Setting Up Design Inheritance

When designing applications, you can distribute design modifications in one of three ways:

• Make modifications directly to the live database.

• Make modifications to the database template and manually replicate the design of the database.

• Make modifications to a master design template and manually refresh the design of the database or use the Design task to refresh the design of the database.

The third method is the most structured option for managing design modifications and the preferred method to control, track, maintain, and synchronize changes.

You typically set up design inheritance when a database is initially created or after a database has been created by modifying required parameters on the Design tab of the Database Properties dialog. When a database is created, you can optionally specify a template on which to base the design of the new database. If an existing template is selected (from either the user's local drive or from a specified server), all the design elements from the template are copied into the new database. Optionally, you can select the check box to Inherit Future Design Changes. If this option is selected, the new database is automatically set up to inherit future design changes made to the template when the design task runs on that server or when the database design is manually refreshed by the database designed or database manager.

Only database templates (files with an .ntf extension) located in the root directory of the server of the local data drive appear in the template database list when a new database is being created.

You can also set up design inheritance on an existing database by specifying the master template in the Design tab of the Database properties dialog. If the database was set up to inherit future design changes, as specified in the previous example, this will already be set up. Nevertheless, to set up a database to inherit its design from a master template, follow these steps:

The master template will have the option specifying Database File Is a Master Template selected. The Template Name field, located under this check box, must contain the same value as the template name field specified in the database inheriting its design. These values can be any text string that meaningfully describes the database. When the design task is run on the server or the database design is manually refreshed, all the databases on that server are searched until the master template is located. Then all modified design elements are updated in the database inheriting its design. If the master database cannot be found or the value entered in the template name is incorrect, the database design is not updated.

A new check box available with Domino/Notes 6 provides the capability to specify that the database inheritance occurs only on the admin server for that database. This is enabled by selecting the Refresh Design on Admin Server Only check box (the admin server is indicated on the Advanced tab of the database Access Control List dialog box). If this option is set, the database design is refreshed only on the replica copy that exists on the server specified as the Admin server for that database. However, the master template database must still exist on the same server as the database whose design is being refreshed. (Therefore, in this case the master template must also exist on the admin server.) Additional design inheritance settings are covered in Chapter 7, “Database Management.”