Synchronizing databases with master templates

To use a consistent design for multiple databases, database designers can associate databases or elements within databases with a master template.

About this task

Designers can manually synchronize databases with a master template, but more often they rely on the Designer task to do this. When a master template design changes, the Designer task updates all databases that inherit their designs from the master template. The Designer task runs daily by default at 1 AM. The Updall task, which runs by default at 2 AM, updates the view indexes of databases changed by Designer.

For a server's Designer task to update databases, you must create a replica of the master template on each server that stores databases that inherit from the master template.

After updating database designs, the Designer task also reloads the LDAP schema on a Domino® server that runs the LDAP service.

You can run the Designer task against a specific database or folder.

Note: When views are being rebuilt -- either through the Designer or Updall tasks -- all new server sessions that are attempted once the rebuild process has started are locked out. Therefore, it is recommended that changes to master templates, as well as complete view rebuilds, be scheduled for late at night, when users are far less likely to require access to the server.

For more information on master templates, see the IBM® Domino® Designer 9.0.1 Social Edition Help.

You can run the Designer task by using one of the following methods.

Running the Designer task using the Task > Start tool

Procedure

  1. From the Domino® Administrator, select the server on which to run Designer.
  2. Click the Server > Status tab.
  3. In the Task pane, click Task > Start.
  4. Select Designer and then click Start Task.

Running the Designer task using a console command

Procedure

  1. From the Domino® Administrator, select the server on which to run the Designer task.
  2. Click the Server > Status tab.
  3. Click Console.
  4. Type load design in the Domino Command field and then press ENTER.

Example

Table 1. Command line options you can use with the Designer task
Command line option Description

-d directory name

Synchronizes the databases in a directory relative to the data directory. For example, to synchronize databases in the directory DATA\SALES, specify -d SALES.

-f filename

Synchronizes a specific database. For example, to synchronize the database DATA\SALES.NSF, specify -f SALES.NSF.

-i name

Synchronizes the databases specified by name, which can be a database, folder, or file name that contains a list of paths, each of which can be a database or a folder.

Table 2. Example of using the -i command line option

If the file SCHEDULE contains this

where

then load design -i SCHEDULE is the same as this

SALES

DEV

DEV\USER1.NSF

SALES is a directory and

DEV is a directory

load design -d SALES

load design -d DEV

load design -f DEV\USER1.NSF