Notes Opens Up to the Web

The eagerly awaited Lotus Domino serves up a goodly dose of Notes functionality to Web clients.

Steve Gillmor

Domino, a.k.a. HTTP Services for Lotus Notes, gives Notes developers a powerful jump-start in creating dynamic Web sites, and it offers unique interactive tools not yet available from other major players. Domino extends Notes' proprietary architecture onto the Web, serving Notes databases to browsers on-the-fly. It loads as a Notes 4.x server task, delivering both a traditional HTTP server and the Domino engine that interacts with the Notes document and object store.

While not eliminating the need for Notes clients, Domino does give Web browsers a great deal of Notes' functionality. Users can browse multiple views; create, edit, and delete documents; perform full-text sea r ches; download binary files; read and send Notes mail; and post documents that trigger work-flow agents.

Installing Domino on our Windows NT server required updating the Notes Release 4.1 Public Address Book and registering Web users, adding them to a special Domino Users group. You can give group members access to databases at a variety of Notes security levels. You can also create an Anonymous entry in the Notes Access Control List to give access to unregistered users.

Domino allows Web developers to leverage Notes tools such as input validation and translation formulas, hiding and revealing information based on time-sensitive and user-identity criteria, and displaying threaded discussions that are automatically indexed for querying. The "gold" release we tested supplied several sample databases, including a registration application with several agents.

With Domino, you can detect the type of client and optimize the look of a database according to whether a Web browser or a Notes client is viewing it. Domino supports the insertion of Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) code, combining HTML and Notes data and passing it to the browser. You can use HTML pass-through code to process graphics, run Common Gateway Interface (CGI) scripts, and add URL links. Browsers don't support the same rich server connections as Notes clients, so only server-based agents can use LotusScript scripting.

Domino will evolve as Web browsers acquire more capabilities. But even in its first release, this HTTP server add-in propels Notes to the head of its class.

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Product Information

Lotus Domino

Free download from 
http://domino.lotus.com
 (requires Notes 4.x Server)
Lotus Development Corp.
Cambridge, MA

Phone:    (800) 343-5414 or (617) 577-8500
Internet: 
http://www.lotus.com

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Ratings

Technology      *****
Implementation  ****
Performance     ****


Key

***** Outstanding
 **** Very Good
  *** Good
   ** Fair
    * Poor

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Now Serving Interactive HTTP

screen_link (52 Kbytes)

Domino lets you customize Notes templates, databases, and forms for interactive HTTP serving.

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Steve Gillmor, of Southern Digital, Inc. (Charleston, SC), has extensive experience using and installing Notes. You can reach him at sgillmor@aol.com .