Analyzing Domino Applications

By Steve Kern

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Using the Design Synopsis Dialog Box
• Using the Design Synopsis
• Teamstudio Analyzer

The purpose of analyzing your database design is to provide a research and documentation tool that enables developers and administrators to quickly locate information on the various design elements of an application. For example, you might want to find out whether you can eliminate an agent. To do so, you need to make sure that the agent is not launched by other agents or by buttons in views or forms. This chapter discusses two tools that provide the analysis you need: the Design Synopsis available in the Notes clients (both the Notes client and Domino Designer) and a third-party tool called Teamstudio Analyzer. With these tools, you can create searchable design synopses of your applications.

The Design Synopsis tool is the only method of generating information about the design elements of a database that is native to Lotus Notes and Domino. Early versions merely produced a listing of design elements in a window that you could then review, search, print, export, and so on. It was better than nothing, but it was very limited. Design Synopsis was significantly enhanced in Release 5. R5 added many options for generating information about the design of your applications and it also added the ability to direct the output of Design Synopsis to a document or to a database. In Designer 6, the Design Synopsis dialog box has changed, but the functionality is basically the same.

Although Design Synopsis is the only tool native to Domino, there is an alternative worthy of consideration: Teamstudio Analyzer. This tool produces very sophisticated and detailed analyses of databases that are then stored in a customizable Domino database. This database has views that drill down from the database level to the object level. More than one database can be included in a single Analyzer database. Like any other database, the Analyzer database can be full-text indexed and searched with ease, and you can even modify the design. You don't have to plod through the database design hoping you can find what you need. As an analysis tool, it simply cannot be beat.