Moving views out of databases

You can move views out of Notes databases into separate view index files (.NDX files).

About this task

This feature is useful for large databases and provides the following benefits:

A smaller database file size, to avoid reaching the 64GB limitation.
Faster database backup and restore.

.NDX files have a limit of 1 TB. The real determination of how large the views can grow is based on application responsiveness or if any other limits are reached before the 1 TB .NDX file limit is reached.

Procedure

Enable transactional logging in the Server document in the Domino directory.
Add the following notes.ini setting on the IBM Domino server, then restart the server:
```
NIFNSFEnable=1
```
Optional: The .NDX files are stored in the Domino data directory, by default. To specify a different location, add the following notes.ini setting:
```
NIFBasePath=path
```
where path is an explicit or relative path. A relative path, for example, NIF, is relative to the Domino data directory. If the location is on a different computer, map the location to the local computer.
To use this feature, databases must be ODS version 51 or higher. To upgrade all databases to at least this version, add one of the following notes.in settings:
```
CREATE_R9_DATABASES=1
```
or
```
CREATE_R85_DATABASES=1
```
Enable the feature on specific databases:
To enable separate view indexes on an existing database, run the following compact command on the server:
```
load compact -c -nifnsf on xxxxx.nsf 
```
To enable separate view indexes on all databases created in the future, add the following notes.ini setting:
```
CREATE_NIFNSF_DATABASES=1
```
Restart the server.

What to do next

Use the following server console command to show all databases, whether they use separate view indexes (NIFNSF state ON), and if so the .NDX file size:

show dir -nifnsf

Use the following server console command to show only information about databases that use separate view indexes:

show dir -nifnsfonly

To disable separate view indexes on an database that currently uses them, run the following compact command on the server:

load compact -c -nifnsf off xxxxx.nsf