This tip exploits an ancient weakness in the security model of Notes databases. It describes how to retrieve values in documents that a particular user does not have access to because they are protected with readers fields.
Code
To hide documents from users in a database a developer adds fields of type "readers". Unless a user is listed in the readers field or an author field on the document they cannot open the document. However field values of this document are still displayed in categorized views within the database. The categories can be accessed programmatically with @DBColumn and the NotesViewNavigator class.
Note: The user does need at least reader access to the database.
1) Create a lookup view and display the field that you would like to look up in a category. Be sure not to set the "Don't show categories having zero documents" property of the view.
You have two options to get to the values displayed:
2a) You create a lookup using @DBColumn which will retrieve the entire column. (@DbLookup returns "Server Error: Entry not found in index").
3a) If you'd like to get a result similar to a @DBLookup you need to resort to the LotusScript using the ViewNavigatorClass. Here is a sample button script that returns the lookup value in a field named "results":
On Click
Dim session As New NotesSession
Dim workspace As New NotesUIWorkspace
Dim db As NotesDatabase
Dim view As NotesView
Dim doc As NotesDocument
Dim uiDoc As NotesUiDocument
Dim navigator As NotesViewNavigator
Dim results() As String
Dim entry As NotesViewEntry
Dim count As Integer
Set uiDoc = workspace.currentdocument
Set doc = uidoc.document
Set db = session.CurrentDatabase
Set view = db.GetView("($All)")
Set navigator = view.CreateViewnavfromCategory(doc.LUValue(0))
If navigator Is Nothing Then
Exit Sub
End If
count = 0
Set entry = navigator.GetFirst
While Not entry Is Nothing
Redim Preserve results(count)
results(count) = entry.ColumnValues(1)
Set entry = navigator.GetNext(entry)
count = count + 1
Wend
doc.Results = results
End Sub
