Maybe I am just getting old, but it has been awhile since a feature in Domino has gotten me excited.  There was a time when I used to load the beta code and suffer through all the NSD's just to play with the new features.  I have spent the last month with the Gold code of ND 8.5.   Frankly, while there are some very useful features on the client side, the shuffling of the pulldown menus and the speed penalty due to the Eclipse framework in the 8.5 client give me cause for concern.   I am concerned that end users familiar with the Domino interface will find these changes get in the way of getting their work done.  

But.....two things have really caught my eye on the server side of 8.5 and they both deal with attachments.  Last Friday I was heads down reading and testing, making all kinds of happy sounds, something I have not done in awhile.

The first feature is something very simple, something that should have been addressed long ago.  When using the Notes client, have you ever clicked on a document that has a large attachment only to wait for what seems like forever until the document finally opens?  Now the Notes client behaves like a browser client.  The document opens quickly regardless of the size of the attachment.  Even though you see the icon in the document, it is really on just a link to the actual file.  What they have done now is only load the attachment when you actually click on it.   We have enjoyed that for years on the browser side with our Uploader and Docova products. Finally it is here on the Notes side as well with the R8 clients.

The second feature is DAOS.  The Domino Attachment Object Store feature lets your store the attachments outside of the NSF on the file system.  At DLI.tools, when companies look at our Docova Document Manager, they often ask where the file attachments get stored?  When we say they  are in the NSF, we usually see a cloud of concern come across a customer's face.   They do not understand that on the web, the document does not know about the attachment until you click on it. For years they have suffered with the Notes client and databases that have grown to  30+ GB that take forever to open, search, index...etc.

I was skeptical when I first configured a Docova library for DAOS, and exported the files.  There are all kinds of issues we could run into.  Would file locking still work if two users tried to edit in place the same attachement at the same time?  Would check in/out work, searching within attachments.  As I tested each feature, and found that it actually worked, I was delighted.

So why would anyone care?  Well, Domino not only exports the files to the file system, it consolidates them.  So if you have the same attachment in multiple locations, it will save only one to the file system.  That is a huge potential savings if DAOS is enabled on mail databases.   Not a perfect world though, as local replication will not longer work. Then again, if you have huge mail databases, chances are you cannot replicate them successfully now.

So, how easy is this to setup?  Not bad at all in fact.  I had a test server running in about an hour, which included reading the docs.  The Domino Admin Help will give you everything you need.  Set it up on a test server and get used to the new ADOSMGR command options.  Basically you edit the server doc DAOS Tab and add the name of the directory and the threshold for attachments to be exported.  Add a line into the Notes.ini then update the ODS of the databases you want to enable using Compact -c -ados.   Check that the database property is set, and that is about it.