Daniel Nashed's Blog

Upgrading ODS for databases with old DB class in Domino 9

When you create a database for example with the extenson .ns7 the ODS will be ODS43 instead of ODS51.
This kind of trick was used in earlier days and was to ensure that an older ODS was used when really needed.
What this causes is that the DB class of the database instance is set to that version.
And you cannot use a copy style compact to change this database to the new ODS -- even you rename the extension back to ".nsf".

The only way to change the database class and ODS was to create a new replica.

In Domino 9 there is a new compact switch "-upgrade".


"-upgrade Upgrade databases created with older DB classes to the most recent class."

This switch upgrades the DB class to a general DB (DBCLASS_NOTEFILE)

#define        DBCLASS_NOTEFILE                        0xff01
...
#define        DBCLASS_V6NOTEFILE                        0xff10
#define        DBCLASS_V8NOTEFILE                        0xff11
#define        DBCLASS_V85NOTEFILE                        0xff12

Some C-API based applications have created databases with specific DB classes and run into the same issue.

With this new compact switch you can change the ODS for those databases quite easy.
This even works when you don't change the extension of the file. But for best practices you should rename the file anyway.


So a compact -C -upgrade help/ will upgrade all your help databases to the new ODS.
Some of the help databases have an old DB classe and a normal compact will not bring them to the new ODS.

you can verify this via the "show dir" command:

sh dir help

DbName                                Version Log  DAOS  PIRC  ---Modified Time----
/local/notesdata/help/lsxlc.nsf        V5     Yes   No    Off  05.04.2013 22:38:45
/local/notesdata/help/lccon.nsf        V5     Yes   No    Off  05.04.2013 22:38:54
/local/notesdata/help/help9_designer.nsf V8     Yes   No    Off  05.04.2013 22:39:10
/local/notesdata/help/help9_client.nsf V8     Yes   No    Off  05.04.2013 22:39:11
/local/notesdata/help/help9_admin.nsf  V8     Yes   No    Off  05.04.2013 22:39:11
/local/notesdata/help/decsdoc.nsf      V5     Yes   No    Off  05.04.2013 22:38:43

This can be quite helpful. I know that also an anti-virus vendor hat issues with databases created with the wrong DB class.

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