Breaking into Lotus Notes developing???

nads

Hi, this fits in this forum i reckon, but i was wondering how do i make the jump from currently administering Lotus Notes to developing in it?

I'm fine with Java, is Lotus Scripting any way harder?

Is anyone here a notes developer, if so, could you tell me how to get started in this path as it interests me, like what books would be good starter books etc, cheers

DublinWriter

Tons of books (check Amazon) but they question I'm asking myself would be why?

Careerwise you'd be better sticking to Java. Notes has a perception of a legecy technology. A lot of places bought heavily into it in the early 90's (including a lot of Government Departments) and are making plans to switch to Exchange.

damnyanks

A lot of companies will find it impossible to move away from Notes within the coming years. Why ? Because a lot of companies use it for more then just e-mail. The place I work has literally hundreds of databases working from it that are critical to certain aspects of the business.

As for notes development, shouldnt be too difficult. It's like javascript. I've only done the basic stuff thats possible through the standard lotus notes client.

bpmurray

The notes market share is actually growing - over 100,000,000 seats. It's been around for a while, but nothing in the market even comes close to providing its groupware abilities.

JavaScript is very close to VB: if you know one, you should be comfortable in the other. However, you can program Notes in C, C++ and Java too.

Hobbes

Don't mind people telling you "why". Domino development has different levels to it.

General design - This is slapping fields onto forms/creating views. Fairly straightforward.

Formulas / LotusScript - Generally for Notes applications. This is where the legacy comes in. If you are familar with Visual Basic then LotusScript is a doddle.

Javascript - Fields/forms and views now allow you to embed javascript for when the notes database is being viewed in a browser.

Java - The latest Notes/Domino fully supports Java, both in notes databases and out of them. It also supports the Java debugger framework which means you can design and debug your stuff in Eclipse.

C++ - You plug your stuff into Domino in C++. (haven't tried it)

LEI - you can also design your stuff to integrate into DB2 which means learning some SQL / database design (not nsf design).

Workplace - this is more for Hannover (next version) but Notes/Domino will support the Rich Client framework, which if your familar with designing plugins for Eclipse then you should find this reasonably easy to deal with. At the moment R7 only allows you to reconise you are working under the rich client.

It is also starting to blur between J2EE/Websphere and R7 now supports creating Web Services as well.

So learning Domino development is not a waste of time.

As for books I am not sure, I learnt everything reading the help file as it has numerous examples on how to do stuff (I'm also PCLP certified in application development for R7/6, so any questions glad to help ).

Hobbes

DublinWriter wrote:

Careerwise you'd be better sticking to Java. Notes has a perception of a legecy technology. A lot of places bought heavily into it in the early 90's (including a lot of Government Departments) and are making plans to switch to Exchange.

You can code fully in Java in Domino now if you want.

As for switching to Exchange. Exchange is only a mail program, if all they did was buy Domino for email they wasted thier money. Afair most of the government websites are just Domino servers.

nads

Cheers lads, Hobbes i'll probably be onto ya soon so was exactly what i was looking for, thanks