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Linux Intranet Application and Collaboration Software?
_blueboy asks: "I work in IT at a medium-sized Life Sciences company, and we are in the process of developing an intranet. As one of the primary developers, I have been involved in evaluating both development and server software. We are currently using an all Microsoft setup but it has proven to be very finicky, unreliable, and unpredictable. Our director is currently evaluating Domino R5 but several of us would like to move to Linux and Apache. Our director likes the idea that Notes & Domino form a "complete package". I know that Lotus is planning to ship Notes & Domino for Linux soon. Does anyone have any experience with the Lotus software and how well would it likely run on Linux? Are there any similar packages for *nix/apache or any companies that might provide a similar custom built solution? It is essential that the software be able to provide us with easy and reliable document sharing/collaboration tools for a Windows network. "
Yes, yes, and yes. However, someone just picking up the language is unlikely to.
Python and Java encourage encapsulation. Tcl... well, let's not go there.
Remember that what's inside of you doesn't matter because nobody can see it.
Intranet and document sharing are two different things. Intranets can be a carrier for document sharing, but can be alot of other things too, as in our case, for example project planning and other financial things.
Document sharing is also a difficult topic to comment on, because document sharing can be easily done by sharing directories/folders on a linux machine with samba, so windos users can access them, but if you want more then that, you'll have to built them yourself.
As for applications like Microsoft's office tools and Notes, they often promiss things like "easy sharing of documents", but wether those functions are really usefull is not proven.
One can think of solutions like using php, embperl or another scripting language in combination with Apache and samba to share and describe documents, with extra stuff like document history or short comments in a database, for example Mysql or postgres.
We are currently investigating the document sharing options, looking at the commercial offerings, and will be either building our own system for it, and maybe opensourcing that, or helping out Midgard , which has very promissing plans in these directions too.
M.Stolte, &Samhoud NetVenture
www.samhoud.nl
-- signed for your pleasure --
It is very hard to describe to people what it is like to use Domino/Notes in an actual business setting if they have not seen it in action.
In my opinion, confirmed by several postings here, there is nothing else in the market that provides the infrastructure for groupware applications that Note does. Note how many of the posts say things like "just snip here and patch this there" and you'll have groupware.
The develi is in the details, and with Notes you will get a integrated platform that can:
1. Replicate databases across servers. This is very important if you have distributed offices.
2. Databases can have levels of user access: administrators, read only users, user that can create top level items, other which can only respond to top level items.
3. Clients which run on many platforms.
4. I'll endorse the other user post about Notes looking the same across all platforms - it does. Training costs for users are minimized.
5. A wealth of 3rd party applications - Notes has been araound for a long time.
6. Since the servers are monolithic, they are robust. No integration problems to test against as you would encounter with some of the home grown approaches suggested in other posts.
7. Proven software. Many large organizations run their entire groupware on Notes. Seagate Technology, the disk drive manufacturer, uses Notes to diseminate design and test specifications across a world wide organization.
In short, think very carefully about giving up Domino/Notes, especaily factoring in hidden development costs, scalability, and reliability. Domino may be expensive, but it is very good at what is does.
FWIW, a sort-of prepackaged solution could be to go with Philip Greenspun's ACS, with an Oracle and AOLserver substrate.
I've got the ACS, AOLserver, and Oracle 8.0.5 running on a Thinkpad (P133) with 48mb RAM/2gig HDD, and it's usable for development. It would only host, probably, 10 users before it became too sluggish for end users, but we're talking a crummy P133 Thinkpad here...
The Upside: robust, ongoing development (see Philip's photo.net) from MIT educated brains. Any development of modules you might do can be used by other ACS users, and you get the "many eyes, shallow bugs" effect.
Also, the ADP programming model is very similar to PHP.
The Downside: you're pretty much restricted to Oracle and Tcl. Some people like Tcl, some don't. Oracle, in a production environment, really needs a 6-figure DBA.
It's worth looking at -- you can extend the toolkit to suit your needs, or if you have $$$, you can hire ArsDigita to do it for you and support you.
Potato chips are a by-yourself food.
I've been using Notes/Domino since release 2.1 on OS/2, I wrote apps, administered a server farm, and wrote server addins using API. After a period of about 2 years of pure hate toward the product and its programming philosophy - around 1994/5 - I've now come to term with it, liking it for what it can do, and trying to avoid things that it doesn't do well.
;) ;)
Pro:
- Database replication
- It's databases are NOT relational (yes, it can be a pro...)
- Very fast application creation for small to medium complexity requirements.
- Server available on a lot of OS and architectures (from little NT to Unixes to OS/390).
- Supports open standards A LOT. No other commercial sw supports so many open standards. You can use almost anything to connect to Domino.
- Has interfaces to a lot of relational DBs.
- Integrated HTML mail for V5.
Cons:
- Closed and rather poor Developement environment. Almost no code reuse, you can lose the position of your code very easily.
- Very steep learning curve (brick wall style)
- Confusion on what tools to use (@Formulas, LotusScript, JavaScript, JAVA/CORBA) to solve a problem.
- To do complex things you are required to use some Horrible Kludges (of the kind that would never be accepted in open source project, I fear
- It's databases are NOT relational (... but it's a con, too
I tried to think on how to get all its good features together using OSS, but I fear now that you cannot, unless you devote yourself to initial project developement for a full year before opening it.
If you do not have a functional program/system upon which others implement new features and improvements, the Open Source model does NOT work.
Bye,
Rob!
Feel free to contact me for other info/detail about Domino.
AniToolBox! An Open Source animation program!
Domino doesn't automatically render MS Word documents into HTML - you would need to convert them to the Notes storage format.
Although the Office 2000 server stuff isn't very popular here, considering if that's where your data is, it might be the best bet. Within the next few years, Microsoft is planning to build an entire web groupware system more akin to Domino based on the Office server extentions. Not that you can wait for them, just something to think about.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
I'm looking at a similar project and I think Zope and Squishdot (with bunches of customization) will fit the bill!!
http://zope.org
http://squishdot.org
Get a life, not a lifestyle. - Hikem Bey
In my admittedly somewhat limited experience with Notes, it tends to be slow. We have Notes at GM (they use it primarily for e-mail and phone number databases right now, but this is changing by March when the company will deploy what it calls its "Notes Restructured project" which includes calendaring and group discussions.
:) but I think that Notes/Domino does have some performance limitations due to its design.
I've used Notes/Domino at two work places and helped design databases at one, and IMHO, Notes, while a noteworthy solution (there is nothing like Notes/Domino right now), it appears to try to be all things to all people and as a result has some severe performance problems. This *could* be related to network and server configurations (the networking setup at GM has its problems, and they are characterized by three letters [E, D and S in that order], but lets not get started on that shall we?
There are no plug-and-play solutions. Zope is open source and is generic enough that you could create an e-mail/calendaring/group-discussion system between it and Apache/Linux, but this is not as simple as just plugging in Notes and there you go. There are other solutions that are written in perl and python that would work as well, and other people in this discussion area have mentioned those. Again, its not as simple and not as powerful as Notes/Domino when it comes to making it easy, but they are open source solutions that would work.
Of course, you could always use Exhange Server and Outlook, but let's not even get started on the Evil Empire's braindead solutions...:)
My journal has hot
Simply:
Go with Zope.
ZOPE is _the_ system today.
Find it at http://www.zope.org/
It would be appropriate to elaborate on these statements, but I'm busy handling yet another case of ZOPE's strong FeelGoodFactor, so I'm afraid I can't.
This severe condition is likely to strike 97,6% of all ZOPE users and application developers more than once.
Best regards,
Steen Suder
Best regards,
Steen Suder
-- for email: send to
As a long time /. lurker, I've finally been moved to post - please keep the "proprietary" flames in check. (See MikeR, you knew you'd get met to post eventually)
In the days before the web, Notes was a secure, distributed, document database. When the web came along, some said, (mostly Microsoft folks as I remember), this is the death of Notes. If Lotus had chosen to stick to the exclusively proprietary, (ie. their "property") requirements, it probably would have been. Instead they chose to support "open" protocols and turned the Notes server into an HTTP server; aka Domino. With present day support for SMTP, POP, LDAP, IMAP, NNTP, X.400 as well as several other company's proprietary protocols, scripts and languages (SSL, JavaScript, Java, and Perl) Domino is a kitchen sink of acronym support. But, more importantly it still works very, very well at what it was designed to do: securely distribute documents.
Sure, you can craft together many different, and probably free applications, script languages, security systems, e-mail systems, databases, web servers, directory servers, file servers and other elements to try to do workflow; but why? If it is for the sake of not using proprietary software, why limit your company that way? Why not choose the best tool for the job? Even if you have to pay for it, sometimes buying software makes very good sense for businesses. Consider the long term value. Especially since you can do all of the workflow that Domino is famous for without the Notes client anyway. Unless you need the PKI security and the local replication of data, just use a browser! It really works well and by using the document database you never end up with broken links for missing or accidentally overwritten documents. The Access Control List management simplification alone could save you a lot of time and grief.
Lest you think I'm an IBM spy, let me assure you, I'm not. I'm a humble Internet entrepreneur that is glad to have some extra time to do real work rather than trying to solve the latest integration headache. BTW - I do run Linux/Apache AND Domino because it is all about using the best tool for the job.
Zope is extensible in Python. The ACS is a large package of tcl code that accesses the AOLserver API (AOLserver is now also free as in speech). Both encourage a style of programming that is more maintainable than Perl. If you knew Perl already, I strongly doubt you'd have asked your question. That's actually a good thing -- the same things that make Perl great for simple one-shots make it tough for novices to maintain. Python (and to a lesser extent, tcl) is a great deal cleaner.
I didn't mention Java or Jserv -- there is a package called JetSpeed which the Java-Apache group has put out, but my initial reaction was that it was very slow. Don't take my word for it, though -- take a look and decide for yourself.
Don't be an idiot and lock yourself into Yet Another Uncaring Vendor. You can get support for Zope or the ACS direct from the developers (Digital Creations or ArsDigita respectively). If you choose to use mod_perl and postgres, you still can get professional support. With Lotus you can look forward to servers that don't write log files, proprietary APIs, flat file "databases", and other such niceties.
Don't buy into it.
Remember that what's inside of you doesn't matter because nobody can see it.
Another issue with analyzing Notes/Domino, is that it's suitability highly depends on the type of applications you are using, and if you are planning to run the Notes client or not.
With the Notes client, it's a proprietary, but pretty effective system for e-mail, calendaring, and the ambiguous "groupware" type applications (generally discussion, tracking, or approval applications that don't require much relational data.) Development is proprietary, but much more rapid and lower cost than your typical VB/Delphi client-server apps. (Most Notes shops are far closer to 'paperless' than places where the only back ends are relational DBs.) The server is certainly stable, and scales better than MS Exchange, although not as well as commodity IMAP and HTTP servers.
As a pure web server, I have mixed feelings about Domino. It does dynamic server-side HTML, but the development environment is not well suited for that at all. Every HTML document must be dynamically converted from Notes format, so it's slow. It includes web mail and discussion applications, but they are certainly not near the best you can get in that department. CGI-like applications with Domino agents run slowly and high overhead.
As a web server, the only thing that Domino seems to give you is the built-in document storage engine (which involves no programming overhead.) For some applications, that might be worth it, but for many others (like Slashdot, for example), a simple relational database can do the job just fine, and the programming overhead for storage is mitigated or justified by the use of standard web development tools.
In short, Domino works great if your organization is willing to commit to using it for your smaller applications, and you're willing to use the Notes client. Otherwise, I'd look around more.
Business. Numbers. Money. People. Computer World.
It's licensed under GPL and written nearly completely in perl. It isn't completely project management system like, but you i guess that with a little bit of perl code here and there you'll be able to customize this system as you like it.
It's really worth giving it a try, it rules!
Greetings go out to Eddie for writing this great thing !
You can test it online on this adress http://demo.obsidian.co.za/ocs/
And here you go for the downloads
OpenSource 4ever!
I've got extensive experience with Notes/Domino, dating back to V2 (OS/2 servers on IPX networks.... [shudder]).
The feedback coming from the Linux beta has been very positive for Lotus. The server is proving wonderfully flexible. You should be forewarned, though, that they have no plans at the moment for a Linux client. Win32, Mac and 4+ browsers only.
Check out Iris Associates' (the Domino engineering group) Linux beta discussion at http://www.notes.net
A basic installation of Domino gives you an address book with your phone numbers, and the default 'templates' allow you to create web-based databases for discussions and postings.
Another default database template lets you create a "Microsoft Office Document Database" that allows you to create Embedded documents or attach existing Office documents. If you index the database, you can include the text of the documents (Embedded or attached) in the index for searching and retrieval.
Don't believe the hype about the problems with Domino, I've been a Certified Lotus Professional Developer and Admin for years and if you follow basic system principles, (don't mess with it to see what it does), it will work for you. In my experience, Domino runs very well on *nix platforms, but can even be run on NT, if you are prepared to reboot the box every weekend!
Coming up with an alternative to Lotus Notes seems to be one of the classic "failed projects;" several attempts have come and gone where groups have brainstormed and not been able to come up with a clear definition of something they could actually implement.
Several are listed at Text Management Projects for Linux, including Gather (aka PINN, aka Sumatra, aka Mediator), Yoga, Citadel, Casbah. Zope is probably somewhat comparable. Some of these are downright failed; others are merely somewhat late.
The problem is that Lotus Notes can be looked at in several ways:
These are all useful perspectives; unfortunately people see it different ways, and when you put together enough people to have a project team, there are enough perspectives to make the project definition so vague as to be a non-starter.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Upon re-reading this, I'm not sure if my question is exactly clear.
An example of what we'd like to do:
- Browser-based and database driven apps like a phone list
- Fully-administered discussion groups, message boards, job postings, etc.
- Access to company documents (mostly Microsoft Word) through a browser, so that you can view them without having access to the entire network
Currently, we are using IIS & ASP for the apps and message boards, but we still haven't decided on a solution for document sharing. I'm afraid of the Office 2000 "Intranet Tools"...
We are looking for either a package or a combination of tools (an answer like "use apache, php, and MySQL..." is helpful).
Thanks for your help!
pdubroy AT yahoo DOT com
Twig
and
Horde/Imp
These guys are great for webmail, calendering and contact management.
A good forum type app would be Sporum. They are all freely distributable and only require IMAP (not a problem on an Intranet),mysql and perl. Twig uses php as well. All of these are fairly easy to set up (especially with php as a DSO in apache). I've set up all 3 on our intranet as evaluating a few options. They are all easily customizable. Any combination of these with a couple of hacks and snips here and there and you have your own web based groupware. =)
"We hope you find fun and laughter in the new millenium" - Top half of fastfood gamepiece
"Fighting the underpants gnomes since 1998!" "Bruce Schneier knows the state of schroedinger's cat"
I work at a small but rather high-profile consulting company, doing both design and admin/support. We're a M$, IBM and Lotus partner company, so we end up working a lot in multi-platform, multi-this, multi-that environments, and even though Domino is scoffed sometimes by database-minded folks as "flat" and difficult, it is a life-saver for long-term evolving situations (the secret being that this is MOST places...), because data can be indexed and worked with in ways M$ and many other vendors have never dreamed of dealing with. [What I'm skipping here is a dissertation on why the word "Workgroup" strikes fear into the folks in Redmond, because they KNOW they are 5 years behind according to current development models, and why its so often overlooked by the shrink-wrap software world in general, but I digress...]
/.'ers might think.... Linux will probably running on the S390 mainframes and RS/6000's midranges (and maybe who knows what this will do to the AS/400 world???) within 18 months. And mix this into the sales push of Windows 2000 next year, with its plethora of bugs and outrageous hardware req's.... wow! Domino and the new R5 client is a blow to M$ companies which have come to realize that they don't want their network infrastructure being designed from the desktop up and out; rather, they need integrated environments with sophisticated replication and access that a PC-centric model does not provide. Companies line-up to hear about the power of Domino/R5... and when you mention that they can subtract the NT or Solaris license fees....
The question, then, is given that Lotus is so much better entrenched in the corporate development landscape, what IBM and its daughter company, Lotus/Iris, will do with Linux and vice versa. IBM is farther into Linux than I think a lot of
This is the vector by which a large number of Linux hosts will infect the corporate bioms, in addition to the Apache/Linux combo. The crucial thing to observe, though, is how the linux philosophy might infiltrate into the halls of Iris (the dev. half of Lotus). Right now, the folks at Iris could really care less about Linux -- papa IBM came down and told them to port to yet another Unix... big deal, they say. (there no way in HELL domino is going open source... not yet) But if the number of Domino servers increases because of Linux, then 2001 or 2002 will see headline stories talking about the Sun development model paralleled with the Iris dev. model...
Linux will not take over the world by winning the desktop -- and it doesn't need to. The flow of the Linux meme into the IBM world is the most significant thing to have happened in the computer world since the advent of the PC. IF you are in the midst of deciding how to built a dynamic enterpise right now, you don't care whether the Linux philosophy is better than some particular companies product... but if you take one of the BEST development environments around and set it on top of Linux, then you know that no matter WHAT happens in the computer world in the next 5 years, you will be guaranteed to be position to pick and choose the best-of-breed options, whether they are open source, gnu, or proprietary.
To specifically answer the original post: I've installed and run the Linux version of Domino, and if you know anything about Domino, its EXACTLY the same on every platform it runs on (OS/400, NT, Solaris, AIX, etc...) By Q#2 2000, Linux Domino will be stable and ready to starting crushing Exchange/SQL Server setups... and don't forget about DB2 for Linux when Domino needs extra horsepower. This combo could be the smartest path an IS manager could make next year.
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