ESCAPE VELOCITY

1 - No idea how you would calculate the "size" of a Notes application. The size of the database is one factor, but with alot of documents, even a simple database can get "big".
We have a image database that is about 16 GB, but it only has one form and two or 3 views... The documents are only accessed from another database, where there are links to the images. That database is just 5 GB.

Our "main" application is much more complex, with tens of thousands of lines of code in a dozen or more script libraries. It has way too many views (about 100), 1.4 million documents (with another 700,000 in a separate database), close to 100 forms of different kind, and a number of agents. The application is replicated to 9 branch servers across the US, each replica filtered for just that branch. So the replicas used by the users are much smaller.

So which one is the biggest?

2 - It's conceptually simpler for the manager to have the platform solve the problem. Never mind the actual effort and cost compared to refactoring in place. Often, merely purchasing the new target platform or making the decision to migrate is rewarded. Any downstream negative ROI lands in someone else's column.

3 - heh. Yeah, I didn't even distinguish between byte size vs. doc count. Or lines of code. (I've yet to crack 7 figures, but I've definitely broken 100K lines of script in an app.)

One of the reasons I'm asking the general question is: if this Domino shop is so unhappy with "the world's largest Notes/Domino app," I'd love to hear why. What problems do they have? Are they associated with platform issues, or is it just bad Notes dev to start with?

I have seen some truly heinous Notes apps in my time that were very, very strategic. One customer had a system that managed music licensing on 6 continents and generated $2 billion in revenues annually, but wouldn't spend $25K to refactor the application to get rid of replication conflicts and the bright YELLOW v2 form backgrounds that it had been saddled with.

That kind of decision making completely baffles me. I am always looking to understand it better.

4 - It's rather simple actually in my opinion. Many C's aren't perceived as worth their pay unless they make big changes, such as a platform change. Imagine a new CIO sitting in a C meeting. They could say "we should just improve what we have" (to which everyone else says "why do we need to pay you to tell us that?"), or they can say "what we need to do is trash this piece of garbage sponsored by my predecessor, and go with this other thing (either what you think everyone else is doing right or this other technology that none of you can debunk because you haven't been working with it)", to which everyone says "wow, this guy knows his stuff!"

By the time their brilliant 3 to 5 year projects flop, they've moved on to screw up another company with a nice cash safety net.

5 - Of course, that sort of "churn" works in our favor also, making it easier to convince someone to replace their current application platform with Notes.

6 - I hope Shigeko isn't still dealing with that thing

7 - According to the project manager there when I corresponded with him about a year ago, the Domino based WebTycho student education program (the online classrooms) at the University of Maryland, University College is the world's largest Notes application.