I took the IBM Lotus Notes Domino Application Development Update Exam for Lotus Notes/Domino 7 this morning, and aced it! Since I also aced the Notes 6 Application Development Update exam four years ago, I now need to keep this streak of perfection going when I take the Notes 8 App Dev Update exam next year.

Why next year? Well, I essentially spent the last month and a half preparing for this exam, and I need a break. I also need to spend time on some other projects that have been on hold until I crossed off this item from my to do list.

To prep for this exam, I purchased the practice test from Self Test Software. I printed out all of the Flash Cards (except for those pertaining to DB2) and went through them several times. I also printed out the What's new in Domino Designer 7? documentation in the Lotus Domino Designer Help file and read that several times. Of all the new development topics, the ones that were hardest for me to retain were the new DXL methods and properties (CreateElementNodeNS, SetElementNodeNS...ugh!) and the elements in a WSDL file (<service>, <portType>, <binding>, etc.) I spent most of my time this week reviewing those topics to make sure I had them nailed down. For some advice on how you can prepare for this exam, click on the "Read More..." link below.

Now that I don't need to worry about upgrading my Notes certification for a while, I'm curious as to how many Lotus professionals still keep their certifications up-to-date. I used to hear about people getting their Notes R4 and R5 back in the day, but starting with LND6 I don't hear about it so much. Am I part of a dying breed who still feels that certifications, particularly Lotus certifications, are important?


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The Self Test Software practice test I purchased about two weeks ago includes questions on Domino and DB2 integration. These objectives aren't included in the Lotus Notes and Domino Recertification Guide, but I decided to learn more about it anyway to see if it would be beneficial to any of my clients. My colleagues and I have discussed implementing the DB2 option to potentially improve the database performance for one of our clients, so I thought that would be the focus of my research.

One article I've been reading was written by Gary Rheaume and Erin Dame of IBM, two of the people who worked on adding DB2 integration to Domino. This article, titled Expose Notes DB2 data to SQL access, was published over the past two years ago for The View. In this article, the authors make the following statement:

"The DB2 Access Table is the DB2 version of the View Collection object in traditional NSFs. In both cases, traditional internal views and DB2 views, we improve view performance by having a separate copy of the view data."

At first I thought that all Domino Data stored in DB2 is stored in a single DB2 Access Table, instead of the NSF way of building and maintaining a View Collection object for each view. But when I reread the above, I realized I misunderstood what the authors were trying to say.

Then I read the FAQ on DB2 and Domino 8 and was even more confused by this section:

Is DB2 store faster than NSF? It depends on the application. This is a very important point to consider. Not all Domino applications will run faster on DB2. It really does depend on the application itself. Do not just simply assume DB2 = faster performance. Do some investigations, pilots and planning first. Chose DB2 storage option when it delivers clear business value.

Hmm. So, does this mean that there may not be any performance improvement gained when converting your Notes database to use DB2 as the data store???

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I decided to buy the practice exam from Self Test Software. I used their ND6 upgrade practice exam years ago and aced that test, so I figured I'd stick with them. I did not pass my first attempt at the exam. I can't complain, though. I didn't study at all before taking the test.

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