Truly noteworthy

THERE’S AN OLD joke that claims the way to recognize a pioneer is by the arrows sticking out of his back. That’s certainly been the fate of Lotus Development since IBM acquired it in 1995. Once a thriving titan of the software industry, Lotus is now barely recognizable, having been left for dead in every software market except the one it pioneered: the integrated collaboration environment, originally defined by the Lotus Notes client and the Domino server.

Today, one might argue that there is no such entity as Lotus — it’s just an IBM division playing dress-up. Certainly many longtime Domino and Notes customers felt that way after January’s announcement that native support of JSP (JavaServer Pages) would not appear in the forthcoming versions of Domino 6 and Notes 6, despite the fact that hundreds, if not thousands, of developers had come to rely on that feature.

One doesn’t have to be a cynic to recognize that IBM is pushing customers, willing or not, to its WebSphere package; but at the same time, it’s hard to ignore that, to everyone outside the developer community, it makes no sense for IBM to split its Java development offerings.

But the groans of disappointed developers aren’t likely to make a difference, as Version 6 of Domino and Notes remains on track for a third-quarter release. Our look at Pre-release 1 of the IBM/Lotus duo was impressive, but it still amazes us how far Notes has to go before it can catch up with the feature set of its chief competitor, Microsoft Outlook, to say nothing of simple e-mail programs.

Beyond Windows

To its credit, IBM/Lotus continues to offer a Macintosh version of the Notes client, putting it a step in front of Novell’s competing GroupWise 6 and perhaps a nose ahead of Microsoft’s on-again, off-again approach toward offering a Macintosh client for Exchange.

IBM’s new-found love for open-source software is demonstrated by the decision to package a Linux version of Domino 6, although we wonder how far this commitment will go, because no Linux version of the Notes client will be forthcoming in this release.

Memo to Linux developers and evangelists: Linux won’t become a corporate desktop without collaboration clients. There’s already a Linux work-alike for Outlook (see ” Open-source Outlook “), but we’re still waiting — as are customers — for a similar substitute for Notes. Granted, there’s no Linux client for GroupWise either, but at least Novell is publicly admitting its dependence on outside help in this department.

Notable improvement

The new Notes client offers a slick interface and a plethora of new features, including automatic refresh, the ability to color-code calendar entries and e-mail in one’s inbox, and the use of the Trash folder as a “soft delete” for unwanted documents. Notes 6 will also allow multiple users to share a PC and maintain separate private message stores, linked to the local operating system’s user ID.

But for some reason, the Notes client still does not allow a view of e-mail by subject. Date, name, and size sorts are still available, but the lack of a sort-by-subject option remains our primary complaint with Notes, and for good reason, because it seems that every other messaging and collaboration client offers this feature.

The Notes Designer client has a number of improvements, including the ability to customize the Tools menu to allow the use of custom and third-party options. We’re also impressed with Notes’ capability of exchanging data with non-Notes databases such as IBM DB2 and Oracle.

The Domino effect

On the server side, things are getting easier for Domino administrators. A new browser-based administration interface will not replace the Administrator Client, but it does offer much of the same look and functionality. Enhanced server logs and improved capture of operating system statistics makes monitoring and troubleshooting easier than ever. Another feature administrators will find useful is the ability to create and enforce archiving policies — seeing as users, when left to their own devices, will let their server-side mailbox databases swell to alarming proportions.

Service providers will appreciate the ability to support multiple organizations within a single Domino directory. By implementing the new Extended ACL (Access Control List) feature, administrators can limit each organization’s view of the Domino directory to keep the curious from probing other companies’ entries in the directory.

Domino 6 features a new fault-recovery option that allows automatic restart of the Domino server, even in situations in which more than one Domino partition is running on a server. Although clients would have to reconnect to the failed server upon its restart, the need to fail-over to an alternate server is greatly reduced. Cleanup processes can also be configured when the fault-recovery option is disabled.

Even the installation of Domino is easier than before, because Domino 6 includes a Java-based setup tool, eliminating the need for a Notes client during initial configuration. Custom options can be set during each stage of server setup. Wisely, the old-style databases are still included as a fallback.

Overall, our experience with Pre-release 1 of Domino/Notes 6 was encouraging. Were the final code to ship today, we’d recommend deployment.