ServerWatch: Whatever Happened to ... Lotus Notes

September 23 2008

A historical review of Lotus Notes and Domino, with an eye to the future.  The article is billed as a tutorial, perhaps for people who haven't looked at Notes lately:

Let's not beat around the bush -- mention "Lotus Notes" to people, and many will have a reaction ranging from "Is that still around?" to "Ugh." Notes has, perhaps unfairly so, a reputation for corporate stodginess that is the technology equivalent of 1980s music videos.  ...

Rather than battle entrenched Microsoft Exchange deployments head-on, with its latest Version 8, Notes is instead embracing openness.

Although Notes represents only the client portion of the Lotus messaging platform, it is now built using the open source Java-based Eclipse framework. This means that not only can the Notes client run Eclipse-based plug-ins, but also that Eclipse developers can essentially customize the Notes client from the ground up. ...

The challenge, as it always has been for Notes, will be how to add substance without adding bulk.
Link: ServerWatch: Whatever Happened to ... Lotus Notes >

Ed Brill Hollywood, FL USA Category:  Notes and Domino 8  Add/View Comments [9]

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  1. 1  Craig Wiseman http://www.Wiseman.La/cpw | 9/23/2008 4:53:53 PM

    Looks like I got there 9 minutes before you ( { Link } ) 8-)

    You didn't notice that it annouced that the Notes client is open source?

    "Meanwhile, the open source Notes client supports all proprietary features in its Domino server counterpart...."

  1. 2  Ed Brill http://www.edbrill.com | 9/23/2008 4:57:07 PM

    @1 PlanetLotus only shows us as two minutes off :-)

    I found inaccuracies in the article, but decided it wasn't my gig initially to identify them. If the list ends up being lengthy, I'll happily send a note to the author.

  1. 3  Craig Wiseman http://www.Wiseman.La/cpw | 9/23/2008 4:59:32 PM

    Trivial stuff like that, 4.6 is where Internotes became Domino, etc.

    Not a bad read.

  1. 4  Ian White http://www.computerweekly.com/blogs/IT-collaboration-technology-blog/ | 9/23/2008 5:37:06 PM

    Internotes, those were the days :-) - sigh

  1. 5  Bob Congdon http://www.bobcongdon.com/blog | 9/23/2008 6:46:47 PM

    @3: Actually the Domino rename did happen in 4.5, even IBM says so { Link }

    Internotes didn't become Domino. The same team that built Internotes Web Publisher went on to do an add-on product with the code name "Domino" which was integrated into the 4.5 server which was renamed to Domino.

  1. 6  keith Brooks http://www.vanessabrooks.com | 9/23/2008 8:40:13 PM

    I thought the original web server in notes was from Apache in fact I recall installing it to make the OS/2 version run a web server in 4.5 days.

    But you know 12 years later I only recall the client I was working on. But wait, I have my emails from back then on a cd.

    Lotus Notes it just works.

  1. 7  Craig Wiseman http://www.wiseman.La/cpw | 9/23/2008 8:45:17 PM

    @5 Forgot that. Well, that's what memory will do for you.

    We went 3.x to 4.5 and skipped 4.0.

    I'll have to go refresh my memory.

  1. 8  Bob Congdon http://www.bobcongdon.net/blog | 9/24/2008 1:22:33 AM

    @6: The original web server in Domino was derived from IBM ICS which itself was based on the original CERN web server code. The ICS code disappeared from Domino in R6. The R6 web server code is similar in structure to Apache but isn't based on Apache.

  1. 9  Darren http://www.dadams.co.uk | 9/24/2008 1:41:29 AM

    Fairly typical article, full of references to people preferring Outlook and Notes not integrating with Windows very well, but as usual absolutely no evidence.