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Chris Toohey

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    IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 7 now available

    xCopy - Local Archiving and File Copying Utility for Lotus Notes

    07/22/2008 12:28:25 PM | Chris Toohey | Bethlehem, PA

    I ran into a situation recently where I needed to start backing up my My Documents contents onto a network drive (which is a good idea of course). I wanted to do this as easily as possible, and without the headache. So I thought to myself that there HAD to be a way that I could schedule the execution of a simple batch file that I'd write that did this for me. After I wrote this - which took a few minutes, it's not doing anything outside of a simple xcopy command with some attributes - I thought to myself that there's an opportunity here for not only a configurable application but also a slick little sidebar application in Lotus Notes. A few hours later, I had xCopy v0.1, a pretty slick little utility. The hours came as the result of little UI tweaks, including something slick that I'm doing with the Transaction Logs Form Design Element, a nice little sidebar widget in the form of a Form Design Element, which showcases a configurable embedded frameset and "webby" tabbed-navigation. And like with Sorting Hat v0.1, I've added an About this Application element that includes an embedded Digsby chat so - from within the application - you can instant message the author (... me).

    xCopy is a simple configurable xCopy client for the Lotus Notes client. By creating and defining xCopy Profiles, you can batch process your file backup or remote upload jobs. With the addition of the xCopy sidebar widget, you can easily kick-off these jobs, and modify both the xCopy Profiles and xCopy itself.

    Have a Javascript Library that you want to easily maintain? Simply download your library updates, and your previously-defined xCopy Profile will incrementally update your Webdav-enabled Domino Application!

    It's simple, easy to use, and full of solid development examples!

    Download xCopy

    To "install" the sidebar, check out this quick tutorial on Creating Form Design Element Sidebar Widgets!

    Feedback/suggestions appreciated!


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    Comments

    Keith Brooks
    http://www.vanessabrooks.com
    07/22/2008 03:24:31 PM

    Chris,
    Can this do an archive within an archive of Notes? So if my archive is too large, I want cascading archives. Any thoughts? Email me or IM me if you do.


    Debbie Farley
    http://www.myblog-randomthoughts.blogspot.com/
    07/22/2008 03:45:15 PM

    Keith, that is a great idea. I have a user with a 16+ GB archive. I would love to use something to trim down that beast. So... if it can work like that I'd love it....


    Chris Toohey
    http://www.dominoguru.com
    07/25/2008 01:12:12 PM

    @Keith:
    This isn't so much a mail archiver, but a simply configurable application that runs an xcopy command from the system shell. There's nothing Notes about it outside of the configuration and client usage - in runs in the Lotus Notes client, but deals with files on or accessible via the system.

    Mind you, you COULD take xCopy and use it to update file resources in a WebDav-enabled database...

    @Debbie:
    Well - there's an issue with multiple archive files... and that's basically that you run into a "where the hell's that email" problem when you have 10 different archives of a single mail file.

    I'd initially recommend an e-vault solution, something that will store and allow restoration and searching of mail files, while allowing you to purge older email - knowing that the email is stored in a central storage engine that can be accessed should the need arise. It'll certainly help with the retention problem that the 16+ GB mail file users are facing (not to mention the performance impacts that presents, etc.).

    Now, I think a good idea for an application would be a configurable database query-and-store application that will allow you to define a set criteria, and run the query against a source application. Once you have a NotesDocumentCollection, it could copy or "move" those documents from the source database to a defined target database.



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