With 55 million seats worldwide, Domino is one of the most effective platforms for developing and deploying messaging and web applications, allowing new communities of developers to enjoy its collaborative capabilities. The release of R5 has taken collaboration to the next level and made Domino easier to use than ever before. For example, with Lotus Domino R5 you can centrally modify client configurations instead of hopping from one terminal to the next throughout the company. And the new Domino Administrator interface enables you to visually monitor the health and status of the Domino servers in your network from a single screen.
However, sometimes it seems that Lotus Domino doesn't get the respect it deserves. The R5 release has been out now for nearly a year and a half, and the latest release announced is 5.04a. The platform is mature, and corporations are currently upgrading or planning to upgrade to the current version. And Domino is holding its own as the leading groupware server product despite intense competition from Microsoft with Exchange.
The new features of R5 are well-documented, but I'll discuss some of the new functionality planned for Domino in this article:
Windows 2000 certification and integration. Windows 2000 was considered a supported platform with the 5.0.3 release, but it has still not undergone sufficient testing for Lotus to consider it a certified platform. This certification process will help put IT managers at ease because it ensures that Lotus tech support won't recommend that customers change operating system platforms later if problems occur. In many cases, the current Domino/Windows integration features make use of NT 4.0 compatibility built into Windows 2000, so a later release should interoperate with Active Directory natively.
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Additional XML support. XML has actually been built into R5 since day one. But its implementation has been hidden. When it renders a view into HTML and uses the new java applets to display the data, Domino uses XML internally to pass the data between the Domino server and the Java applet in the client browser. However, since R5 it took several point releases for Lotus to add methods so developers can access Domino database content. Currently, only view entries and access to specific documents within a Domino database (called "Notes") can be accessed via XML. Lotus is excited about the possibilities of XML, and will be making further enhancements to allow more access to Domino database content via XML.
iNotes. Announced in January at Lotusphere, iNotes is the new strategy for enhanced usability for Domino clients that do not use Lotus Notes. iNotes addresses the user resistance to using Lotus Notes instead of Microsoft Outlook and also enhances the existing browser support that Domino has provided since version 4.5. Using technology borrowed from Lotus Quickplace, iNotes enables browser users to download the contents of a Domino database, work with it offline, then later reconnect to the Domino server and replicate the data changes to the server. This process requires some small additions to the Domino database application design for custom applications. (These additions have already been added for Domino user mail databases.)
Currently, iNotes for browser clients is available as a separate download called Domino Off-Line Services (DOLS), although this should soon be part of the base Domino product. iNotes for Microsoft Outlook 98 and 2000 is currently in its second beta release and is expected to be released later this year. This will reportedly only require administrators to complete a single configuration form, so each user will only need to complete three mouse clicks to configure each client. Then each user will work with their mail and calendaring in Outlook in the same way they would with Exchange.
Websphere Integration.Websphere is a suite of IBM Java-application-server products that has some functionality overlap with Domino. The current plan is to increase the integration between the two products. Originally there were rumors that Domino would become merged with the Websphere product range, but the plan is to keep the two as separate products. Domino 5.0.4 included some new Java classes that allowed Websphere java programs on different servers to access Domino server objects. Future Websphere versions will include support for LotusScript (the BASIC-like programming language used in Domino and other Lotus products) to create server pages, single sign-on for both products, and will also share a common security and directory scheme.
Raven. "Raven" is the code word for the forthcoming Lotus Knowledge Management product, which will use Domino and DB2 (IBM's relational database product) to host and classify information from Domino databases, file systems, or HTML web pages. Clients then can use the IE 5.x browser to access their own customized portal site hosted on a Domino server that contains information of interest to that user. This is currently in beta and is expected to be released next year. Various trade publications are already excited about the possibilities this will bring to the field of Knowledge Management.
So in summary, although this is a mature technology with a large installed base, there are a lot of new goodies for us to get excited about. If you haven't already, you might want to check it out. You can register for and download a demo version of Domino.
Greg Neilson has over 11 years of IT experience. He has worked with Lotus Notes/Domino since 1993 and has deployed it on various platforms, including Windows NT, OS/2, AS/400, AIX, Solaris, and Linux. He is certified as an CLP Domino R5 Principal System Administrator and a CLP Domino R5 Principal Application Developer. He also has an MCNE and MCSE+I. Currently, he works as a senior notes architect for a large IT services company in Australia and is a contributing editor for Microsoft Certified Professional magazine. And is he working as part of the Domino Support team at the upcoming Sydney Olympics. He has also written about Domino for magazines such as Microsoft Certified Professional magazine, Windows NT magazine, IIS Administrator newsletter and NEWS/400 Magazine.
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