.Domino Framework

For many years Microsoft have been trying to build a application capable to challenging Lotus Notes.   For just as many years Microsoft have been falling short in that effort.  Recently however I have began to notice that many of the organizations for whom I work Sharepoint is being considered as a solution for applications that would previously be the realm of Lotus Notes.  Could it be that Lotus Notes now does have a viable competitor?  It doesn't seem like it when you compare the products technically.  But hey, to this day I still feel that Lotus 1-2-3 was a superior spreasheet application to Excel and I preferred Netscape Navigator over Internet Explorer.  So who knows what the Microsoft marketing machine can convince senior IT executives.
As I see it, Sharepoint has a number of distinct weaknesses.  First, it still seems to have more hype than substance.  It is not as much out of the box as Microsoft would like us all to believe.  It is also not a single product, requiring the usual mismash of products such as Sharepoint Server, SQL Server, IIS, Visual Studio, Active Directory to work.  And it is a Windows only solution aimed solely at selling even more MS software....
If I had the resources of a company like IBM this is how I would go about baking a killer product capable of resigning Sharepoint to the same fate as the last "great white hope" - IBM Workplace.

1) The base product would continue to be Lotus Notes.  Nobody has ever come up with a product that can compete with Notes for the simplicity  of building and deploying collaborative applications.  Notes consists of a single NSF that contain all the data and code.  By adding integrated security, replication, directory services, and mail services the task of building and deploying an application onto multiple servers has never been made easier.  Add to that the new slick Notes 8.0 UI, composite applications and the as-yet untapped capabilities of X-Pages and you have a platform that is truly capable of rapidly delivering modern high quality SOA applications on both thick and thin client platforms.
2) One of the strength of Lotus Notes has always been the speed with which customized solutions can be developed.  The programming base of Notes does however need an urgent overall to bring it into the 21st century.  This includes completing the work already started to migrate Domino Designer to the Eclipse platform.  Java and LotusScript editors need to delivered quickly along with native eclipse editors for all the other non-xpages design elements.  The LotusScript language must be expanded to offer many of the capabilities found in Java (and VB.Net/C#).  Likewise IBM need to find a way to make  Java available in all the same places LotuScript can be used.  We then have a HUGE army of Basic (LotusScript) and java programmers able to fully leverage the product.
3) Sharepoints' current strengths over Lotus Notes include Document Management and Workflow.  I would turn this weakness into a strength by taking the Lotus Worklflow and Lotus Document Management products and integrating them into the standard Notes/Domino product.  These products have been neglected and are unable to effectively compete as stand-alone products.  It is often an impossible task to convince IT executives to approve the purchase of new products such as these.  But then, if they were part of the core Notes product I wouldn't have to.  I can't believe these products are huge contributors to the IBM bottom line.  If they were, they would get an occasional mention at LotusSphere (outside of appearing on the annual LotusSphere Bingo cards).
4) The out-of-the-box capabilities of Notes would need to be expanded to take on Sharepoint.  Enhanced document library and teamroom templates are needed that exploit the features of document management and workflow and build on some of the great ideas found in QUICKR (including the SNAPPS templates).  Added to that we need a killer blog template - perhaps taking the existing IBM blog template and combining that with the OpenNTF Blogsphere template.    A wiki template is needed - again the openNTF DominoWiki template is a great start.   We would also need to add to the mix some of the social software capabilities  found in Lotus Connections.  An improved PAB that adds some of the profiling capabilities of Connections and even a little sex appeal with something like Lotus911's Carousel.  For DogEars it would be hard to go past LinkJam - and why not throw in an idea/suggestion scheme template (IdeaJam).  For good measure some form of Activity management template is needed.  And while I am not a big twitter fan, a twitter template may not be a bad addition too.  Also build out the RSS Feed manager to be comparable with products such as FeedDemon.

Take the above ingredients and mix in a large yellow bowl until the right consistency is achieved.  Then add to a hot oven and allow to bake for 3-6 months.  Don't cook for too long now or Sharepoint will be selling like hotcakes and the juggernaut may become uncatchable.  Served to a large corporate audience I am sure this new Sharepoint Killer would soon get that yellow blood pumping through the veins of organizations around the globe.

During my time as a Notes developer (mostly as an independent contractor/consultant) I have had the chance to work  with a large number of companies on four separate continents.  In all that time I cannot remember a single client in which the Notes development was ever considered "strategic".  In fact, in many, the attitude towards Notes was (and often still is) decidedly hostile.  So if Notes is often seen (unfairly?) as the ugly duckling in the programming world, why is there so many Notes databases out there and so many Notes developers still being employed?

One of the reasons for this seems to be that fact that unlike many other development platforms, Notes has always extended down to reach many people who would not be typically classified as programmers.  People can start out with a Notes template such as TeamRoom or Discussion Library and get a small application up and running pretty quickly.  These same people then find that with little or no formal programming experience they can add a few fields to a form, add another column to a view or even create a whole new view from scratch.  Then using nothing more than a few simple forms, views, and  little bit of @functions and @commands a whole new application can be built to automate a task that may have outgrown an Excel spreadsheet or fits some new process.  A few of the more adventurous "non-programmers" even find some basic LotusScript within their capabilities.  To a seasoned Notes programmer many of these applications look decidely ugly and badly written but they are highly effective.  They provide the basic functionality that is needed by the business and because they have usually flown underneath the radar screen nobody has bothered to question whether Notes is the right tool to use.

It is usually only when the application breaks, the creator leaves/transfers, or there is a need to enhance the application that it suddenly appears on the radar screen of a Notes development group.  As a developer I often get assigned to work on applications that were orginally developed this way.  Whilst I may be tempted to curse the bad design, inefficient code, and the fact a production application is running on a development server, I can also be thankful that another business process has found a home in the Notes development arena giving me work and the chance to show what Notes can really do!  I have worked for some companies with as many as 80,000 non-mail databases of which less than 20% were ever supported by a Notes development group!

This feeder base of applications is an important part of the Notes development food chain.  Without these applications many companies may have been able to contemplate a life without Notes (and Notes programmers).

I am not sure if the role of this type of development is fully recognized when the future of Notes is being mapped out.  Few of these "non-programmers" are represented on the various forums such as IdeaJam, Planet Lotus, and IBM's Notes discussion forums. And they probably are not heavily represented at events like LotusSphere.  And they almost ceratinly do not get to be design partners evaluating the latest release of Notes.

With the Notes 8.5 beta having been released I have started to wonder what impact the new development tools and environment may have on Notes "non-programmers".  A full-time developer (especially one who has developed with Java), probably loves the move of Designer to eclipse.  Notes developers who have long struggled with design issues such as joining views or developing Notes/Web client or Web only applications probably love the new capabilities of X-Pages and the extended JavaScript language.  The Notes development world is beginning to look a lot more like Java and ASP.Net development environments.  But are these capabilities going to attract more "non-programmers" or less?  IBM have not yet made public too much about what the Notes development environment will look like post Notes 8.5 but it does seem like eclipse will at least be part of that.  My hope is that in acquiring some of the tools that Java and .Net developers take for granted we do not take the Notes development environment out of reach of the "non-Notes" programmers.  At least not until more companies understand that Notes truly is a strategic platform and it is OK to make it the #1 choice for developing many applications.

Let me first start by saying I am not a design partner and I do not have any inside contacts at IBM, so I have absolutely no inside information as to what IBM's plans are for the future of Notes programming.  But because I am not subject to any non-disclosure agreements I am free to speculate and say whatever I like. If I start to take a closer look at the tea-leaves now forming at the bottom of my yellow mug I wonder if there may be a pattern forming I had not seen before....

 

I have been taking a much closer look at X-Pages, the new design element  that is part of Notes 8.5.  This design element looks nothing like any other existing Notes design element.  And not just because of the new Eclipse editor.  I see a whole bunch of new controls that remind me more of my time as an ASP.Net developer than they do of Notes development.  I see the ability to bind these controls to data sources that include not just Notes documents and Notes views but also to SQL-databases and XML.  Again, this is not unlike ASP.Net development (except for the ability to natively link to Notes databases).  I also see that as I design an X-Page, it is building XML code which I can not only see but edit directly.... 

 

And when you look at the functionality of X-Pages, they seem to be able to do pretty much everything that many of the existing UI elements of Notes (Forms, Subforms, View, and Pages) can do.  Except that I can now combine them in ways that were never possible with these other design elements.  A number of other bloggers are starting to rave about the really cool stuff they can do using X-Pages.

 

I believe IBM are on record as saying they intend to make X-Pages available for the Notes client in a later release.  So what does that mean?  Unless X-Pages for Notes has a different set of controls that mirror more closely the existing set of controls I am probably going to be soon building new applications for the Notes client in a completely new way.  And thanks to X-pages these applications will look and behave the same on a Web client..  If X-Pages provides the functionality of other design elements such as forms why would I use both in an application?  Perhaps I am not supposed to?  Perhaps in a post Notes 8.5 world I am now supposed to do most of my UI design using ONLY these new design elements such as X-Pages?

 

Perhaps round-tripping of DXL is not an issue for IBM because they  see a future for us developers where we will be able to edit the XML from inside Notes.  Perthaps IBM are not making a major push to develop Eclipse editors for Forms, Pages, and Views because they see these design elements going the way of the Navigator (i.e. no new features added in future releases).  Perhaps there is no need to extend other Notes design elements such as views to support style sheets for the same reason.

 

It is not immediately clear If LotusScript will form a key component of the brave new world.  I am hoping so, because one of the reasons I believe the world has as many Notes applications as it does is that non-programmers (and many programmers) are often better able to teach themselves to program in BASIC-based programming languages much more so than they have ever been able to with Java, C, or JavaScript like languages...

 

The tea-leaves are still swirling around and so the future may show that I am completely wrong.  (But I do hope the dead fly floating at the top is Sharepoint!).  But just in case I am not completely wrong , I would suggest Notes Developers take a very close look at X-Pages - even if you do not do a lot of Web development.  X-Pages (and custom controls) just might provide an insight into how you will be building Notes client and dual client applications in the years to come.  Oh... and read the blogs of those that are design partners.  They may not be able to say a lot just yet... but look at what they don't say!