Richard: Why is the Server task such a black hole? It's very difficult to see what's taking all the processing.

Ed and Rob: Which server task are you referring to? There are many tasks that make up Domino load. The Server.load tool in the Domino product can help pinpoint issues on individual servers. Check out the Domino Performance site at http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/performance/ for many useful articles.

Richard: TCO seems to be aimed at IS running services. When are we going to get better customer end service TCO emphasis?

Ed and Rob: Notes client offers a variety of productivity enhancements that can translate directly into user TCO improvements. Industry reports which address all aspects of TCO are available at: http://www-306.ibm.com/software/swnews/swnews.nsf/featurestoriesFM?ReadForm&Site=software.

Richard: Why are there differences among the performance improvements of each platform? Are there platform implementations that are more beneficial than others?

Ed and Rob: We continue to tune Domino performance across the board, but also on specific platforms where we can identify specific opportunities. Overall performance gains are frequently the result of numerous small improvements.

The degree of improvement on some platforms depends on a variety of factors including, but not limited to: existing levels of scalability, how optimal was the existing version and how responsive the platform has been to the enhanced 7.0 version. It is not that one implementation is more effective or successful than another, but that applications run differently on various architectures and some platforms are better designed for some environments.

Wrapping it up
Finally, I asked Ed and Rob, "Is there anything else you'd like to tell the readers of DominoPower about ND7 that wasn't asked here?"

Ed and Rob: Not for now. Your readers covered a lot of important questions! We are really excited about getting Lotus Notes and Domino 7.0 into the hands of our customers. Although we might be a little biased, we truly believe that this will be the best release of Notes and Domino yet.

It will demonstrate significant opportunities for TCO and productivity improvements and reinforces IBM's commitment to these products and their critical role as part of the IBM Workplace family of products and solutions.

More questions
We very much thank Ed and Rob and the entire IBM team for all their support in getting our questions answered. We know this took a lot of there time during that period during product release when time is at the most precious. We wish IBM a fabulous R7 release and everyone connected with the project some extra hours of well-deserved sleep!

There may be an opportunity for another Q&A round. If these questions haven't slaked your thirst for R7 information, you're welcome to send us some more.

To have your question considered, it must be in the form of a single sentence. You also must send it to editor@ZATZ.com with "DOMINOPOWER INTERVIEW QUESTION" in the subject. Please make sure you get that subject exactly right, so our filters will know your message is meant to make it through.

Shabbir Tayeb Ali is a Systems Analyst with Cyber Internet Services (Pvt) Limited in Karachi, Pakistan (at http://www.cyber.net.pk). He can be reached via email at shabbir1@cyber.net.pk.