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I attended an IBM CommonStore session today, thoughts on it


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It was a simple 2 hour presentation sponsored by an IBM BP who got their 5 minutes of talk and then the IBM Solutions Specialist took over.  In  the room was only about 8 people, 1 of which had Exchange.  The remainder was Domino.  The first hour and fifteen minutes was all about what it could do, some component slides, blah blah blah.  We asked a few questions as it went along, but waiting for the demo was the key.

Ok, so the first part of the demo was Outlook and Exchange.  He was using VMWare to show the servers and clients running all together.  I paid attention but that is not what you are here for.  We took a quick 5 minute break while he loaded the Domino VMWare to show us that.

  • Template modifications are necessary to add the necessary action buttons and menu items.  Not a big deal overall but he stated they stay about 6 months behind major Domino releases so nothing for 7 yet
  • You have the ability to grab just attachments or the whole body to archive off.  You can also specify certain parameters based on date/time/size of message/size of attachments/etc/etc to grab for archiving.
  • You have the choice to leave the small stub in your mailfile and then retrieve from there.  Or remove the stub and use the CommonStore interface to get it back.  This runs from a web browser over SSL (we were told and saw it looking for SSL requests in the background on a console)
  • New icons are used to designate that the message was moved to archive.  I took issue with the icon choice since in Domino 7, that same icon appears in the lower right of your client (between the access icon and IM component) to let you know that messages are signed or encrypted.
  • Signatures on all emails get broken since the document is opened, things deleted, lines added and then it is saved.  So you get the old error that document might have been modified or corrupted since last signed

I could go on for some time just explaining, but if you have an archive policy setting that works with some journaling of all or based on subject/sender then you have a lot of what this does.  Yes there are some features and benefits that revolve around compliancy.

Now another thing should be noted is that they push the idea of Single Copy Object Store heavily in numerous slides and conversation points.  We all know the old versions of SCOS in Domino were not the best, but they touted it like Domino cannot do ti either.  Interestingly enough it was pointed out that with archiving, journaling and SCOS in Domino you have all of what they have in databases that are still searchable.  In reality, unless you have some strict recoding/archiving needs (SEC, HIPPA, S/O) then all you are doing is pushing the mail onto yet another machine that needs backup, maintenance and management.  The product will hit mailboxes on most platforms, but only runs itself on Windows and AIX.  So all of you that invested in iSeries to get away from Windows, break out the old hardware and add tons of disk space.