XPage gets signed by an ID used previously

Question

We use shared development Notes IDs for some databases because the application breaks immediately if one XPage is signed with different ID than others. You might also get

Error 403 HTTP Web Server: You are forbidden to perform this operation

like I just got.

The problem with using multiple IDs is that XPages get signed by wrong ID. When I switch ID and edit an XPage sometimes it (and occasionally other XPages) gets signed by the ID I used previously. When I select the XPage from the list after that and click the "Sign" button it is signed with the ID I'm using.

Anyone else fighting with this problem and found any solutions? I have been using Windows 7 and now Windows 8 and Designer 9. I think this is quite serious bug.

Answer 1

Turn off Build Automatically. I also have found that to effectively switch IDs I have to shut down and restart Notes using the second ID.

Answer 2

Different IDs signing design elements is only really a problem if you use sessionAsSigner. If a webpage uses components signed by different IDs, sessionAsSigner then just gives up because it doesn't know which signer to use. In SSJS it throws an Error 500, in Java it works for a while but you may find your server crashes.

When I'm working on an application with another developer, my preference is to work on a standalone copy and either use source control to merge changes across or manually merge using Package Explorer's "Compare With > Each Other..." option. Selecting the XPages node in each database and comparing with each other is a reasonable alternative to source control for transferring changes back to a core template, once I'm happy with my feature change.

Cameron Gregor has been doing some work on an OpenNTF project called Dora to avoid source control thinking traditional Domino design elements have been updated when they've just been accessed or signed. Sean Cull has done quite a bit of documentation on source control in Domino as well.