.nsf This database was added in version 8.5 and it keeps data that is interesting to the administrator only. There is a record in this database for every user and every device that a user has registered with Traveler. The primary reason for having this database is so that an administrator with an admin client can open it and select a user's device and issue a remote wipe command. So it provides a nice UI that allows easy selection. Since we are keeping these records around, we can also show the admin interesting data about the devices, such as when it last synced, if it has any security policy violations, what OS the device is running and patch levels, what Traveler client level is running on it and more. This database could be replicated with Domino replication to a failover server. ntsclcache.nsf This database stores replica information for users. It is based on the template from cldbdir.ntf. When a user first registers with Traveler, Traveler looks up the user's home mail server and tries to open that server's cldbdir.nsf. If it can, it pulls all of the known replicas for this user from that DB and stores them locally in ntsclcache.ntf. This way, if on a subsequent sync Traveler cannot connect and sync with the primary server for this user, then it will have a list of replicas to try. This database could be replicated with Domino replication to a failover server. File Directory data\traveler\ntsdb\* This directory holds the files that build a Derby embedded relational database. The data inside this database is the meta information that Traveler keeps for registered users and devices that are using the Traveler server. It keeps the last sync times for the users and their devices, the device sync anchor points which indicate the last device sync point, the mappings between Domino UNIDs and the device's document identifier (LUID), it tracks which email folders the devices are syncing, and keeps the mapping between Domino UNID to folder id because this information is not always returned by the Domino APIs. There is more info stored here, this is just the mail items I can think of offhand. Traveler accesses this data using a Derby JDBC driver and the entire DB is implemented in java. So far, the administrator has been mostly unaware of this database. There are no maintenance activities that are needed and setup and installation is all handled automatically in the Traveler code. Also, each device user can set some personal preferences for how they want to sync data to the device (e.g. how many days of mail and calendar, do they want to include attachments, etc). This information is actually stored inside a Traveler unique profile note in their mail database. So even if Traveler was destroyed, this data is always preserved and will be reused whenever the Traveler service can again connect to the user's mail file. So, the infocenter statement is technically correct ... if the device was re-routed to a different Traveler server than what was previously used, then the sync anchors would now no longer match. This would cause the device to resync data from the server down to the device again, and it would overwrite any previous data on the device. This is what we call a "slow sync" or a refresh sync and it is what occurs when the device is first registered with the server. However, this all occurs in the background on the device and typically the user would not notice this unless they are right in the mailbox or calendar app at the time this is going on. So one possibility is in the case of disaster where a Traveler server is lost, another server with the same IP address could be brought online at that time and devices would resume syncing automatically. Or there could be a proxy or switch in front of the Traveler server that is then reconfigured to point to the backup server. Many thanks to Bill Wimer of IBM's Lotus Traveler team for this information.
Inspired by Generosity - Together Let’s Raise Funds for Haiti at Lotusphere 2010Ruth Jarvis January 17 2010 03:34:11 PMInspired by GROUP Business Software's generosity at Lotusphere 2010, Davalen is making a comparable commitment promising to make a donation for every attendee that allows us to scan their badge by stopping by our Showcase Booth #237 throughout the course of the open showcase hours.Open Showcase Hours are: Monday 01/18/10 10:00 AM - 8:00 PM Tuesday 01/19/10 9:30 AM - 5:00 PM Wednesday 01/20/10 9:30 AM - 4:00 PM Let's team together to make a contribution to those who need it most. For more information on where the contributions will be donated, please visit http://www.redcross.org/
You’re Invited: "Lotus Connections Hour with Victor Toal"Ruth Jarvis January 15 2010 03:47:09 PMDo you want to discuss Lotus Connection? How about Domino basic administration questions/reviews, Domino 8.5.1 upgrades, Sametime in general, Sametime upgrades, Lotus Connections implementations, Lotus Quickr topics and more with a master in the field? Then come to "Lotus Connections Hour with Victor Toal."The Details: Lotus Connections Hour with Victor Toal Monday, January 18th 2010 at 3:30 PM - 4:30 PM EST WALT DISNEY WORLD DOLPHIN Atlantic Hall, Booth #237 Who's is Victor Toal? Victor Toal is a messaging and collaboration architect and engineer with more than 15 years experience with Domino (since R 4.1), Sametime, Quickr, Lotus Connections, and WebSphere. Victor’s clients include the Pentagon, US Army, banks, as well as manufacturing, tourism, and medical companies. He has worked in the US and overseas (Japan, Austria, Great Britain, Germany, France, Italy, Hungary, Poland, and Czech Republic) and speaks fluent German and Japanese. He is certified in Domino R4 – R8.5 and Sametime 7.5 and 8.0. You can contact Victor directly at victor@toalsys.com and make sure you check out his blog too. Presented by Davalen, LLC Add this event to your calendar. Or check out the event on LinkedIn.
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