.Domino Framework

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.

One thing that has struck me about  the Notes 8.5 beta is that X-Pages implements JavaScript as the only option for both client-sided and server-sided scripting.  Neither @Language nor LotusScript appear to be supported directly but the "JavaScript" language has been expanded to provide @Formula emulation.  The new server-sided JavaScript now also seems to be able to do some of the things only done in the past using LotusScript...  When X-Pages is made available for the Notes client I am expecting to see support for JavaScript only.  We already have LotusScript able to run on the Notes client and Domino servers, so why is IBM going to so much trouble to extended JavaScript for server-sided scripting?  Could it be that  LotusScript is not part of the long term vision IBM has for Notes development?   As a devoted LotusScript programmer (biggot) I am hoping I am wrong...

 

The next version of Notes (post 8.5) promises to be a very interesting one for Notes developers.  Consider a scenario in which:-

1. X-Pages provides an alternative to Forms, Views, Pages, and Subforms with the added advantages of running on both a Web client and a Notes client, plus the ability to link to non-Notes data sources;
2. X-Pages supports "JavaScript" directly but not LotusScript or @Formula
3. There is little or no future extension of LotusScript language to make it a more modern OOP language;
4. There are few (if any) enhancement made to "old-style "design elements such as Forms, Views, Pages, Subforms, Framesets, Outlines;
5. The Eclipse IDE does not provide native support for these older style design elements  - although we do get the LotusScript editor almost everyone has been waiting for.

It sounds to me like a completely new Notes II programming environment has been created. An environment in which many of the Notes development paradigms of the past have been replaced, including either the death (or significant downsizing) of the role of LotusScript.   Will we have the choice of staying with what we know (e.g. LotusScript & @Formulas) or will we have to move to a new way of doing things (most likely JavaScript based0)?  And where does Java fit with this?  Hopefully IBM will soon provide a clearer picture to the public of its plans for Notes development post Notes 8.0.

 

Perhaps those more in the know than I can comment about where I am completely wrong....  "Whenever you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be true".

Whilst a native eclipse editor is not yet available in Designer 8.5 for Forms and View it seems that option is provided to edit the DXL for these design elements.  This provides both raw DXL/XML code and a node/property tree for these design elements.  There are times when this can be a distinct advantage over the traditional Domino Designer tool to find and set values (e.g. search and replace".  Not all Design elements are supported (e.g. LotusScript Libraries).

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!

Having undertaken a review of the Notes 8.5 public beta I have decided that I will not be developing a version of the .domino framework  for the 8.5 release.  My current plans were (and still are) to release 1.0 of the .Domino Framework later this year that is fully supported with Notes 6.0+.  After this initial release I had planned to then jump to Notes 8.5 and start developing functionality specific to this release. 

I find Notes 8.5 to be a major disappointment for Notes client development and see no compelling reason to develop a version of the .Domino Framework for this release.  For one thing there is little or no new features in this release specific to Notes Client functionality.  The design elements such as X-Pages and Custom controls are supported on the Web client only.  Then there is the new eclipse IDE which does a great job for these new design elements but leaves all the existing design elements worse off than before.  (And don't get me started about the absence of an eclipse editor for LotusScript!!!).  So until IBM starts to get fair dinkum with providing something new for Notes client development All post 1.0 releases of the .Domino Framework will be developed for the Notes 8.0 stream.  This includes support for composite applications - something I am quite excited about.  I suspect a lot of people will bypass this release of Notes anyway and wait for the REAL 8.5 release to become available.

It has been a long time since the LotusScript language received any major attention.   The time is rapidly approaching where the language needs a major upgrade to compete with other programming languages such as Java, C#, and VB.Net.  The following is a list of the 20 features that I would most like to see added to LotusScript: (many of which are already posted on IdeaJam)-

1. Allow the extension of product classes such as NotesDocument
2. Provide a construct (similar to .NET LINQ) allowing LotusScript to perform SQL operations such as joins on views.
3. Allow method overloading (defining a single method with multiple options for the parameters - # and type)
4. 100% Fideltity exporting and importing data using DXL.
5. Expand the list of properties exposed by product classes to include all those other properties already available within the C API.
6. Add a Try/Catch construct as an alternative to On Error Goto (with VB.Net it is Try Catch End Try)
7. Allow optional parameters for a method (sub/function)
8. Add "enumerations" (as per .Net) as a construct within a class.  This would allow keywords to be added without necessarily having to assign keywords specific value.
9. Add the ability to serialize a class into text, XML, and/or binary formats.  This would be especially usefull when passing data via a Web Service.
10. Allow field events to be trapped outside the form (e.g. allow an external class to trap when a field value has changed)
11. In addition to Public/Private classes, add the ability to define abstract and sealed classes.
12. Provide greater support for polymophism, including the ability to cast a object from one class to another.
13. Add the ability to define extension methods as a way of adding to/modifying the behviour of classes (as per C# 3.0)
14. Provide a constructor for the NotesDocumentCollection class
15. Add an AllDocuments property to the NotesView returning a NotesDocumentCollection.
16. Extend the NotesUIWorkspace class so that access can be gained to any window presently open on the workspace.
17. Implement interfaces as a way of specifying properties/methods that must exist in a class implementing a specific interface.
18. Add Reflection, in which it is possible to establish if a class has a specific property/method.
19. Devise a simple way to tell if a Rich Text field is empty
20. Add iterators for document collections.  e.g. Forall NotesDocument in NotesVIew or ForAll NotesDocument in NotesDocumentCollection.

IBM did such a great job with Notes 8.0 in improving the overall UI and the Mail database and bridged the gap between Notes and Outlook.  Finally it looked like "we" (IBM and the Notes community) were moving forward again with Lotus Notes.  While I would have loved to have seen a lot more done for developers in 8.0 I can understand IBM's need to focus on bring the Notes client  into the 21st century.  I am not sure if it was just me, but somehow I developed an expectation that the needs of the Notes developer would be the central theme with Notes 8.5.  As a result I was already looking forward to the release of 8.5 even before I got to use 8.0.

Over the weekend I downloaded the first public beta of 8.5 and almost immediately jumped into the new eclipse version of Domino Designer to see what goodies were there for me to use.  There were some obvious signs of a slicker interface as per the Note 8 client.  Useful but not really something I was hanging out for.  I had heard all the talk about what an eclipse IDE would do for things such as LotusScript so the first thing I did was open up a LotusScript library from the .Domino Framework to see what I could now do.  There was a new property box eating up space at the bottom of the screen and.... THAT WAS IT.  The property box did not even provide any useful data.  It just sat there empty consuming space.  Where was the class browser?  Where was typeahead for anything but production classes?  OK so the new IDE is still not there yet, surely there is a swag of other new development features for me to use.

1. X-Pages, these look really cool but I rarely get to do much Web development so this is not a big gain.
2. Server-Sided JavaScript, again great if you do a lot of Web development
3. Themes, works with X-Pages only, which work for Web client only....
   
4. Dojo, another cool Web development tool (A pattern is emerging)
   
5. New LotusScript methods for NotesDocumentCollection GetAllReadDocuments, GetAllUnreadDocuments, Intersection.  Something I guess but I don't recall ever needing methods like this.  Where is the constructor for NotesDocumentCollection?  That would at least be useful!
6. YES , finally an extension to the LotusScript language!  Oh, the ability to set the system date and time.  In 15 years of Notes development I don't recall ever needing to do that. I thought we had operating systems that managed the clock!

So after all the hype and all the wait I get practically NOTHING to help me build Notes Client applications.  It makes me envious of all the Domino Web developers who did at least get something in this release.  I can only hope something new appears before the final 8.5 release because IBM have gone nowhere in bridging the gap between Domino Designer and modern IDEs such as Visual Studio.  Perhaps we are not important in IBM's plans after all.  Which begs the question, why go to all the trouble to revamp the Notes client with 8.0 and then do so little for developers who develop applications that run on that client?