Replication tuning for mobile users

Notes R5 Technical Overview

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"We're trying overall to reduce the need for users to know information that the system should already know, like which server is needed."

"One of the things we're looking at is a replica directory mechanism, which will allow us to ask the server where there are copies of a replica and then order them in proximity."

"We're still the leaders in data access from a mobile perspective and, of course, we want to retain that lead."

"Overall, we try not to think of mobility, or the mobile user as a feature or as an afterthought, but rather, as an integral part of what Notes is and does."

[Editor's Note: To learn more about Notes R5 mobile user features, check out the discussion with Doug in the Developer Spotlight.]

With mobile features like location profiles, and off-line directory replication and Web browsing, the Notes 4.6 mobile client is already in a league of its own. And it's Doug Conmy's job to keep it that way. Having implemented lots of the mobile features in the last couple of releases -- like the replicator page and stacked replicas -- he's now looking at how to improve the life of the traveling user in the upcoming R5.

Where did your work on Notes for remote users begin?
Just after Release 3.0, we really began to attack the issue of making more options for remote use available to the user, and we started to give them much more usability. For example, we had background replication in Release 3.0, but not much in the way of a GUI to make it easily accessible. We didn't have server passthru capabilities at that point, so performing background replications for remote users involved generating multiple phone calls, which wasn't very efficient. Also, there was no location management capabilities, so changing phone numbers was a hassle.

The first thing we did was create the replicator page, which we thought of as a kind of script of things you'd want Notes to do to synch up your database replicas. And that script could change from location to location, so when you're in the office, you might synch everything you have on your laptop. Then, when you're on the road, you might just want to retrieve your mail and get a couple of important documents, maybe not the entire documents but just partial documents. So we had to give people that level of control by being able to vary their remote experience from location to location and then take advantage of server passthru, so the user would only need to dial into a single server.

What's a stacked replica?
In Notes, through replication, you can have multiple copies of the same database, either on different servers or on your laptop. Prior to Notes Release 4, each database was represented by a single icon so that the user had to make a concerted effort to use a particular copy of the database. That seemed unnatural, so in Release 4, we started doing what we call "stacked replicas," in which we default to a logical choice and the user can pick which database they want to use.

In R5 we'll go farther than that. The average user will either pick a local copy or a server copy, and they won't have to worry about which server they're using. Notes will pick a copy on one server and fail over and fail back, as needed, plus, we'll allow the administrator to have some control over that process as well.

What's the purpose?
We're trying overall to reduce the need for users to know information that the system should already know, like which server is needed. It's similar to when you go to a particular site on the Web, which might actually involve hitting a cache at your company, or you may be on just one of several copies of a particular page on the site. But users don't really care about that as long as they're getting at the data they need and it's up-to-date.

So, we want to eliminate the same kind of unnecessary decision making. At the same time, there may be some power users who want to still have that level of control. So we want to have an advanced option where they can pick servers at the name level.



So the goal is to minimize user involvement and complexity?
Right. There's not a lot the average user needs to know about how Notes collects servers in a clustered environment, for example.

What else is planned for R5?
Well, one of the things we're looking at is a replica directory mechanism, which will allow us to ask the server where there are copies of a replica and then order them in proximity. So listed first would be the one you can get to the quickest, say the one on your same network, rather than one that's over a LAN connection, or on a slow server, or whatever.

Again, it's about taking the burden off the user to find information. We'll get it from the Notes infrastructure, which already has that information, albeit in a scattered way, and then bring it all together to help people quickly find things.

Part of the work we're doing is smoothing out that process. For example, in Release 4.0, if you got a doclink to a database and you couldn't find it because perhaps you'd never used that database before, Notes would ask you "Which server do you want me to look on?" And you'd go, "huh?" The user should just say "I want it," and the system, which already has all the information it needs, should get it for you.

Is the replica directory transparent to the user?
It can be. You can think of the replica directory as kind of analogous to the Public Address Book because, in the same way you want to find people without knowing much about them, you can find information without knowing where it specifically is. So, for example, in Notes a doclink is a mechanism for a user to point other users to a particular document in a database. It contains an identifier, called a replica ID, that uniquely identifies where that document can be found, anywhere in the world. The replica directory will transparently locate the closest copy of the replica, and open the document when the user wants to view the information.

What about improvements to off-line Calendar and Scheduling?
That's another area we want to keep improving. I implemented the freetime dialog, which allows users to query the availability of other people as well as rooms and resources, and then allows them to see the information graphically offline.

In R5, we want to tell you more information. For example, when you pick a meeting time, we'll tell you who can make the meeting, and then allow you to look at the data in a couple of different ways. Right now, you can look at it by week, or in detail by person each day. We'll add things like people who can make it, people who cannot, and people it wasn't able to find. That's going to get rid of a lot of scrolling back and forth, as well.

Also, we're working on helping the traveling user to be more efficient. Now, for example, we can adjust for time zones, but we don't clearly indicate when someone might not be geographically in the same place. In R5, we'll add the concept of place of user. This will add travel information that may change the information read by the system. So if someone is going to be located in some other place when freetime is queried, there will be information there to account for changes in location.

So, will R5 be a flying leap forward for mobile users or an incremental improvement?
I'd say it's a progressive change. We're still the leaders in data access from a mobile perspective and, of course, we want to retain that lead.

Do you think mobile users in general have caught up with and are using the current technology to its full capability?
I'd say there's a lot of technology that we're trying to get to the point where it's useful to your everyday user. If we can automate more things, we can be most successful. For example, things like selective replication are very powerful features, but the typical user doesn't understand it or doesn't know how to get there. And administrators are saying they'd like to be able to control that process and set more things up for the user. So, we're thinking and working along those lines.

What about simplifying things for mobile application designers?
Definitely. One way to simplify things for the mobile user is to give tools to the designer and administrator so that they can make default settings for the mobile user of a database. If the local database's settings and selective replication information could be controlled centrally and easily, the typical end-user could bring databases on the road by just saying, "Make me a copy of this," and not having to do anything else. All choices and options could automatically be made for them. Going even further, a particular database could be marked as mobile so that the database would automatically be created for the user without their intervention. We can do a lot of this today, we're just thinking of ways to make things easier by removing the complexity of getting everything setup. So, we'll see more little steps that take the burden of having to know what to do off the user.

Are you constantly at odds with making it easy for the user, but powerful for the programmer?
That's always the battle as a programmer to say "Hey, there's a really cool thing I can do," but the user needs the power without the complexity, and if you can give it to them, then it's Nirvana.

Will we see Notes for the mobile user change fundamentally in R5?
Well, yes, in that the UI experience is going to be very different. It's going to seem closer to the browser experience in the way you can browse through information, see a of history of what you looked at, easily bookmark things -- either information you've seen in a Notes document or on a Web site.

And the ability to work remotely with Notes is going to be even more melded with the Web, so you can bring down information from either Notes databases or the Web without having to think of them as two different things.

It sounds like life for the user will get a lot easier.
The whole direction of the R5 UI is about simplifying things for the 90 percent of the people who are going to be using the client. That means fewer menu choices for the typical user, paring it down to the essential stuff users need to do their jobs, and less options with more real estate to see what they really care about.

How do mobile issues change how you design features?
For most features, we try to keep the connected experience and the mobile experience as close as possible. But we always need to take a step back and ask how something might work for the mobile user, or how would it impact them.

We realize that the mobile user's environment has unique challenges that we need to help them overcome. One is that they are only occasionally connected, and when they are, it is at slower speeds than a network. Second, a typical laptop configuration will always be constrained for space when compared to a desktop counterpart. We are looking at ways that we can make more efficient use of the limited resources by reducing our mobile disk footprint, and by more efficiently using space in databases on the local hard drive.

Overall, we try not to think of mobility, or the mobile user as a feature or as an afterthought, but rather, as an integral part of what Notes is and does.

BIOGRAPHY
Doug has been with Iris since September of 1991. For Notes Release 4, he helped refine Notes for remote use, the focus of this interview. Recently, he has focused his energies on Calendar and Scheduling in the latest release of Notes. Before joining Iris, Doug worked at Wang Labs which he joined straight out of college. In his off-hours, Doug enjoys skiing, traveling and spending time with his 3 year old daughter, Kaitlyn.

Copyright 1997 Iris Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.