IdeaJam(tm) : XPages: @DBLookupBig & @DbColumnBig

Domino Designer / : XPages: @DBLookupBig & @DbColumnBig

Sun, 11 Oct 2009 11:59:34 +0000

Author: Erik Brooks
Tags: formula xpages @Dblookup @DBcolumn
Idea:

XPages are here, they're big and bad and scalable. They integrate with @Formulas, which is extremely powerful. For things like repeat controls, type-ahead, etc. there are times when you use @DbLookup or @DbColumn.

But these functions are limited in returning 64K, like the days of old.

Two new @Formulas, @DbColumnBig and @DbLookupBig should be created to be able to return large amounts of data.

Presumably to incorporate this capability into the legacy design elements (<computed text>, fields, etc.) this would be a large amount of effort because of all the other 16/32/64K limits on those elements. To ease the engineering effort on IBM's side the new @Formulas could be made available only within the context of XPages, similar to how @Unique has a completely different implementation on XPages than it does with legacy Domino design elements.

re: XPages: @DBLookupBig & @DbColumnBig

Mon, 12 Oct 2009 06:20:45 +0000

Author: Rob Goudvis
Comment: Why should there be a special @formula for this. Why not allow for more data to be returned in the existing @formulae? You could think of a new optional parameter that could limit your return size (like NotesDatabase.Search).

re: XPages: @DBLookupBig & @DbColumnBig

Wed, 14 Oct 2009 22:21:10 +0000

Author: Oliver Regelmann
Comment: I agree with Rob. The original formulas should get enabled to return more data.

re: XPages: @DBLookupBig & @DbColumnBig

Wed, 21 Oct 2009 13:28:35 +0000

Author: Erik Brooks
Comment: @1 & @2 - I thought I answered that? If you changed @DbColumn to return more data you'd potentially break all of the other design elements out there. At the very least they'd all be returning different error messages on large sets ("Formula is too large" instead of "@DbColumn returned more than 64K of data").

If they could rework the existing formulas, that'd be great. But what would likely be easier for IBM from an engineering and backwards-compatibility standpoint would be to add the new ones and surface those in the places (e.g. XPages) where they would work.

Or they could simply change @DbLookup / @DbColumn to "@V8DbLookup" and "@V8DbColumn" like they've done with other deprecated @Formulas.

re: XPages: @DBLookupBig & @DbColumnBig

Wed, 09 Feb 2011 08:30:57 +0000

Author: Tommy Valand
Comment: A little late to the party. I agree with the first two. In XPages, there's no 64k limit on components that I'm aware of, so there's no danger of destroying existing XPages applications if the "limit" was removed.

In formula, I would rather have a parameter for the limit, than having a new command to deal with.

e.g. [ReturnAll] or [NoLimit] (there's probably a better name)