Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Lotus vs. SharePoint

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the let's-get-it-on dept.

daria42 writes "An article at ZDNet pits the software collaboration kings against each other. IBM's Lotus Notes/Domino 7 goes head to head against Microsoft's SharePoint Portal Server 2003. 'If you don't have the resources dedicated to developing collaborative applications, don't have complex application or integration requirements or if you are focused on the Microsoft solution stack, SharePoint Portal Server 2003 is going to be hard to beat,' the review concludes."

6 of 181 comments (clear)

  1. Sharepoint is OK by br00tus · · Score: 4, Informative
    I've never worked with the Lotus stuff. I work for a Fortune 1000 company where until a few months ago, all public IT documents were stored in a shared directory on a Windows file server. So there was no record of when it was created, who was modifying it, who erased it if it was erased etc.

    Recently we began using Sharepoint. The upside is it's like CVS - you can see who edited a file, when, and what they changed. This is useful more for utilitarian purposes than spying - if I see Joe created a file, or modified it, I can ask Joe about it.

    One drawback for Sharepoint is linkage. In the old days I could just tell people to go to \\FILESERVER\IT\Documents\Whatever\Coolstuff.xls . They click on that in e-mail and it pops up. Now I have to give convoluted instructions on how to get the document. The URLs are long and convoluted. It was easier to direct people to information before.

    I am stuck here in Windows hell, are there any GPL and possibly UNIX-friendly versions of this type os software?

    1. Re:Sharepoint is OK by gambino21 · · Score: 4, Informative

      If your primary need is document management (version control, approval process, etc.) I have found Knowledge Tree to work pretty well. We've been using it for about one year, and it's fairly easy to set up and we haven't had too many bugs.

  2. Re:Speaking as a Scarepoint user by awkScooby · · Score: 4, Informative
    God forbid anyone use something other than IE.

    It's pretty much not usable with anything other than IE on Windows. IE on OS X (when they Microsoft provided such a thing) was unusable. Fortunately I had my laptop with me when the Microsoft folks were pimping Sharepoint to management. They said things like, "oh, yeah, it will work as long as it's IE. No problem." So I asked them to show me how since I was having problems with their Sharepoint site using IE on OS X.

    Needless to say, we're not running Sharepoint.

  3. Subversion is far better for your needs. by 955301 · · Score: 4, Informative


    Subversion. http://subversion.tigris.org/

    What you are describing is a source control system applied to documents instead of code. By design any files in the subversion repo are accessible via url. And you can restrict access using apache httpd access controls.

    For example, here is a subversion repo: http://svn.collab.net/repos/svn/trunk/

    notice you only needed a browser to get to it. If you use TortoiseSVN as your client, you can grab a copy using Window Explorer as a file-friendly client.

    Here's a screen shot of TortoiseSVN:
    http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/

    Access via apache httpd is through web DAV, so you can put it in your network share list as well.

    --
    You are checking your backups, aren't you?
  4. You're not talking about Domino... by sean.peters · · Score: 3, Informative
    the big end user problem in Domino is the limited hierarchy. You have rooms, cabinets, folders, and files.

    Rooms, cabinets, folders, files, etc; are not Domino features... they're Quickplace features. Domino applications can be developed to have any sort of hierarchy you want. Quickplace comes out of the box with the room/cabinet... architecture you refer to.

    Probably, though, the comparison of Quickplace to Sharepoint is more relevant anyway, as Domino is the full-fledged application server, and Quickplace is the easy document collaboration product. Quickplace specs match a lot more directly to Sharepoint than Domino specs do.

    Sean

  5. Jeez, I get tired of hearing this by sean.peters · · Score: 4, Informative

    The "interface hall of shame" site is ludicrously out of date. It refers to Notes release 4.6, for God's sake! That was released in what, 1996? We're up to version 7 now! It's a little silly to keep harping on an interface that hasn't even been used in 10 years.

    And criticizing Lotus Notes because you don't like the interface of a Notes application is somewhat like criticizing Linux because you don't like the GIMP. Applications can be well or poorly designed in any environment.

    Sean