Other lotus. What is Lotus Domino and Notes and how do they work? but on the other hand

Andrey Akopyants

Our shortcomings are an extension of our virtues
Folk wisdom...

Almost all experts in information technology heard about Lotus Notes (LN) but relatively few have dealt with it in practice. As a result, there is a catastrophic lack of objective information on Lotus. All available publications about this product are in the form of brochures or datasheet excerpts.

Where there is no objective information, it is replaced by myths. Now in Russia, Lotus is promoted mainly as a system for organizing corporate document management, although in reality this is not entirely true. Opinions about this product are polar - some present it as a panacea for all diseases of corporate automation, others do not even want to hear about it.

At the same time, the real significance of Lotus Notes for the corporate market is extremely high. Many large Russian companies are now on the verge of choosing a corporate information environment, and Lotus is one of the main contenders for this. Therefore, it seemed important to me to tell what LN really is, what problems it solves and what problems it creates.

I've had this idea for a long time, reading descriptions and asking friends. The final impetus for me was an acquaintance with the former head of IT of a very large bank, who told about some of the features of the operation of LN that he had to face.

A bit of history

Lotus has been a pioneer in many areas of the software business. Now many do not remember this, but at the very beginning of the 90s, "Lotus 1-2-3" was synonymous with a spreadsheet - it simply did not have worthy competitors ... The mail program "CC-mail" remained the best corporate mail system until the middle 90s.

There were no analogues of the LN released in the late 80s - they had to come up with a separate term for it - "GroopWare" (providing teamwork). It was the first and for a long time the only system that really allows to provide quick creation a single information space of the company and a system of corporate communications.

The triumphal procession of LN lasted almost ten years, and its main users were large and medium-sized corporations. Not surprisingly, IBM, which traditionally serves the Top 1000 of world business, showed interest in Lotus, and eventually bought this company in the bud. So now Lotus is a division of IBM, which has retained some independence, and the trademark "Lotus".

Now, however, only Lotus Notes has really remained on the market from the entire Lotus product line - the rest of the office applications have practically died, unable to withstand competition with Microsoft Office . And Lotus Notes has not just remained, but is actively moving forward - at least in the Russian market.

Lotus Notes - what is it?

talking in simple terms, LN is such a hybrid of DBMS and postal system, which has a number of interesting features. There are also a number of opportunities for organizing structured communication - forums, calendars, etc.

The main feature of the Lotus database is its focus on storing large poorly structured documents and collective work with them. Collective work means the ability of several people to edit the same record (document) at the same time. Accordingly, the versioning apparatus and the ability to track changes made by individual users are supported. In addition to texts, Lotus database records can contain an arbitrary number of user-configurable details different types. Moreover, setting up the composition of the details is quite simple and feasible for end users. Documents in the database can link to each other (something like web hypertext links), and by clicking on a link in the text of a document, you can open another document.

LN implements a sophisticated user rights management system that allows you to assign rights to individual users and their groups both on databases and on documents and their individual fields. It also supports document authentication using electronic signature- i.e. when placed in the database, the created or modified document can be signed by the signature of the employee who worked with it.

The mail program and other applications (forums, scheduling, etc.) are built on top of this very document storage system. Address books, folders with letters, calendars, etc. are also entries in the database, and all common mechanisms apply to them - versions, support for teamwork, etc.

Another basic mechanism, first implemented in Lotus Notes, is replication - i.e. the ability of LN servers to synchronize their databases, send documents to each other in their free time from their main work. Thus, it is possible to work in a geographically distributed environment with slow communication channels, when each employee works with his nearest server (that is, quickly), and, say, at night these servers synchronize their databases.

Naturally, the possibility of developing specialized applications in the LN environment is provided. For this purpose, a programming language (Lotus script) is built into the system, which opens access to the system's API, and allows you to create fairly complex applications. You can also develop applications for Lotus in more traditional Java & JavaScript, which also has object libraries to work with the Lotus API.

but on the other hand

Lotus is an extremely functional system with an elegant architecture that really allows you to create a common information environment in a large company with many offices in different cities and countries. And in this capacity, for almost ten years, he had practically no competitors. During this time, it has gained well-deserved popularity - according to official data, about 700 companies from the Top 1000 of world business use it.

But times are changing... And what was yesterday's advantages, today often becomes disadvantages that cause a fair amount of headaches for users and support services.

Lotus Notes is a functionally closed system that provides the user with all the tools he needs - text editor, mail program, system scheduling etc. And while the user uses Lotus applications for these purposes, everything is very convenient and good.

But today, a significant part of users prefer to use office applications from other companies - for example, Microsoft, which have become the de facto standard today. It is possible to store "foreign" files in the Lotus document repository, but as soon as we start using MS Word together with Lotus, it immediately turns out that half of all the charms that were when working with the built-in LN editor are lost.

But problems are added - special procedures for export-import. Not to mention the fact that the ergonomics of Lotus applications leaves much to be desired - at least when switching to them from Microsoft products.

Another feature that has shown its downside is replication, combined with a general resource requirement. The head of the IT department of a large bank that I mentioned, which had more than 2,000 jobs on LotusNotes, recalled how they had hours of replication between cool servers over dedicated fiber (which means that people could not receive urgent documents sent to them for approval for hours.

And the need for many servers arose due to the fact that single servers could not cope with the load, since LN, due to its integration, is very demanding on server resources. And when they ended up rewriting the app to MS SQL, it turned out that all users are calmly "pulled" by one not the coolest server, and the bandwidth of the channels (which was not enough for replication) is quite enough for normal remote work of users.

With large volumes of the database, the "birth injury" of Lotus Notes also appears - its data storage system does not support a number of things that are the standard for modern DBMS and absolutely necessary for the functioning of real automation systems.

• First, the Lotus Notes database does not support transactions - ie. coordinated changes to multiple tables performed as a single entity. Those. if, for example, an application running on a client managed to modify one record, but did not have time to another, and "fell" (for example, the light turned off), then in the LN database the modified record will remain as such, while in all modern DBMS in In such a situation, the server will roll back to its initial state. Because of this, it becomes problematic to maintain the integrity of large databases on LN.
• Secondly, as we said above, LN supports the ability to link documents. But at the same time, there is no referential integrity control in it - you can safely delete the document that someone links to, and a "dangling" link is formed. Naturally, there are no more advanced integrity control mechanisms - such as constraints in relational databases.
• And finally, thirdly, unlike modern relational DBMS, where indexing of a record occurs when it is placed in the database, in LN indexing is a separate process that occurs asynchronously.

Complements the picture of operational "charms" "fat" client (not just thick, but very thick) with a large client-server traffic and an application development environment that requires rare and therefore expensive programmers.

Lotus notes users also complain about the laboriousness initial installation and settings, and, much more seriously, a large number of critical errors for work, including in the security system, which are very slowly corrected by the developer company.

Lotus as a document management system

But maybe Lotus is so good as a document management system that all of the above can be ignored? Indeed, LN has one big plus in this capacity - it allows you to quickly create a corporate document repository and provide basic procedures for working with it.

But along with this, he also has a big drawback - that, apart from this, Lotus itself can do nothing more. Those. it is possible to make a layout using the basic Lotus tools, but it is impossible to implement a full-fledged corporate document management system that meets the requirements of the State Standards. Saying - "For office automation we will buy Lotus Notes" - is the same nonsense as "For office automation we will buy MS SQL". You must either develop the system using LN as a tool, or buy a custom solution.

The advantage of LN as a development environment is the presence of a number of built-in mechanisms for working with documents. We talked about the disadvantages above - expensive developers, outdated data storage technology and difficulties in integrating with other systems.

In general, it turns out that with a somewhat lower labor intensity, the development time for an application system based on Lotus does not differ from similar developments based on, say, MS SQL And Visual Basic, and the cost (including licenses and expensive developers) can significantly exceed. Not to mention the fact that the operational properties of systems based on LN, such as reliability and efficiency, are noticeably worse than those of solutions based on full-fledged DBMS.

There are specialized solutions for organizing office work on Lotus in the Russian market. The most common systems are the development of the company Intertrust - "Office Media", the system "Boss-referent" from IT and "Cinderella" developed by the Moscow Development Institute, and a number of other systems.

But they cost extra money to Lotus Notes itself, they are not finished products, but rather "semi-finished products". According to experts, their functionality and performance characteristics are also inferior to systems implemented on the basis of full-fledged DBMS and operating in the Microsft Office environment, such as Delo from Electronic Office Systems, LanDocs from Lanit, Optima Workflow from Optima.

Conclusion

And yet, why, with all of the above, is Lotus Notes quite popular with IT managers and continues its expansion into large Russian companies?

Apparently there are two main reasons.

• First, opportunistic - image considerations - such as "we have everything, like the leaders of Western business - that's Lotus Notes worth it."
• Second, LN creates the illusion of a quick solution. With relatively little effort, you can get a visible result and solve a layer of the simplest tasks. And the fact that it will be very difficult to develop this solution further - by that time either the business will die, or the IT manager will change ...

The active direct marketing policy of IBM partners should also not be discounted.

What are the prospects for this product in the market? Those who have exploited hundreds and thousands of LN jobs for many years will most likely never give it up - at least until the next Y2K-level cataclysm. Simply because the costs of switching to something else will be too high - the problems that arise are easier and cheaper to solve within its framework ...

But it seems to me that in modern conditions Lotus Notes is already moving into those deep market troughs where the Loch Ness monsters, IBM mainframes and Cobol live. Lotus will live there forever, but it doesn't make much sense for companies choosing solutions for themselves now to bet on Lotus Notes.

In any case, you need to clearly understand that Lotus Notes is not just one of the systems used by the company. This is a whole world in which you need to immerse yourself completely, while moving away from the mainstream, which today, whether we like it or not, is still a component architecture based on Microsoft solutions.

Robustly secure, full-featured collaboration application environment for midsize business needs

IBM Domino Collaboration and Messaging Express software provides a highly secure, full-featured application environment for Email and a wide range of business and collaboration applications. It is packaged and priced to meet the needs of midsize businesses and is supported on a wide range of platforms and operating systems. Three offerings for SMBs up to 1,000 users that provide email, scheduling, and instant messaging capabilities and support a wide range of business applications - Lotus Domino Messaging Express, Lotus Domino Collaboration Express, and Lotus Domino Server Express.

IBM Lotus Notes(Also Lotus Notes, Lotus Notes/Domino) is a software product, a platform for automating the joint activities of working groups (Groupware). Manufactured by IBM Lotus Software, part of the IBM Software Group.

2018: Notes/Domino passes to HCL Technologies (India)

HCL Technologies, headquartered in Noida, India, will acquire software assets worth $1.8 billion from IBM, according to a December 7, 2018 announcement. The companies have already agreed to sell eight applications to HCL Technologies, including the iconic product like Notes/Domino.

Upon completion of the transaction in the first half of 2019, HCL Technologies will also become the full owner of the Appscan , BigFix , Unica, Commerce products targeted at the e-commerce and human resources markets.

As of December 2018, the parties are intellectual property partners in five of these applications.

The reasons why IBM decided to transfer its developments to a third-party company were not disclosed.

Notes is a software package designed to automate the collaboration of workgroups. This is a whole range of software solutions, which includes, among other things, e-mail tools, an instant messaging system and an application for working with group calendars. The platform exists in versions for Microsoft Windows, Linux and Apple Mac OS.

The second equally significant IBM product, which in six months will become the property of HCL Technologies, is Domino, the server part of Notes. Domino also includes a number of services, including a database management system, a directory server, and mail.

IBM's transfer of ownership of its software products to India's HCL Technologies does not mean the corporation is in trouble. On the contrary, 2018 was productive for her: in March 2018, she introduced a tiny microchip that supports blockchain technology, and at the end of October 2018 she acquired Red Hat for $34 billion.

2012

IBM Notes/Domino - Social Edition 9.0

As Ed Brill, Director of Product Line Management for Collaborative Solutions at IBM, wrote in his blog, according to a survey, 2/3 of IBM Business Partners plan to implement a new release within the first three months of its release.

The commercial version of Notes/Domino Social Edition 9.0 will be released in the first quarter of 2013.

IBM is burying the Lotus brand

The release is also notable for being the first time the system is to join IBM's corporate-branded product line without using the Lotus name, Brill said. The system name Lotus has been used by the blue giant since IBM was taken over by Lotus Development Corporation in 1995.

IBM previously reported that the next release of Notes/Domino would be 8.5.4, but the amount of changes to the system was so significant that it was decided to give the release a serial number of 9.0.

One of the new features of the system will be the ability to run some Notes applications in an unmoderated manner through browsers on Windows PCs, so that businesses do not need to install the full Notes client to work.

The update will also include a redesigned user interface, new mail and calendar features, SAML (Security Assertion Markup Language) support, a number of enhancements to the XPages development platform, and much more.

Notes/Domino Social Edition was first announced at Lotusphere 2012 and took about a year to develop. The first limited beta code was demonstrated in April 2012. Businesses that are interested in beta testing can register.

According to the plan, a full release of the system will be released in the first quarter of 2013.

2009

Platform Benefits

()

• the possibility of creating geographically distributed systems;
• open architecture, mechanism for application development;
• the ability to work mobile and offline users;
• support modern technology traffic-minimized replication, allowing users to work efficiently even when there is no network access;
• built-in instant messaging;
• integrability with other information systems (compatibility with IBM DB2, Oracle, Sybase, MS SQL, ODBC data types);
• document-oriented databases - the ability to work with any type electronic documents, including unstructured data;
• IT infrastructure security - a multi-level security model that can be configured from the server level to the level of an individual field in a document;
• platform independence - the Domino server runs on various operating systems (Windows NT, OS/2, Unix, Linux, iSeries).

Description

Positioning

Lotus Notes is a platform for building applications for automating management and documentary processes. A feature of the system is an object-oriented architecture, thanks to which it is possible to create information systems, automating work with complex structured data and non-formalized dynamic processes. The software product contains only basic functions that allow you to organize the work of distributed workgroups and create process automation applications, therefore Lotus Notes it is incorrect to consider it a complete system for automating the activities of an enterprise (just as, for example, MS SQL Server cannot be considered an accounting system). Lotus Notes is a platform for such applications. Systems electronic document management and other complete solutions on the platform Lotus Notes/Domino developed and distributed by third party software vendors.

Terminology

Full official product name: IBM Lotus Notes/Domino.

IBM has used the following terminology since 1996:

• notes- client workstation software.
• Domino- server software.

Up to and including version 4.5, the name "Domino" was used for a separate application that added web server functionality to the Notes server. With the release of version 4.6 in 1996, the web server functionality was included with the Notes server. The server changed its name from "Notes server" to "Domino server".

Starting from version 5.0 client side Lotus Notes consists of three parts:

• IBM Lotus Notes Client - workplace user
• IBM Lotus Domino Designer- application developer workplace Lotus Notes(programmer)
• IBM Lotus Domino Administrator- workplace system administrator Lotus Notes.

Main functions

Main functions included in the basic package Lotus Notes/Domino version 7.0.2:

• group activity automation application runtime
• cryptoprotection (encryption and electronic signature)
• email client
• applications server
• mail server
• group calendar, task scheduler
• Lotus Sametime instant messaging client (Sametime server is a standalone product)
• web server - to provide access to applications Lotus Notes via browser
• LDAP server
• Replication - synchronization between remote database instances
• Domino Enterprise connection services (DECS) data integration services

Peculiarities

1. Cross-platform. A significant feature is cross-platform Lotus Notes. The current version has been certified by IBM to run on the following operating systems:
   • Lotus Domino Server- Windows NT (32 and 64 bits), GNU/Linux (Red Hat , SuSE), Solaris, OS/400, AIX, OS/390)
   • Lotus Notes Client- Windows NT (32 bit), Mac OS X, GNU/Linux
2. replication
3. Fast RAD and application deployment. The IBM Lotus Domino Designer application development environment provides developers with advanced core services for developing document-oriented applications. The program code and visual forms of applications are physically stored in the databases in which they are used and executed. When making changes to programming code or form changes are made available to all users and servers accessing the database in which the modified code or form is stored. Other servers receive changes via replication during the first session.
4. Offline application execution The Lotus Notes client allows you to store Lotus Notes databases locally (on the user's computer), replicate them with the Domino server, work with local databases when there is no connection to the Domino server, and execute server program code in local databases. This functionality supports the full-featured work of the user in a state disconnected from the server (for example, on a laptop). Changes on the local (for the user) computer and on the server are mutually synchronized through replication.
5. Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) Cryptofunctions Using Public Keys - Encryption and Electronic digital signature- are the basic services of the Lotus Notes core. Each user of the system upon registration receives a pair of keys: the public key is stored in the general (public) address book and is available (for reading) to users from the server, and the secret key is stored locally in the user's identification file.
   • Electronic digital signature used when authenticating a user and/or server by the server, when determining the level of trust in the executed code, when checking the validity of mail messages, documents (database records) and individual fields.
   • Encryption used for mail messages, entire databases, individual documents (database records), individual fields, and network traffic between two Lotus Domino servers, and between a Lotus Notes server and client.

Current Versions

For November, 2018 IBM Lotus Software supports and develops the following versions of products Lotus Notes/Domino:

Supported technologies

(Data current as of November 2018)

1. Email
   • SMTP
   • POP3
   • IMAP
   • MIME
   • DNSBL(fight against spam)
2. instant messenger
   • Sametime
3. Reading the news
   • usenet(NNTP)
4. Full text search
5. Database
   • Object-oriented DBMS
   • Client-server technology
   • Formats: NSF and NSFDB2
6. Server
   • Cluster (group of servers)
   • Partitioned servers- the ability to install several Lotus Domino servers on one hardware server
   • Passthru- end-to-end connection ("proxy" via NotesRPC protocol)
7. Client
   • Eclipse
   • Thin client (HTTP And HTTPS)
8. [Network protocols"
   • TCP/IP protocol stack- default Lotus Notes running on TCP port 1352
   • IPX/SPX
   • NetBIOS
9. replication
10. Programming languages
    • @-formulas
    • Lotus Script
    • JavaScript
11. Integration with DBMS and other applications(by data and program calls)
    • CORBA
    • ODBC
12. Crypto protection(Encryption and Digital Signature)
    • X.509
    • S/MIME

Summing up the outgoing decade, InformationWeek magazine named Lotus Notes one of the most important products of the 90s, which is most closely integrated with the concept of "group work". During the last decade, Lotus has really put a lot of effort into developing the functionality of Lotus Domino and Notes into cutting-edge Internet products, and entered the year 2000 with a total of over 56 million Lotus Notes users.

The "integrated systems for collaboration" market, as defined by GartnerGroup, is one of the largest segments of the global software market, and applications for which these technologies are used are classified as "critical" and "life-critical". Suffice it to say that, according to IDC1, in 1998 the "average" European organization spent $89,000 on collaboration systems and $48,000 on messaging and e-mail software. In countries like Sweden, the percentage of people doing knowledge work and using collaborative systems was almost 70%.

Nevertheless, very often among potential users of these technologies there is no understanding of what this concept includes - "integrated systems for teamwork", and also what is the essence of Lotus Domino and Notes technologies, in particular. It is these questions that this article is devoted to.

In this short introduction, Lotus Domino and Notes are formally defined as tools for collecting, organizing, and distributing information and knowledge.

Based on the actual practice of use, we can distinguish the following groups of organizations that have chosen and are choosing these technologies for themselves.

The first group consists of organizations that need e-mail, messaging and communications infrastructure: modern, reliable and scalable. Lotus Domino is a mail server and Lotus Notes is an advanced email client.

The second group consists of organizations that use Domino and Notes as a platform and infrastructure for business applications, automation of business procedures, workflow, etc. Lotus Domino is an application server, and Lotus Notes is a client for running business applications, working with information and documents, including offline.

The third group of users selects Lotus Domino as unique technologies for creating Web infrastructure. Lotus Domino is a Web server with advanced features for dynamic updates, information categorization, full text search etc.

And finally, the fourth group of organizations chooses Lotus Domino and Notes as integrating software, or "middleware" capable of integrating information and data from virtually arbitrary information sources - relational DBMS, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems such as SAP R/3, Internet environments, etc.

Ultimately, most users of Lotus Domino and Notes are aware of the possibility of solving the entire range of the tasks listed above on the basis of a single technological platform and create an information infrastructure that allows them to say: "The effective work of our organization would not be possible without Domino and Notes."

It should be noted that Lotus Domino and Notes are multiplatform products. Domino server versions are available for most common operating systems and hardware platforms such as Windows 3.x, Windows 95, Windows NT, Linux, Sun Solaris, HP-UX, IBM AIX, OS/2, Novell NetWare, OS/400, OS /390, Mac, giving users of these technologies the freedom to choose the platform that best suits their organization's needs.

The product is localized, and its users in Russia are hundreds and thousands of organizations.

Lotus Notes has its roots in some of the first computer programs written at the Computer-based Education Research Laboratory (CERL) of the University of Illinois. In 1973, CERL released a product called PLATO Notes. At that time, the only function of PLATO Notes was to attach a user ID and date to error reports, and to protect the file from deletion by other users. System personnel are thus able to respond to problem reports that appear at the bottom of the screen. It was this way of secure communication between users that formed the basis of PLATO Notes.

In 1976, a product called PLATO Group Notes was released. Group Notes inherited the original concept of PLATO Notes and was its logical development in terms of organization feedback with users. Reviews of the latter about the new product turned out to be positive, Group Notes began to be actively used and eventually became the prototype of many software products using the “notes” metaphor.

Lotus Notes creator Ray Ozzie worked on the PLATO operating system at CERL in the late 1970s. He was impressed by the system and its communication capabilities. Using the knowledge gained at CERL, Ray Ozzy begins work on a proposal for a "notes" product for PC. Initially, he experienced difficulties due to the lack of funding sources.

Mitch Kapor, founder and then CEO of Lotus Development Corporation, believed in what was a completely new concept at the time. Kapor was not only inspired by this idea, but also expressed a desire to invest Lotus money in the development of a new product. Kapor's insight, creativity and willingness to overcome his own disbelief predetermined the transformation of Ozzy's speculative ideas into reality.

In July 1984, Ozzy and Kapor began working on an innovative development that led five months later to the creation of Iris Associates, Inc., based on Lotus funds and associated with the latter by contractual obligations. Iris' task was to develop the first release version of Notes.

The main idea was to develop software designed to provide collaboration and messaging capabilities. At that time, most users had not yet thought about it and were not interested in using computers for this purpose. The developers modeled Lotus Notes on top of PLATO Notes, but added a lot of powerful new functionality to the product.

Initially, Notes was envisioned by developers as a combination of online discussion tools, e-mail, phone books, and document-based databases. This approach gave rise to two problems. First - network technologies in the form in which they are known to us now did not exist then. As a result, developers initially had to sell the idea of ​​Notes as a Personal Information Manager (PIM), something like " electronic organizer”, which has certain collaboration capabilities. Second - at that time OS were underdeveloped, and developers had to write a lot of system code to create a name server (Name Server), databases and network communication tools. With the development of network technology, developers began to sell the idea of ​​Notes as groupware ("software for group work"), which meant the ability to provide communication, collaboration and coordination between groups of users.

Soon came the Macintosh computer, the brainchild of Apple Corporation, with a new, easy-to-use graphical user interface. This influenced the developers of Notes, and they provided their new product with a character-oriented graphical interface. The initial idea of ​​the founders quickly evolved to the idea of ​​creating a product to support virtual communities of people. Thinking of building groupware software in 1984 was an eccentric business - at that time, most users did not yet know what e-mail was. This product was way ahead of its time. It was the first commercial client-server product.

It took several years to develop Notes, which is quite a lot by today's standards, but that's what made Notes so successful. With the luxury of spending five years on development, the creators of Notes produced an exceptionally solid product that had virtually no rivals on the market. It took years for competitors to create something similar to Notes. However, to date, none of the products has all the features inherent in Notes.

Most of the core development was completed within two years, but the developers spent another year porting the client and server code from Windows to OS/2. During this period, Iris developers used Notes to communicate remotely with Lotus staff. Everyday use of the product was very helpful in developing key functionality. For example, developers needed to synchronize data between two remote offices, and they invented replication, one of the strongest features of Notes. The interesting thing is that this was not even included in the original plans, but the problem arose, and it was solved.

By August 1986, Notes already had many of its unique functionality, and preliminary documentation was prepared for it. The product was ready to ship to Lotus internal users. At this time, Lotus evaluated and accepted the product. Lotus acquired the rights to Notes in 1987.

The fate of Lotus Notes was successful even before its first release version was released. The head of Price Waterhouse watched a Lotus Notes demo before the first release. He was so impressed with the product that he immediately bought 10,000 copies of Notes. At the time, this was a record sales volume for a PC-based product. As the first major buyer of Notes, Price Waterhouse predicted that Notes would fundamentally transform existing business processes. Price Waterhouse employees were right.

The commercial second version of Lotus Notes has been on the market since 1991, and for a long time the product remained the only technology to support people's collaboration.

Then came the Internet, with its ability to store and exchange information between geographically dispersed groups of people - about what Notes has been able to do for a number of years. In 1995, there were many articles in the computer press that the fate of Notes was sealed and that it would be replaced by the more open and cheaper technologies of the Internet.

However, in November 1995, Lotus, then part of IBM, announced a strategy to complement the rich functionality of Notes (then version 3.3x) with support for Internet standards and drastically reduce prices. Since then, Lotus has released several new versions of Notes, and since version 4.5 the server's Internet technology functionality has been such that the company has found it necessary to rename the Notes back end to Domino server.

And today, at the beginning of a new decade and a new century, Lotus Domino and Notes continue to be best products for collaboration, which give organizations the opportunity to ensure effective interaction of staff. Lotus Domino is also an advanced Web server, application server, and e-mail server. So even if an organization is not interested in using Notes for collaboration, there are many reasons to choose a Domino server as the backbone of their Internet/intranet infrastructure.

There is no space in this article to go into detail about the history of Notes, from version 1 to version 5, which was released by Lotus in 1999. Therefore, let's move on to the possibilities that this technology provides today. The following presentation is very brief description Domino and Notes.

Notes is a very elegant application. It is a multi-faceted product, the functionality of which is so extensive that it makes it fundamentally different from other applications. This is the reason why it is sometimes difficult for users to realize the uniqueness of this technology. However, once you understand how Notes works, it becomes clear that the technology is indeed superior to many similar Internet tools or products from other vendors in the field of collaboration systems.

The work of modern organizations, whether commercial structures or government agencies, is based on the active interaction of people, departments and other organizations external to them.

All forms of such interaction can be divided into three groups, or the so-called three K:

• Communications: you and your organization can solicit or forward information from anyone.
• Cooperation: people and organizations use a shared workspace (buildings, campuses, etc.) to get work done, and people need to interact informally to get the job done.
• Coordination: there are certain processes in which different people and organizations are involved, for example, the process of coordinating an order or passing a payment order, subject to predetermined rules.

If we talk about computer technologies that respond and support these three forms of interaction, then these are, respectively:

• Email and messaging systems
• Shared Access Databases
• Business procedure automation tools (workflow)

Lotus Domino and Notes are based on the three technologies listed above.

Lotus Domino and Notes could be described as a distributed shared database system integrated with email capabilities.

• A shared access database implies the ability of a large number of users to simultaneously access and update the content of the databases.
• Distribution means that databases can be located simultaneously on a large number of servers that periodically send updates to each other so that through certain time data changes made on one server will reach any other. This process is called replication.
• Databases integrated with e-mail capabilities mean that not only can human Notes users exchange e-mail messages, but databases and Notes applications can send documents and messages to both people and other Notes databases and applications. And this is a critical property when automating business flows and procedures (workflow).

Important to understanding the capabilities of Domino and Notes is the so-called Lotus Solution Architecture. This concept (see table) was developed by the Lotus consulting service in accordance with the principles of a systems approach. It provides a holistic approach to classifying decisions based on communication technologies and collaboration technologies on the Domino and Notes platform.

From the point of view of the concept under consideration, the chosen communication platform should have the following capabilities. First, it must support the full range of technologies for creating a corporate system, which are listed above ( corporate system e-mail, shared databases, business process automation tools).

Secondly, solutions based on this platform must function effectively at three levels of organizational complexity:

1. The level of departments and divisions.

2. Level of integrated organization.

3. The level of an extended organization (includes all communications with the outside world - partners, customers, service providers, etc.).

In this sense, Lotus Domino and Notes provide a complete solution in the field of collaboration systems and allow you to solve technologically complex problems at any organizational level. Lotus Domino is both an email server, a document and business process automation application server, and a Web server, complemented by extensive integration with relational database management systems and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Lotus Notes is an integrated email, Internet, collaboration and document client that provides, among other things, mobile work users.

According to this approach, a given solution falls into one of nine categories in terms of applied technologies and organizational complexity. Everything that is on top level of the extended organization are Internet technologies, the two bottom rows are internal corporate intranet systems. The e-business technologies that are being talked about so much these days are the top two right-hand boxes, that is, they are standards-based Internet technologies that provide a means of collaboration and coordination between various organizations involved in common production processes.

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Since 2010, the DeA Group of Companies has been offering services for the development, installation and configuration of Lotus Nootes, as well as technical support and maintenance of the work of electronic document management information systems and other software solutions in the Lotus environment.

The range of software solutions using the Lotus environment is quite wide: from converting workflow into electronic form, installing mail server, a messaging server between users, a Web server, to a system of working time planning, resource management and reliable information protection tools.

About the Lotus Notes platform

Lotus Notes is a powerful client-server software for automating collaboration and management activities, solving document management problems, storing semi-structured information in corporate Internet/Intranet systems.

A feature of Lotus Notes/Domino is an object-oriented architecture, thanks to which it is possible to create information systems that automate work with complexly structured data and unformalized dynamic processes. The software product contains basic functions that allow you to organize the work of distributed workgroups and create process automation applications, so it is incorrect to consider Lotus Notes a complete enterprise automation system (just as, for example, MS SQL server cannot be considered an accounting system). Lotus Notes is the platform for such applications. Electronic document management systems and other complete solutions based on the Lotus Notes/Domino platform are developed and distributed by third-party software vendors.

Key features included in the base distribution of Lotus Notes/Domino

• group activity automation application runtime
• cryptoprotection (encryption and electronic signature)
• email client

• applications server
• mail server
• group calendar, task scheduler

• Lotus Sametime instant messenger client (Sametime server is a standalone product)
• web server - to provide access to Lotus Notes applications through a browser
• LDAP server
• replication - synchronization between remote database instances
• Domino Enterprise connection services (DECS) data integration services

IBM Lotus Notes/Domino supported by most modern industry technologies and standards

• Email: SMTP, POP3, IMAP, MIME, DNSBL (anti-spam)
• Instant Messenger: Sametime
• News Reader: RSS, Usenet (NNTP)
• Full-text search in object-oriented databases
• Database: Object Oriented DBMS, Client-Server Technology, Formats: NSF and NSFDB2
• Server: Cluster support ( teamwork server groups), Partitioned servers - the ability to install several Lotus Domino, SMP, Passthru servers on one hardware server - end-to-end connection ("proxy" using the NotesRPC protocol)
• Client: Lotus Notes (multi-platform, there are implementations for Windows, Linux, Mac OS X), created in the Eclipse environment, Thin client (HTTP and HTTPS)
• Network protocols: TCP/IP - by default Lotus Notes runs on TCP port 1352, IPX/SPX, NetBIOS
• Replication.
• Programming languages: @-formulas, Lotus Script, Java, JavaScript
• Integration with DBMS and other applications (by data and program calls): CORBA, COM, XML, ODBC, DDE, OLE
• Crypto Protection (Encryption and Digital Signature): X.509, SSL, S/MIME
• Authentication: built-in, LDAP support

Additional IBM solutions included in the IBM Lotus Notes/Domino license

• IBM DB2 Enterprise Server Edition
• IBM Lotus Expeditor
• IBM Lotus Notes Traveler
• IBM Lotus Sametime Entry
• IBM Lotus Workflow
• IBM Tivoli Directory Integrator
• IBM WebSphere Application Server Network Deployment

Traditionally, IBM Lotus Notes / Domino is used to create information systems of the following direction

• Catalogs, file cabinets, directories, any information repositories in which the concept of a “document” arises by itself.
• Electronic document management (workflow, business process automation) - applications with rather complex logic (branching document routes, many different document states, approval and rejection, etc.), documents move from one user to another, status is tracked, notifications are sent. Electronic document management, document management systems, document management - the main scope of Lotus.
• Collaboration with data - group development of documents, viewing documents by different groups of users, sharing information. Unlike electronic document management systems, it does not take into account document routes.
• Internet applications, up to sites and portals. Domino incorporates a powerful web server that allows you to convert information stored in databases into Internet standards that are viewable by web browsers on the fly.
• Logs, archives, data accounting.

The IBM Lotus Notes/Domino family of products includes the following components

1. Lotus Domino is an application server and database management system.
2. Lotus Notes is a standard client workstation.
3. Lotus Domino Administrator - an administrator's workplace that allows you to conveniently manage Lotus Domino servers
4. Lotus Domino Designer is a developer's workplace for creating applications.
5. Lotus Sametime - a system for video conferencing, instant messaging and web conferencing

Lotus Notes is ideal for electronic document management systems, especially for geographically distributed organizations. Through the use of a non-relational database structure, the platform implements the ability to replicate documents between servers and restrict access to documents.

Installing Lotus Notes /Domino provides:

• creation of a qualitatively new level of management based on electronic documents;
• improving management efficiency by documenting all the activities of the organization
• increasing the transparency of business processes at all levels of management;
• reduction of cycles of passing documents and the time of execution of control functions;
• ensuring maximum transparency of the process of processing documents and tasks and the possibility of operational control of all stages of management processes;
• creation of a single information space of the enterprise.

For questions about the implementation and operation of Lotus products, please call the company. We will install and configure Lotus Notes for you.