How to Categorize like ebay

[DerStephan]

I have to build a document archive with the Domino Designer
It should be categorized in "ebay style"
in top categorie you can see all documents and the more you navigate in the less documents are displayed in the main frame

should this be solved with a view or with folders
or isn't this possible at domino designer at all??
Would it be easier with Aptrix?

I haven't found any example template or DB or any documentation on this issue.



regards

Stephan Hofmann

 

[pmonett]

Are you building this for use in a web client, or in the Notes client ?
If building for web, you might find a solution in the use of embedded views and a judicious use of category calculation.
If you are using a Notes client, I'm afraid the outlook is much more bleak. Categories are used to sort documents, but opening one is not supposed to remove documents from a view. Using folders will be a nightmare in an archive, since the code will have to go through all documents in the db and mark the ones to display in the folder, then work by successive removals from folder. Don't go that way.

 

[DerStephan]

thanks for your help

the problem is, that this solution should work on web and notes

but i'm now trying to solve it that way:

the categories are represented by OUTLINES!? and the links open 1) that view for the cotegories or better 2) open all the same view with different parameters to tell the view which documents to display

2) maybe:

click on outline "Hardware" sets global Variable "CurrentCat" to "Hardware"
the Documents have an attribut "Categorie".
A Document in the Folder
Hardware -> Network -> Hub
has the attribute "Hardware\Network\Hub"

and the view displays all Documents where(@Begins(Categorie,CurrentCat))

I suppose this would work, but I don't know how to set global client variables, or how to give a parameter to a view.

In a Formula Window:

dim TstVariable as string;
TestVariable = "Hallo";
If(TestVariable="Hallo";....;...)

give's me the else command !?!?!?!?

regards

Stephan Hofmann

 

[DerStephan]

I see I've mixed up Formula Language and Lotus Script

I've played a little bit with 2)

I tried it with
@SetEnvironment(CurrentCat;"Hardware&quot
and notes sais: You are not allowed to modify Environmental Variables

I tried it with
@SetProfileField("test";"CurrentCat";"Hardware";@UserName&quot
and he sais: Formulas withe side-effects are not allowed in this context.

What's the matter with passing a string to a view??????

 

[pmonett]

Okay, first things first. An outline is like a menu. It presents a list of options which the user can choose to view documents. Categories are used in views to class documents, and have nothing to do with outlines.
As for passing strings to a view selection formula, that is simply not allowed by Notes. You must understand that a view selection formula is somewhat like an SQL query that you cannot change unless you change the view. The only parameters a view selection formula accepts are centered around field values in the documents that are selected. No global parameter, environment variable or otherwise is accepted.
If outlines seem to be a solution, you can perfectly well use that, but be aware that each outline entry must correspond to a view or an action. That probably means that you are going to create a multitude of views with increasingly complex selection formulas. Those will get hard to debug and harder to maintain, besides the fact that the more views you have in a database, the larger it will get for a given quantity of documents.

Pascal.

 

[DerStephan]

I worked on this but without the ability for notes acces, so i'm building an agent that is called by each outline with an cgi-paramter (url), so each outline has in it's source only one line
the agent writes the parameter in a dummy document and calls finally the view
the view opens first the dummy document und reads the parameter and can now select the documents, so only one view is used.

I think thats more or less the only one possibilitiy besides userProfile ore environmental variables.
and the Databased should mainly be used via web interface.

I will try to finish this and then i will look at the performance and stability.

i would like to hear your opinon about this solution
i think it will work but the question is if it works fine.....

Regards

Stephan Hofmann

 

[WartookMan]

Stephan,

In your original posting, you mentioned Aptrix. Do you have access to it? It isn't meant to be used as a Document Management System, since it is a Content Management System package, but it can be used as one.

The biggest drawback of using a CMS as a DMS would be the indexing of attachments in the Full-Text Index and the size that the Index would bloat to. But by excluding attachments from your index, and writing either keywords or a description in the summary field of each document, you could effectively search for documents that way... keeping you Index small and the system fast!

Aptrix uses a category heirarchy exactly the same way you mentioned above:
Hardware -> Network -> Hub
...woud have a category list as:
"Hardware\Network\Hub"

Aptrix allows you to use "Current Category" or even "Descendants Only" or better still - both. I've been using Aptrix for the past 3 years and find it quite powerful as CMS packages go. I'm a consultant in both the Lotus Notes and the J2EE packages.

I realise that this was posted back in August, but have you managed a solution that is acceptable yet?

Cheers, Pete.