Locale settings for date and time in IBM Domino and Notes

Recently we setup 2 new IBM Domino servers and today I found an issue related to how we display time in our application. The 12-hours format was used (with AM or PM). I've checked OS date settings and they were right so I started to google and found out that in order to change locale settings to 24-hours you have either update notes.ini with a ClockType variable or change register.

I went with notes.ini (feel more safe with it). Below few variables that control date/time format output.

 DateOrder=YMD  
 DateSeparator=.  
 TimeSeparator=:  
 CLOCKTYPE=24_HOUR  

It is also possible for windows OS to change register (but I personally do not like that).

 HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\International\iDate  
 HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\International\iTime  
 HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\International\iDate  
 HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Control Panel\International\iTime  

You may find more information about it in article Timely information in NOTES.INI

Related topics:
Format datetime object in Lotus Script

Using preceding-sibling and following-sibling in xpath

In this article I will show few examples about how to use following-sibling and preceding-sibling

Our XML example we are going to use.

 <div id="cities">  
 <country>France</country>  
   <city>Paris</city>  
   <country>UK</country>  
   <city>London</city>  
   <city>Manchester</city>  
   <city>Liverpool</city>  
   <country>Denmark</country>  
   <city>Copenhagen</city>  
   <country>Ukraine</country>  
   <city>Kiev</city>  
   <city>Odessa</city>  
 </div>  

Taking all city elements after element UK

 /div/country[.='UK']/following-sibling::city  

 <city>London</city>  
 <city>Manchester</city>  
 <city>Liverpool</city>  
 <city>Copenhagen</city>  
 <city>Kiev</city>  
 <city>Odessa</city>  

Taking all city elements before element Denmark

 /div/country[.='Denmark']/preceding-sibling::city  

 <city>Paris</city>  
 <city>London</city>  
 <city>Manchester</city>  
 <city>Liverpool</city>  

Let's increase difficulty little bit and try to use preceding-sibling and following-sibling in the brackets []

Taking all city elements following till first country is UK

 /div/city[following-sibling::country='Denmark']  

 <city>Paris</city>  
 <city>London</city>  
 <city>Manchester</city>  
 <city>Liverpool</city>  

Taking all city elements from bottom till first country is Denmark

 /div/city[preceding-sibling::country='Denmark']  

 <city>Copenhagen</city>  
 <city>Kiev</city>  
 <city>Odessa</city>  

Let's increase difficulty even more and start using both preceding-sibling and following-sibling in one xpath.

Taking all city elements between two elements

In this example I'm going to get cities after UK and before Ukraine.

 /div/city[preceding-sibling::country='UK' and following-sibling::country='Ukraine']  

 <city>London</city>  
 <city>Manchester</city>  
 <city>Liverpool</city>  
 <city>Copenhagen</city>  

Setup Play Framework and TypeSafe on centOS

I'm going to setup simple project based on Play Framework together with Cassandra on two centOS servers.

I'm going to do 3 steps during that process:

1. Install Java
2. Install Typesafe activator
3. Create test project.

Installing Java

//1. go to opt folder
cd /opt

//2. download java
wget --no-cookies --no-check-certificate --header "Cookie: gpw_e24=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.oracle.com%2F; oraclelicense=accept-securebackup-cookie" "http://download.oracle.com/otn-pub/java/jdk/8u60-b27/jdk-8u60-linux-x64.tar.gz"

//3. extract java archive
tar xzf jdk-8u60-linux-x64.tar.gz

//4. installing java
cd /opt/jdk1.8.0_60/
alternatives --install /usr/bin/java java /opt/jdk1.8.0_60/bin/java 2
alternatives --config java

//5. recommended options: setup javac and jar
alternatives --install /usr/bin/jar jar /opt/jdk1.8.0_60/bin/jar 2
alternatives --install /usr/bin/javac javac /opt/jdk1.8.0_60/bin/javac 2
alternatives --set jar /opt/jdk1.8.0_60/bin/jar
alternatives --set javac /opt/jdk1.8.0_60/bin/javac

//6. setup variables so we can access java from everywhere
export JAVA_HOME=/opt/jdk1.8.0_60
export JRE_HOME=/opt/jdk1.8.0_60/jre
export PATH=$PATH:/opt/jdk1.8.0_60/bin:/opt/jdk1.8.0_60/jre/bin

//7. checking java version
java -version

//8. delete java archive
rm jdk-8u60-linux-x64.tar.gz

Installing Play Framework / TypeSafe

Example is about current version, which is 1.3.6

//1. go to tmp folder and download typesafe activator
cd /tmp
wget https://downloads.typesafe.com/typesafe-activator/1.3.6/typesafe-activator-1.3.6.zip

//2. unzip and move to opt folder
unzip typesafe-activator-1.3.6.zip
mv activator-dist-1.3.6 /opt

//3. delete zip file, we do not need it anymore
rm typesafe-activator-1.3.6.zip

//4. create soft symbolic link from /opt/activator-dist-1.3.6/activator to /usr/local/sbin/activator
ln -s /opt/activator-dist-1.3.6/activator /usr/local/sbin/activator

//5. set variables so we can use activator from everywhere
export PATH=/usr/local/sbin/activator:$PATH

Create helloworld project

Time to create our first project. Play Framework provides many templates, we are going to use play-java (it has already web interface and some code, so we can discover it).

//1. create folder www in /var (we are going to keep projects there).
cd /var
mkdir www
cd www

//2. have a look on current templates
activator list-templates

//3. create a new project based on play-java template
activator new helloworld play-java

//4. go into newly created project and run it
cd helloworld
activator run

If activator run properly, you should see something like this:

Now you are ready to open project in browser. Type 127.0.0.1:900 and boooom, we have it ready!

I'm going to play with centOS little bit more (before I start to look on code). I already have some minor issues I want to optimise.

Transformation of String into Date respecting Locale

Let's say you need to parse a string into date and it is localized string (f.x. name of month on local language). In past I would definitely define an array with months and then parse a String to get a number of my month and then build a Date object. In Java it's pretty simple (almost 1 line of code).

Locale approach

package parser;

import java.text.ParseException;
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.util.Date;
import java.util.Locale;

public class parser {

 public static void main(String[] args) throws ParseException {
  Locale locale = new Locale("ru");
  Date date = convertStringToDate("19 Сентября 2004", "d MMMM yyyy", locale);
  System.out.println(date); // Sun Sep 19 00:00:00 CEST 2004
 }
 
 public static java.util.Date convertStringToDate(String dateString, String format, Locale locale) throws ParseException {
  return new SimpleDateFormat("d MMMM yyyy", locale).parse(dateString);
 }
}

Alternatively, if you need to define months yourself use DateFormatSymbols

Define symbols in DateFormatSymbols

package parser;

import java.text.DateFormatSymbols;
import java.text.ParseException;
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;

public class parser {

 public static void main(String[] args) throws ParseException {
  String months[] = {"Январь", "Февраль", "Март", "Апрель", "Май", "Июнь", "Июль", "Август", "Сентябрь", "Октябрь", "Ноябрь", "Декабрь"};
  DateFormatSymbols dfs = new DateFormatSymbols();
  dfs.setMonths(months);
  
  SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("d MMMM yyyy");
  sdf.setDateFormatSymbols(dfs);
  System.out.print(sdf.parse("19 Сентября 2004")); // Sun Sep 19 00:00:00 CEST 2004
 }
}

Insufficient memory - NSF pool is full

Recently I've faced up with an odd issue. When users tried to open Lotus Notes applications they got a warning saying

Insufficient memory - NSF pool is full

What 'Insufficient memory - NSF pool is full' is about?

As far as I understood it is memory leak on IBM Domino server. There are different kind of issues similar to this one:

• Insufficient memory - NSF pool is full
• Insufficient memory - index pool is full
• Insufficient memory - NSF directory manager pool is full
• Insufficient memory - Event pool is full
• Insufficient memory - NSF Monitor pool is full
• Insufficient memory - Network pool is full

Fixing the issue

Of course it require investigation why it happened but as a temporary fix you can simple increase memory while you are looking into the problem (if you do so :)). The variable name responsible for this pool is NSF_Buffer_Pool_Size (number of bytes) or alternatively you can use NSF_Buffer_Pool_Size_MB (number of megabytes). I'm not going to explain details about this variable, since you can find everything on IBM, just open this link: NSF_Buffer_Pool_Size

Adding or changing NSF_Buffer_Pool_Size_MB in notes.ini

I didn't find a default size for NSF_Buffer_Pool_Size (One article mentioned 32MB as a default value, however I could not really confirm that with IBM documentations). Anyway, for I set 64MB and from now I will keep my eyes open on this problem.

Let's change notes.ini using a Configuration Settings document

1. First, open IBM Domino Administrator and find a Configuration tab there.
2. Find Configuration settings now (in R9, it's nuder Server\Configurations), if it is not there, you may need to create it first.
3. Highlight right server and and click button Edit Configuration and switch to NOTES.INI Settings tab.
4. There must be a button: Set/Modify Parameters at the bottom, click on it and add/change your variable.
5. Save configuration and Restart Server.

Done.