Rob's Blog

24/2: Calling Oracle Stored Procedures from Lotus Notes or Domino

I am currently writing an application for one of my clients that creates new projects in the Oracle eBusiness Suite ERP from the Lotus Notes client.  Oracle have public APIs written in PL/SQL that you must use for the task.  I created a PL/SQL "wrapper program" to call the APIs and called this as a stored procedure.

When this application is complete, I plan to write an in depth article on the techniques I used.

However, in the meantime, I thought it was worth posting the syntax that I used to call the stored procedure with both input and output parameters.  The documentation for calling a stored procedure is a little sparse.

So here is an example stored procedure.  You could call that using an anonymous block like so.  The LotusScript code to call that stored procedure using the LC LSX is here.

Finally, I used an on-line book to learn the fundamentals of PL/SQL which you can find here.  I plan to buy that book because I'll be using Pl/SQL again.

21/1: Not made Lotusphere (again)

I spent the afternoon trying to combine an honest day's work with catching up on the Opening General Session at Lotusphere.  There was plenty of live blogging going on and I was able to get a flavour although being there would have been better!  It seemed to me that this year is one of consolidating on last year's announcements and strategies.

I guess my highlight was the Designer client in Eclipse with a new class browser etc.  However, doing this was a no brainer once the strategy for using Eclipse was decided on way back before the Hannover announcement.  Making the Notes client available on Apple's Leopard and also Ubuntu has got to be a good thing and is only possible because of the Eclipse strategy.

There was quite a lot for small businesses.  This is a huge market and one that IBM Lotus Notes/Domino is under-represented in.  Hopefully that's going to change.

I am booked on a Notes/Domino three day course on Composite Applications in March.  I think that being able to tie Notes in with other desktop applications and systems will differentiate developers more and more in the future.  It can also be a huge differentiator between Notes/Domino and the competition.

The improvements coming in Quickr and Connections are going to strengthen the overall Lotus Software branding and they will start to make inroads into companies also considering Sharepoint.  I only wish that there had been some sort of announcement that Lotus Document Management (Domino.Doc) functionality could have been incorporated into Quickr.

One project I have on the drawing board is a Lotus Notes Composite Application front-end to Oracle eBusiness Suite ERP.  It was interesting that IBM are going to develop a customisable product with SAP code named "Atlantic" that will be sold by both IBM and SAP.  This seems to be much bigger than the SAP templates giveaway that didn't seem to get the same support from SAP.

So in conclusion, I am happy with the consolidation of a successful strategy and glad that IBM haven't tried to bring out a whole bunch of brand new products.  Looking forward to the Eclipse Designer release!!

3/12: BE Systems acquired by Blue Wave

As announced in Barcelona today, BE Systems is now owned by Blue Wave. The press release can be found here:

http://www.elsmore.net/warren/blog.nsf/Downloads/WELE-79HKRN/$File/Bluewave%20press%20release%20FINAL.doc

In Domino blogging circles, this means that Warren Elsmore now works for Paul Mooney.  These talented conference speakers, LUG organisers and Domino Administrators join forces.  The combined company is also better able to serve its customers - which is what it's all about.

So congratulations to both companies!

14/11: What next for eTimesheets?

A week or so ago, I released eTimesheets onto openNTF as an open source project.

eTimesheets is a web based Timesheets system that I had developed a few years ago when I was based in India at a subsidiary of Inter Weavers that was called Tiger Infotech.  We learnt a lot when we developed eTimesheets and it was successful for us because one of our clients took it and we integrated in into their existing systems.

Here's the link to the eTimesheets project on openNTF:
http://www.openntf.org/Projects/pmt.nsf/ProjectLookup/eTimesheets

I decided to open source it because we weren't doing anything with it.  I decided that letting companies use it for free may provide some opportunities in the future if one of those companies want to interface it with their HR system, their ERP system or their Leave Request system.

So now the product has been downloaded about 150 times but I could sure use some feedback.  Was it easy to install?  If not what do I need to add into the installation guide?  Do you like it?  If not, what enhancement would you like me to consider adding?  Please comment away.

4/11: eTimesheets finally released!

I have finally released eTimesheets to the http://www.openNTF.org site as project eTimesheets.  Please download it and check it out.

UPDATE: I originally uploaded the NSF databases with local encryption!  This has now been fixed which also reduced the filesize from 9MB to 2MB.  Apologies to anyone who has downloaded the 9MB version.  Please download the 2MB version instead.  I simply edited the original release document rather than creating another.

UPDATE 2: This is getting embarrassing.  I released eTimesheets without giving Manager access to the Default ACL group despite writing the installation instructions on how to change the ACL after download.  It is now rectified.  Apologies to anyone who downloaded version 0.9 which has now been replaced by 0.901.

23/10: Coming soon to openNTF : eTimesheets

This post is my way of forcing myself to get my act in gear by committing to release a web based Timesheets System to openNTF within a week.  It is something I've been meaning to do for over a year now!  I had the system developed in India during my spell there and it has been in production at one of my clients for a few years.  I also use it to record my time and mileage and then use it to create invoices.



You can see some screen shots already that I have added to the openNTF project.  I just need to decide upon a licence and finish setting up some installation documentation and I'll then upload the NSF applications.

Please let me know if you think this might be useful to you.  There are enhancements that I have in mind too but I want to wait and see what the feedback is like first.

Here's the link to the project on openNTF: http://www.openntf.org/Projects/pmt.nsf/ProjectLookup/eTimesheets

30/6: Busy Busy

Since returning from the ILUG at Dublin just over a month ago I have been really busy with one of my clients.  Their US parent decided last Christmas to implement Oracle's eBusiness suite ERP across the group and to start in the UK.  The scope of the projects includes the Financials modules (General Ledger, Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable, Fixed Assets and Cash Management), Human Resources, Time & Labour, Procurement, Expenses and - last but not least - the Projects modules.

In the UK, this implementation will replace software written using IBM's UniVerse DBMS and Lotus Notes/Domino mostly written by me over the last twenty years plus a bought in Finance system called SunAccounts from Systems Union.  So I have mixed feelings about this.  They have a fully bespoke ERP written specifically for them and their US parent has decided to rip and replace it.  This is personal.

The methodology used to specify the system by the Oracle Contractors is totally alien to me and not something I'm likely to use in the future.  However, I am learning quite a bit about how the modules all interface together and will be able to use that knowledge in the future.  I am travelling 60 miles to work and 60 miles back most days which I find tiring and especially difficult last week when the motorway was closed because of the flooding.

By 1st April 2008 (yes April Fool's Day) the company intends to go live with the new systems.  However successful the implementation project goes between now and then, I believe that the new software will ultimately fail to improve the company's business.  The investment cost of the project coupled with the ongoing additional costs in maintaining the infrastructure for it will never be returned by efficiency savings or increased revenue.  In addition, however, there are big risks involved in the data migration required to drive the Projects.

Data must be migrated out of the existing UniVerse databases into the Oracle tables.  The Oracle Projects suite works completely differently to the existing systems so the data migration is complex.  To migrate data to the Projects suite, a completely bespoke interface will need to be written using the custom APIs which are basically a large number of stored procedures.  There are likely to be around 700 projects that will need their data migrating.

Once the UK has its systems in place, the ERP will be implemented in Ireland, Mexico, Brazil, USA, Canada, Australia and a few smaller installations elsewhere.  However, I expect that there'll be some additional work to be done in the UK before these projects get going.

This may be one of my last projects for this client.  I feel like a turkey voting for Christmas.

27/5: Just back from Dublin ...

Julie and I have just returned from a few days in Dublin timed to coincide with the third ILUG event.  I didn't go to the first one but was at the second last year.  This time, the event was held over two full days with three full streams of seminars.  Organisation was first class.  This was a first rate event thanks to the professional planning, project management and fulfilment skills of Paul, Eileen, Kitty, Warren, Bill and Tom.  All sessions started on time.  That's very impressive.

The event was free to attend thanks to the sponsors.  The main sponsors were IBM and RIM.  IBM's sponsorship included a free bar on Thursday evening throughout the speed geeking and beyond.  That's my kind of event!  And if that wasn't all, Rob Novak of Collaboration University fame bought everyone a Guinness in his Free Code session.  This was my first experience of the gui.nne.ss AJAX framework but I have to say I'm impressed.

One session I was particularly impressed with was Chris Blatnick's Interface Matters.  I think that the Notes client doesn't get enough attention (at least up until release 8) and Chris is doing a lot to counter that.

The various Blackberry sessions got me excited again about building a Blackberry solution for one of my clients.  I think that there's a space in the market for a generic Domino workflow solution for the Blackberry.  Does one already exist?

I also attended a few of the Admin sessions which helped me to get an idea of Clustering, Domino Domain Monitoring and SPAM prevention.  I now know enough to be dangerous!

On Saturday we joined the Geek Trip that went out of Dublin into the country.  I saw enough to decide that next time we come, we'll drive over.

So there are big hints that this event will happen again in some form next year.  It has become a great success.  Many many of the 250 people attending weren't at Lotusphere in January so this event is reaching and educating a new audience.

19/4: Implementing Oracle eBusiness Suite

One of my clients has decided to implement Oracle eBusiness Suite throughout their business.  Their UK company has bespoke systems written using IBM's UniVerse DBMS and well as in Lotus Notes/Domino.  They have other companies based in the US, Canada, Mexico, Ireland and Australia amongst others.  The intention is to use global best practices yet adopt Oracle with minimal customisation.

This is quite a challenge especially as the intention is to go live with all systems at the same time  in the UK and Ireland later this year.  Other countries will then follow.

I have personally written many of the systems that are being replaced both in UniVerse and in Lotus Notes and my company will be helping with the migration.

I will be taking some training for both the Human Resources and Timesheets modules and liaising with the Oracle Consultants who actually configure the applications.  I am also responsible for the data migration strategy and for actually making data available from the existing systems.

I am quite looking forward to the experience.  I will learn a lot of new technology and will be able to apply it in the future with new clients.  I will also be able to adapt some of my existing products to integrate better with the Oracle ERP.

Do I see a quick return on investment?  Absolutely not.

12/3: First Impressions of Notes 8 ...

First impressions are favourable.

I haven't had much time yet to do too much.  I upgraded a Notes 7.02 client to 8 and left the server at 7.02 to start with.

I subscribed to the Notes/Domino 8 forum using the in-built RSS reader and read through what was there.  The default window that the RSS content goes into was quite small and I found that I needed to view everything in a browser.  It would have been nice to be able to resize that window and get the same window size the next time you read a feed.  The visible feed was also truncated which might technically be right but meant that every feed needed to be opened in the browser.  When I viewed content in the web page, it created a new window every time (which is what Notes does) but I quickly found that I had an unmanageable number of windows open.  Closing these windows was time consuming too.

I'm now using the feed reader without the preview window which can be turned off in preferences / feed.



This seems better but will be using more bandwidth which will be important in a big company.

That all sounds a bit negative but RSS feed readers need to be ultra efficient.  The number of feeds I'm reading is going up all the time and - just like e-mail - it can easily get in the way of my development activities.  I need to be able to get through it as quickly as possible.  At the moment, most people still haven't heard of RSS but fast forward a year and the number of people using RSS will have mushroomed.

The feed reader doesn't support OPML imports and exports either.  That's a shame because by the time Notes 8 goes gold, I won't need one.  I will have painstakingly had to subscribe to all my feeds manually.  In a corporate environment, it will be essential that administrators can also add feeds using policies.  I was hoping for subscriptions and feeds at a server level (a bit like shared mail).

The Productivity Editors look quite good and I think were undersold a bit during the recent "Lotusphere Comes to You" sessions.  They are little slow on my current test laptop but this is running with only 500MB of RAM so I expected that.  I opened a few Office documents with no problems and think that existing Notes shops could certainly save a few bob by ditching Office for 80% of their staff.

The mail template looked fine although it wasn't my mail file so I haven't used it in anger.  The same Notes 8 mail database also opened fine and looked good when viewed from a Notes 7.02 client.

I've not done anything in the Designer or Admin clients yet other than check that they start up OK.

I'm not going to report any bugs here (certainly not now anyway).  I'm more interested at the moment in the overall picture which looks fairly rosey.

I plan to install Notes and Domino 8 as a new organisation/domain onto new hardware as and when I get time.  I cannot upgrade my main laptop yet until I know more about what problems that might cause me :->

12/3: Notes 8 install gotcha

Actually for once I did RTFM beforehand.  However, I wanted to get this out there because, in the first public beta, you need to be running your Windows or Linux client Operating System in English US locale.  I almost missed this and it might save someone a re-install.

Lotus Notes 8 supports the English US OS locale only. You must install and run Notes in an English locale.

IBM productivity tools and Property Broker Editor support the English US OS locale only. You must run IBM productivity tools and Property Broker Editor in an English locale.

11/3: Public beta download working again ...

I got back Saturday night after twenty four hours without the internet only to discover that the Notes/Domino community were all fighting each other to be the first to get hold of the public beta.  The IBM servers must have been overwhelmed with this unprecedented level of interest.  I have never in my twelve year Lotus Notes/Domino career been so keen to see a new release before it went gold and it seems like I am not alone.

It quickly became apparent that Saturday night was never going to be successful since people were getting download estimates of 19 hours!  So I decided to try it Sunday morning "when all the Americans should be in bed"!

Anyway, it looks like that strategy is working.



I can't wait to get this installed.  It is going to be very interesting over the next few weeks and the blogosphere is going to add hugely to our ability to learn from each other's experiences.

So how are we going to tag our blog posts?  As with Lotusphere, it will help if we have some consensus.  I think that the public beta is going to be all about the client.  Although there are some excellent new features in the server product, they are almost by definition invisible.  We won't really know that the Domino server is more scaleable first hand.  Sure we'll benefit from that in time when we upgrade our production servers but that's for the future.  For now, we all want to know about the Notes 8 client interface and the new admin and development features.

So I'm using the tags "notes 8 beta" and "notes and domino 8".  My download progress has jumped from 22% to 69% whilst I've been writing this post.  Thirty six minutes to go!  Yay!!

15/2: SNTT: Notes Support Helper

I have been using the OpenLog database a lot recently.  It was written by Julian Robichaux over at NSF Tools and can be downloaded from Open NTF.

Well basically I use it for all my new Notes development and I'm also back fitting it into my existing applications when I get an excuse to do so.  It's a great tool and I thoroughly recommend it to anyone.

However, there are times when a user rings up with a Notes problem that hasn't triggered an error.  For example, the button they need has disappeared.  This might be access related or it might be a bug.  However, to progress you have to get all the relevant information from the user.  Ideally you'd like to be able to interogate the actual document.  Depending on the user, this sometimes takes a while and the information extracted isn't 100% reliable.

I decided to make things a bit easier.  I've created a simple shared action that can sit in the actions menu for multiple forms.  Whenever, I need to know user related information, I ask the user to select the "Write Access Details" option in the Actions menu.  This routine uses the LogEvent() function that comes with the OpenLog database and logs all I need to know.  It even adds a document link so that I can quickly get to the document and provide the support needed.



Click on the picture above to download the LotusScript source if you want to try it out.  You'll also need to get the OpenLog database from OpenNTF if you haven't done that already.

12/2: Visio and IE7 don’t play well together

I wrote a Domino Content Management System last year that is used to store Quality Management information.  Much of the content is flow charts that have been drawn in Visio 2003.  The Save As Web Page option was used within Visio to create the files that would be viewed in the browser.  This worked fine with IE6.

Along comes IE7 and this breaks.  Great this compatibility isn't it when Microsoft's new web browser won't work with their own latest Visio product.  Aparently it will be fixed with Visio 2007 but no patch to Visio 2003 has arrived yet as far as I know.

I will have to devise a fix to all the existing content prior to my client upgrading their browser -- although I'm not sure upgrading is the right verb to use.

Maybe I'm spoilt working with Lotus Notes/Domino where applications written ten years ago still work just fine.  Isn't that what customers should expect?

Anyway, here's a link with a good explanation of how to fix the data.

9/2: IsDate("13/02/2007") = False ??

Strange one which I'm about to log on the Notes.Net forum.  I hope it's not something too obvious.

A couple of users have picked a date using the date picker in the Notes client.  They chose 13th February 2007 in the date picker which put "13/02/2007" into the field.  My program took a string representation of this date (taken from the UIDocument) and then used the IsDate() function prior to converting it to a Date Variant using the CDat() function.

However, the string failed the IsDate() check!

Fair enough I thought.  They probably typed the date in and their PC is setup with an American format date or something.  No, it's not that.  The PC is setup correctly.  To be sure, I made the program get the date format from the NotesInitialization class and put this into the error message.  The users also swear that they used the date picker - and I believe them.

Here's an excerpt from the code:



and here's the resulting error message in the magnificent OpenLog database:



The error text says:  "13/02/2007" is not a valid date.  Date format should be "DD/MM/YYYY".  Use the date picker if you didn't already.

Can any of you clever people tell me what I've done wrong?  Surely this isn't a Notes bug?

6/2: ILUG 2007

I've just booked our flights to Dublin in May with Ryanair from East Midlands.  We're leaving Wednesday evening and then making a weekend of it.  Can't wait.  And what's our excuse for a trip to Dublin?  Why it's the third annual Irish Lotus User Group Conference of course.



Here's the list of speakers.  Paul Mooney and Eileen Fitzgerald are doing another amazing job organizing the event again.  It's now grown to two days and it's still free to attend.

25/1: 1 year’s Blog Anniversary / Lotusphere 2007

It is exactly one year since I started this blog.  Yes I know ... I was a late starter!  The primary reason I started blogging was to learn about blogging and other technologies like RSS.  Until you try stuff yourself, you aren't the best candidate to go into companies and advise them.  I now feel much better equipped to recommend to clients that they experiment with RSS to keep their staff up to date with changes in their Quality Management System (for example).

What I didn't bargain on was getting so much back from the blogging community as a whole.  I am much better informed now about Lotus Notes/Domino related technology than I was a year ago.  Even though I didn't go to Lotusphere this year (and I've never been to Lotusphere) I almost feel like I've been there because I know so much about what's been happening.  I feel thoroughly enthused about what IBM are delivering this coming year with Lotus Notes and Domino version 8 and with other launches like Quickr.  I'm looking forward to the "Lotusphere comes to you" session that I'm going to in about a month when I can see all this for myself.  I'm also keen to see inside the Connections product, understand it and decide whether it's right for my clients.

So now here's to another year of blogging and another year of 30% growth for Lotus Software.

11/1: Readers Field Problem

I've been having a strange problem today with readers fields.  I have written a Notes client based Leave Requests System that contains a Leave Summary for every person in the company.  Readers fields are used to hide documents so that staff can only see other staff within the same department (apart from some roles such as [Admin] and [Personnel] and apart from supervisors and supervisor's supervisor (who may be in other departments)).

This all works fine.  However, when testing the system I have four documents visible and 271 documents in total.  When I select all documents with CTRL A, the system reports 271 documents -- actually it reports 272 but is including the one visible category.  How can that be right?  I don't even want the user to know that there are other documents.



Despite not being able to see the documents, I can delete the documents and I can create a replica of the database that contains those documents.  Is this working right?  I was always led to believe that you couldn't replicate documents if you were locked out with a Readers field.  Help me out guys!!  I'm on version 7.01 at the moment.

Update 12th Jan

I've just tried this on a database in production and get the same behaviour and I've also tried it with a version 6.03 client with the same results.  All I can say is that this "feature" surprised me.  I wouldn't have thought it would be possible to delete documents that you are protected from seeing with a Readers field.

Naturally, I would also use Authors fields and use the Query Document Delete event to prevent unauthorised deletion of documents in a real application.

18/12: LOL Emoticon

On slashdot there's a reference to a patent application from Microsoft entitled "Email Emotiflags".  Talk about trying to patent the obvious.  Lotus Notes has had Mood Stamps for as long as I can remember.  Now I wonder if Mr. Ozzie could cast his mind back that far.

7/12: Domino 2.0

Today I came across Michel Van der Meiren's Blog Domino 2.0.  Over the last two months he has basically built his blog site from scratch and is blogging whilst he does it.  Very impressive and a testimony to what is possible with Domino despite its well publicised quirks.  It is all XHTML compliant and he has plenty of tips in there for mere mortals like myself.  I would recommend subscribing to his RSS Feed.  Great Blog Michel!

1/12: Mollio and Meebo

Yesterday I launched a new website for Inter Weavers.



A few months ago Bill mentioned Mollio and I took a look and liked what I saw.  I decided to write a simple Domino Content Management System (CMS) that allowed me to easily create Notes documents and have them displayed as web pages.  Basically Mollio is an Open Sourced Design of HTML/CSS templates.  I had intended to add my database onto OpenNTF but it's been done already!

Anyhow, I did the work at least a month ago and there were a few gremlins.  I've decided to release it (warts and all) as a way of forcing me to work on it!  It isn't rendering the same in all browsers (whereas the Mollio templates do).  I need to figure out why and get that fixed.

And Meebo.  That is a web based Instant Messaging System that Alan mentioned a while back and I thought I'd give it a try.  It will allow me to chat even when I'm using a client supplied laptop.

So now inter-weavers.com points to this new site which has a link to my blog.  Blog feeds remain the same.  In the past inter-weavers.com pointed straight to my blog.

1/12: Lotus Notes and AutoCAD

One of my clients wants a system to automate some of their AutoCAD drawing.  They do a lot of surveying and they want a system that will take the survey data that has been typed into their PDAs, validate the data, calculate some data and then draw it using AutoCAD.  Much of this is done manually at present.

I have proposed a Lotus Notes system that can use LotusScript to access the AutoCAD ActiveX classes much as you can do this with Excel or any other application that has VBA.  I have tried it and it seems to work very well.

Anyone have any experience of programming with AutoCAD?  I think that there may be plenty of other opportunities with my other clients once I have written this.  They all seem to use AutoCAD.

9/3: Dynamic Menus

OK I've been meaning to post this for a while but didn't manage it over the last two Thursdays.  Anyway, better late than never ...



A couple of months ago, one of my clients wanted me to sit in on a meeting where they were going to buy some (3rd party non-Domino) Content Management software to host a new intranet for their Quality Processes.  They had a whole bunch of Visio flowcharts and wanted to host them as web pages using the "Save as Web Page" option within Visio.  To cut a boring story short, we decided to use Lotus Notes/Domino and not to buy the CMS.  I got to design the website.



I needed to design something that was extremely easy for the users to use and where they didn't have to worry about keeping menus up to date as well as pages.  The menus had to work dynamically from the pages a bit like the ProjectDX software that I'm using for this blog.

I decided to use Javascript Menus from Milonic because I'd used them before, they work great and they are great value.

However, for them to work in this context, the javascript code for the menus themselves would have to be dynamically created from the domino documents that made up the content of the site.  As usual the power and flexibility of Lotus Notes/Domino came to the rescue and I was able to design a view categorised on the menu name and used an @DBLookup to pull the javascript into the web pages.

Hard to explain succinctly so here's a link to a brief demo.  The demo shows the dynamic menus in operation with two different menu styles.  Each of the menu options comes from a domino document.

You can download a copy of the demo database from here.  Rather than explain how it works, check out the design.  If anything is unclear, let me know and I'll gladly clarify.

When you download Milonic menus from the Milonic site, the download will include four javascript files.  One of these files menu_data.js is the script that will be pulled from the domino view.  Code snippets from this file are required in a Menu Style document.  Within the Admin section of the database is an import option to pull all the required data from the downloaded files into the database.  It will create the Menu Style document automatically.  You will need to use this option at least once because the Milonic supplied javascript files haven't been included in the demo.  I would prefer you download them yourself after reading the licence terms from the Milonic site.

I hope these are useful to someone.  If so, please let me know!

17/2: Setting up Domino to work with IIS

For companies that use Windows and IE, IIS simplifies the authentication of web users with integrated Windows authentication.  When integrated with Domino, this means that web users do not need a separate web password.  This clearly has big administration advantages.

Unfortunately, the instructions in the help have been plagued with mistakes both at version 5 and version 6.x.  I wanted to post some instructions here that correct those mistakes and make it easier for others.  If there are any mistakes here then please let me know!

When upgrading a domino server from version 5 to version 6 (or 7), there is a big change in the way the integration works.  At version 5, IIS served the web pages and you didn't require the HTTP process to be loaded within Domino.  At version 6, both IIS and Domino serve web pages and there is a plugin required for IIS so that it knows which URLs to send across to Domino and which to serve itself.  For example, you would want any URLs containing ".NSF" to be passed to Domino but any containing ".ASP" would need to be served by the IIS server.

If the two servers are running on the same box, the two HTTP processes must be configured to use different port numbers.  Usually the default port 80 would be assigned to the IIS server and another port chosen for the Domino HTTP task.  If IIS and Domino are on different servers then you can choose to keep the ports the same if you wish.

Here is the official Lotus help with errors fixed.

[Update 6th May 2006:  Another useful document here describes how HTTP threads are queued by the HTTP task in Domino (changed between versions 5 and 6) and the new NOTES.INI setting at version 6.5.5 that enables you to change it.]

27/1: Is Lotus Notes/Domino Expensive?

Lotus Notes has endured much pressure from Microsoft over the years since MS started their attempt to produce a Notes Killer.  I believe that without IBM, Lotus would not have survived.  If Notes had gone the way of Lotus 123 (in my view a better spreadsheet than Excel), that would have been the end of Lotus.

However, I believe that the product is better than ever and Outlook/Exchange is being seen as a weak alternative that provides just email whilst Lotus Notes/Domino is so much more.  IBM have just announced figures of 125,000,000 licenced users!

But Lotus Notes is perceived as expensive in the marketplace.  I think that this stems from the fact that Outlook comes bundled with Office whereas the Lotus Notes client requires an extra licence.

Big corporations benefit from big discounts based on the number of seats that they buy.  Where does that leave the smaller companies?

The price of Lotus Notes/Domino for companies of less than 1000 employees is actually dirt cheap.  They benefit in what IBM calls Express Licencing.  I'll give you an example.

A company of five people each wishing to use Lotus Notes for email and other applications with a Lotus Domino server would pay just $133 per person (just $665) and that would include a Lotus Domino server.  That's as cheap as chips and it includes one year's maintenance too!

If they just wanted to use mail then that would be only $96 per person.

If you needed to use Lotus Domino for an internet application where people register and then login when they return, the cost is only $2500 per CPU so only $2,500 for a single processor server and you can have any number of users logging on using a browser with no CAL required.

Is this IBM's best kept secret?  The actual page on IBM's site is here.