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Mac OS X Version of Lotus Notes 6
NadizPicR writes "Lotus released the first Mac OS X beta for its Notes Domino messaging and collaboration system client. Version 6.0b1 also features improved toolbar handling. I just downloaded and installed it, and it seems to be an excellent implementation." Do people still use Lotus Notes? Honestly?
Lotus released the first Mac OS X beta for its Notes Domino messaging and collaboration system client.
Should read: IBM released the first Mac OS X beta for its Notes Domino messaging and collaboration system client.
The company that work for used to run Exchange 5.5 with Outlook 98/2000. It was an adminstrators dream. Everything just worked. Then, we got bought out, and our parent company told us to switch to Lotus Notes, which is what they use. WE HATE IT! Roaming users don't really exist in Notes. A name change involves us to go to the machine itself and change many settings. It also kills any computer that doesnt have more than 64MB of RAM. Lotus Notes blows. It's sad to see such a crapy program corrupt such a beautiful OS.
I've been using this client for about 2 weeks since it was released, and aside from a few small crashes, it's been running solid. The main problem is that when it freezes and you kill it, you have to reboot your Mac in order for it's database to be unlocked, (or i haven't figured out what else to do), which is kinda dumb, this being BSD.
The aqua interface isn't too aqua - it's mainly a wrapper around the R5 design with the exception of the dialogues, but all in all is just as easy to use.
3M
Accenture
Arthur Andersen
BASF
Bayer
CIA
Chevron Texaco
Countrywide
DiamlerChrysler
Eastman Kodak
Eli Lilly
ExxonMobil
General Motors
GlaxoSmithKline
Hewitt Associates
IBM
JP Morgan
Mars
MasterCard International
Nationwide
Philips International
PricewaterhouseCoopers
Procter & Gamble
Prudential
Rockwell
Coke
World Bank
I could go on, but I'm tired of typing.
There's an important ingredient here in Lotus Notes that's being missed, and would have solved many of Microsoft's problems had it been included in Exchange. The ECL, or Execution Control List.
Notes has embedded PKI, and checks who signed actions and design elements, and allows you to limit actions based upon the signature. Similar limits exist for the Java VM, and for execution of JavaScript. Each of these is a checkbox for each entity/identity/wildcard in the main list. That means you can allow */YourCorporation a basic level, then go back and all */Admins/YourCoproration more access.
I've listed the actions that can be limited below.
Access to file system
access to current database
access to environment variables
access to non-Notes data (ODBC and such)
access to external code
access to external programs
ability to send mail (eat your heart out MS!)
ability to read other databases
ability to modify other databases
ability to export data
access to workstation security ECL (this list)
First, use Web Mail in Notes. The 5.0.8 server came with iNotes, which is a pretty decent web client. Includes calendar. Light-years ahead of Microsoft's crap.
As for roaming users, there's a reason they don't roam under Notes. The Lotus Notes ID file, which is analogous to your PGP private key, is needed to log in. Exchange relies upon NT authentication, which is exactly why groups like the CIA won't touch it.
In Notes, the server can be given permission to put things into your mail file, and nothing beyond that. The user -- the one with the correct ID file (and the password to it), is the only one that can open that mail file.
Try that with exchange, or any other mail program.
IBM shops often use notes, since they already depend on IBM as a vendor. I know Kaiser-Permanente, the HMO, just recently swtiched from MS Exchange (A.K.A. Mmm... sex change...) and Outlook over to Lotus Notes after weathering one too many email viruses. KP uses DB2 on RS6000s running AIX.
Washington Mutual probably uses Notes too. I know they're an IBM customer. At the branch in Cheney you could see the S/390 behind the counter. If you get a look at the screen of a loan officer's PC, it's not running Windows but OS/2. From what I understand, the banks buy the AS400s and get OS/2 thrown in for free.
Casinos are another safe bet, if you want a job working with IBM iron and Notes. The new ones being run by native americans seem to prefer NT/2000, but the "old" corporate-run casinos of Las Vegas mostly use AS/400s for their accounting.
The Associated Press (AP) used to be all-IBM too. All the turnkey systems they used to sell newspapers ran nothing but OS/2, but last year they made a big promotion about they're new commitment to Windows 2000, and shortly after that all our AP systems were replaced by IBM PCs with W2K. They may still may be a place to look if you're looking for a Notes sysadmin position.
Democracy. Whiskey. Sexy. Pick any two.
The Notes server (now called "Domino") supports IMAP, POP, SMTP, HTTP, and whatever the Notes native protocol is (port 1352).
:-P )
If your Domino server supports POP or IMAP, then you can use any client you want. There's also iNotes for Exchange, which allows you to substitute a Lotus Domino server for a Microsoft Exchange server.
For those not familiar with Domino, it's something like an SQL server. Each Notes database is a database (so each mail file is a separate database) with design elements and command/scripts embedded into the design elements. For example, when you open a calendaring invitation, there are scripts that execute before the display renders to handle things like reschedule notices, return reciepts, etc. In a sense, using IMAP or POP is like doing an ODBC query, in that you get the raw data, but not necessarily in the full-featured native format. The single database model makes restores faster than Exchange's nightmare of a single database for all messages. You can create views, which are preset SQL queries (select all messages in my mail file that are in the folder "inbox" and list them), or base them upon formulas. There are also agents, which are either complex Visual Basic or JAVA actions you want to perform, or scheduled complex actions (like cron). Notes understands Java, JavaScript, and LotusScript, which is about 95% similar to Visual Basic.
Since IBM owns Lotus, version 7 of Domino/Notes is rumored to have lots of DB2 technology included in it.
Rapid application development is easy, and requires minimal user training to get started.
Since Domino is database + intelligent scripts + UI, that means you can make it do whatever you want. Throw in DECS (Domino Enterprise Connect Services), which means you can hook it into Oracle or any other SQL server, and you can make it the GUI front-end for your database, or make it pump data in and out to other sources.
Some examples of things I've done since I started working with Notes: software rollout (complete with scheduled "it's time to..." emails), time tracking, greeting cards, web sites, and secured document storage.
Understand I'm really just scratching the surface. Find someone who runs a Notes shop, or hit one of the big vendor fairs. I've run Sendmail, Exchange, and Notes servers, and frankly prefer the Notes servers -- except I use PostFix for spam filtering.
There are full-featured demos available on Lotus' web site, and incredibly good documentation on IBM's Red Books web site. http://www.redbooks.ibm.com/ Go to IBM's Red Books web site anyway. Documentation on everything.
Exchange takes less Administrator training than Notes does -- but Exchange doesn't run on mega-hardware like multi-processor Unix boxes. One Gartner study I read indicated that larger companies that can afford single-purpose administrators, use Lotus Notes, and smaller companies with administrators that must split duties, use Exchange. Oh, WebSphere gets along wonderfully with Lotus Notes, too, and they're talking about using the WebSphere IDE for Notes at some point in the future. (Yes, Notes is a self-contained application development environment, and it includes an IDE.)
There's other products like Sametime (http://www.lotus.com/sametime) that's a real-time collaboration/chat program that's encrypted end-to-end that frankly kicks Jabber's, AIM's, and NetMeeting's asses. (But since Sametime was written by Ubique and DataBeam, the companies that created NetMeeting and AIM, I'm not surprised.) The U.S. Pacific Fleet is currently using Sametime to better manage ship-to-ship communications, and to let Allies talk to one another while coordinating the whole Afghanistan mess.
(Posted anonymously because I can't remember if that Gartner study was classified or not.