Yesterday I spent most of the day with the Northeast Ohio Lotus Notes Usergroup. They had a very well-attended half-day meeting (50 attendees, give or take). I gave my 25 Tricks for Building Better Lotus Notes and Domino Applications Faster presentation but, as a part of it, got a surpise.

One of the items on the my list of 25 tips had to do with using AJAX in your web applications. I won't go into the details here but, as I got to that tip I asked the group, "OK, so how many of you are building web applications?"

I expected a third...maybe as many as half...of the people to raise their hands.

Only one guy did.

One guy? Out of a room of 50 or so Notes developers? Only one was doing web development? Wow, was about all I could think. Besides the fact it made my AJAX tip pretty much a waste of time, it got me started wondering how many people really are doing web development in Domino. As for me, it's probably three-quarters or more of what I do, but what about you?

Are you doing Domino web development? If so, how much of your time is web, how much is Notes? Are you building double-sided apps (to be used from both the Notes client and a browser), or apps strictly for the web? If you're not doing web apps, why not? Does your company simply not do web development or is Domino just not the platform of choice?

I'm quite interested in hearing what you have to say about this. Please take a moment to put in your two cents' worth.

1. Chris Blatnick11/17/2006 08:51:49 PM
Homepage: http://interfacematters.com

Hi Scott...great job yesterday! By the way, I was that one guy.

I was greatly surprised by the fact that no one else raised their hand as well, but I think this is more common than we probably thought. Around here, there are still many companies that haven't even turned the HTTP task on! As a consultant, you're probably much better positioned to be doing web work than a lot of in-house people. As for me, my time is usually split about 50-50...sometimes doing more web work and sometimes less. At a couple of other companies I worked for, there were dedicated web groups and Domino was not considered a worth platform in their eyes.

Anyway, thanks for coming up to Cleveland...it was a great meeting! Cheers...

2. Kevin Pettitt11/17/2006 09:28:37 PM
Homepage: http://www.lotusguru.com

Hey Scott,

Chris Toohey asked a similar question a few months back and got a similar answer. You might find this interesting: http://www.dominoguru.com/pages/08222006085500.html

I have personally done a good bit of domino web development, but would probably guess it has comprised no more than 30% of my overall work in the past 10 years.

3. Michael Smelser11/18/2006 02:18:50 AM
Homepage: http://www.Lotus911.com

Hey Scott,

A couple of the projects I am currently working on are for converting Notes databases for the web. Also, items I have been developing internally (to keep my skills up) have been double-sided.

Mike

4. Andrew Tetlaw11/18/2006 03:18:26 AM
Homepage: http://tetlaw.id.au

I work full time on a Domino driven, web based intranet so 95% of my job is web based Notes development. I've been doing web stuff in Notes for many years but have recently come to doubt Domino as a useful platform for web apps.

It really doesn't surprise me that so many Notes shops are no longer using it for web apps because, frankly, there are better tools available and Domino, despite leading the way in the late 90's, hasn't kept up. It really hasn't changed all that much since '97.

Anyway I wrapped up all my thoughts in a recent post here:
http://tetlaw.id.au/view/blog/dominos-relevance-and-the-modern-web/

5. Curt Stone11/18/2006 07:33:39 AM
Homepage: http://www.curtsisland.com

When I began my Notes career, the company I worked for decided to build the apps for both web and client. So, I "grew" up learning both in 4.6. I went to work for a new company and at this time they were focused on "thin" client and the stategy was to web enable all our Notes databases. I did that for 5 years. The company I've been with for 3 years has not made web enabling Notes apps a priority and I only have 1 out of 15 as a web app. I'm looking to change this into next year. I will promote web enabling our apps more next year for a variety of reasons. Do you think this is still a good strategy even with Notes 8's release next year?

6. Scott Good11/18/2006 08:22:36 AM
Homepage: http://www.scottgood.com

Curt,

In my mind, the question (in regard to Notes 8) is what your end users have (a) installed, and (b) in the way of connectivity.

One of my primary clients has manufacturing facilities literally all over the world. Many of these places have poor (which is to say, slow) Internet connections.

Until a few years ago, all their applications were built strictly for the Notes Client. At the headquarters, no problem. At sites sitting out there at the end of a thin wire, however, using some of these applications was like watching paint dry. There were situations where it could take several minutes for a form to load.

It was an unacceptable compromise.

What we found, though, was the same applications, re-tooled for the web, ran vastly faster...4, 6, sometimes 10 times faster (or more). Suddenly, they were usable again.

Then we found that by doing really smart (if I may say so) things in the development, we could internationalize the applications--make them come up in Chinese if you were in China, German if you were in Germany, and English if you were here (okay, technically speaking, it has to do with how your browser is set, not where you are. So sue me).

So, for these folks, the web was a godsend...they still had the same applications, the same security, the same...well...everything...but now it was faster, better, and more adaptable. That's a good thing.

Of course, if your application touches people outside the organizations (clients, vendors, etc.), who may not have a Notes client (8, or otherwise), then all the more reason for a web interface, if not a totally web-facing application.

7. Sean Burgess11/18/2006 09:07:49 AM
Homepage: http://www.phigsaidwhat.com/

Although I am currently doing 100% web development, I think it's been more of a 60/40 web/notes development over the last 5 years or so. And there are times that each type has more draw than the other, but both are essential in most environments.

@Andrew If you firmly believe that Domino hasn't change much since it was fully integrated into the Notes server in 1997, then the blame for that lies solely at your feet for not keeping up on the changes. In looking at your blog entries, I found only 2 entries in 2 years that have anything to do with Notes and neither of them talk about what you are doing with the platform. Add to that the fact that you seem to be in love with any new Web 2.0 and your opinion seems to carry even less weight. If you had said that there are other UI frameworks out there that should be used to enhance the Domino applications, I would be completely behind you. But a fancy UI does not make a Web Application. When those other platforms/frameworks start including a mature security model, simultaneous rapid application development of UI/database, mail routing capability, an enterprise tested LDAP directory, and a multi-os/reliable/scalable server, then you can start talking about them as being a replacement for Notes/Domino. Until then, the things you are talking about are nothing more than pretty window dressings.

Sean---

8. Curt Stone11/18/2006 11:14:04 AM
Homepage: http://www.curtsisland.com

@Sean - Well said. I was thinking the exact same thing as I was cleaning my gutters an hour ago. Might I add the benefits of an unstructured database model that contributes to RAD. I just ripped up a Microsoft tshirt promoting Active Directory, .Net, SharePoint, blah blah.. and another five products to do what's all in Domino. (I needed a rag to wax my car). I treasure the ability to do everything I need myself without relying on a host of others. They slow me down.

9. Andrew Tetlaw11/19/2006 05:19:27 AM
Homepage: http://tetlaw.id.au

Sean and Curt,

It sounds like you didn't really understand what I was saying and gave nothing more in return than a knee jerk reaction.

I was talking about Domino as a platform for web apps specifically. I wasn't talking about Notes replacements. My conclusion was that it's only a matter of time before the other frameworks have Domino's good features.

CouchDB looks very promising, in fact it seems to offer all of Note's goodness re: unstructured data. In fact most of those features you mention as Domino's strengths are already appearing.

As far as Notes being a good platform for web apps, I'm of the opinion it really only makes sense if your organisation already has a Notes investment. I don't see it having any value if you don't already use it.

At Domino's core, the web interface is still a simple HTML rendering of a Notes app using the web technology of the 90's. It's only through the efforts of others that the framework is dragged into working like modern websites should. I know, I have to do it daily. That for me is a clear indication it's not a viable web app framework. A framework should not make you do all the work.

As for me, my blog is about standards based website development, CSS, XHTML javascript and so on. I didn't want to write another Domino blog. Sorry if that's a problem for you. And, since you mention it, I think the only time I mention web2.0 is to mock it. So I have no idea on what you based your opinion.

I too have been using it since 4.5 for web development. Back when HTML attributes had to be entered into the field help.

So I think I know what I'm talking about. In fact if you really knew me at all, you'd see how silly your comments are.

10. Rich Waters11/20/2006 10:51:28 AM
Homepage: http://www.rich-waters.com/blog/

I would have to agree with Andrew on this one. I spend most of my time doing web development with various back-ends. Domino at this point in time does not stack up well against other web development frameworks. I often found myself hacking things and forcing domino to act how I want it to. In any recent domino web apps, almost all html was hand coded pass through with loads of computed sections which generated more html. This turns out to be far more work than in other web development frameworks which have a better html template system.

In our most recent endeavor, we are ditching a very problematic notes based web application and replacing it with a Ruby on Rails app. The application still interfaces with Notes via LDAP for authentication and web services for calendar/scheduling. So far this process is going very smoothly and looks to be a good basis for all of our future web applications.

I think that Notes is great for collaboration, calendaring, and email services. It is also a great RAD tool for very simple applications, though its web engine is very lacking.

11. Charles Robinson11/20/2006 02:55:42 PM
Homepage: http://cubert-codepoet.blogspot.com

No web development for me so far, but management wants me to start doing more to push information to the web. My boss has this "if you build it they will come " idea. The sad fact is only a tiny percentage of our customers even use computers in their businesses. I'll look good on my resume, but ultimately I don't think it will have the impact that is hoped for.

12. brandt fundak11/20/2006 03:43:49 PM

Scott,

as one of the attendees at the NEOLUG meeting (I was the guy who told you I hadn't heard of lists until a week before your presentation) I have been doing my homework about AJAX since your presentation. My problems with implementing AJAX however is that i am the only Notes designer in my company, and I have to balance working on older, non-web apps and making sure that my newer apps work across the board. unfortunately, I am not quite sure where to begin...i keep trying to think of useful ways to implement it, and since I am left to my own devices, I have no clue where to go.

I tried to go read your articles in Lotus Advisor, but my boss informed me that we hadn't received an Advisor in some time and that maybe our subscription had lapsed. d'oh!

in my perfect world, all of our Domino apps would be web enabled. I want to stop supporting the client. I just don't know how to get there.

13. Scott Good11/20/2006 04:01:55 PM
Homepage: http://www.scottgood.com

@Charles,

You're probably right, but you never know.

The client I do a lot of web work for started out a few years back and just one day drew a line in the sand and said, "From now on, all Notes apps have to work on the web, too." They didn't need things to be on the web then but figured they just ought to start.

Everybody groaned and moaned and, frankly, for the first year or so, the web capabilities were mostly lip-service. Rarely did those early applications have anything other than read capabilities from the web which met the letter of the law if not the spirit.

But then a funny thing happened: They had enough modestly-web-capable applications that they could actually put up an Intranet site and have a reasonable amount of data to access. And, lo and behold, people started using it.

Pretty soon, web-capable apps became a much more important consideration...to the point that today we're building more and more (Domino-based) apps for these folks which are not intended for the Notes client other than for administration.

Nobody really saw this happening back 5 or 6 years ago when the rule went into place, but it greased the skids for what was to come.

Scott

14. Sean Burgess11/21/2006 09:56:15 AM
Homepage: http://www.phigsaidwhat.com/

@Andrew

The issue I had with your comments is that, IMHO, I think it's impossible to separate the application framework for Domino Web apps from everything else that it does. For it is that intgration that really makes the Domino platform as powerful as it is. When developing a Domino application, there are so many things we take for granted that it isn't until we try to implement an application on another platform that we understand how unique it is. No worrying about implementing a new directory for my application. No need to figure out which mail routing engine to hook into. No concerns about what version of RDBMS to connect to. The beauty of Domino is that you don't have to provide all the tape and glue necessary when you implement other platforms. Since it seems that there is no perfect solution, would you rather have to provide the glue to get the app to work on the backend, but have a simple to program web framework or would you like to have a backend that you don't have to think much about, but have to do a bit more work to make the UI look fantastic. MS takes the first approach, Lotus the second.

I would love to see IBM "get with the times" in terms of output from the HTTP engine, but there is a part of me (the admin side) that understands that the impact of those changes would not be minimal. A prototype-like JavaScript framework would save so much time, it's ridiculous. With all their involvement in dojo, I wouldn't be surprised to see it integrated into the base Domino platform in the near future.

It's funny that you bring up CouchDB. I also believe that it has the potential to be an amazing platform that cherry picks some of the best things that make the Notes platform great. And there is no one I would want building it than Damien. His in depth knowledge of the inner workings of Notes will definitely be an invaluable asset. But I do worry about any product that is being driven by only 1 person, no matter how talented that person is. I really hope he gets some VC funding soon so that the true power of CouchDB can be realized.

Since we have never met and I just found your blog from the link, my previous comments were in response to what you had written here and in the linked blog entry. I must confess I didn't read your entire blog before responding, simply went off the entry titles as to what the content might be.

I have worked for a number of companies in my career and I have never found a place that has started implementing Domino apps that has stopped unless Domino has been completely removed from the environment. I think it's more of a case of Notes shops not seeing the need to extend their client based apps to a browser more than a limitation of the platform.

Sean---

15. Riaan Adriaanse11/27/2006 03:12:38 AM
Homepage: http://www.autumnleaf.it

Hi Scott,

We have a few clients here in South Africa and we are developing for both sides Notes and Web. Some clients are just Notes and some just web. I am about 50/50 between the two although I would prefer doing more web development.

16. Martin12/07/2006 09:24:22 AM
Homepage: http://www.martinhumpolec.cz/blog

I think that about 10% of my applications are web-based. The others are in Notes.

17. Ian Randall12/21/2006 06:55:06 PM

My company develops a Lotus Notes application for Risk & Compliance Management. The application is reasonably complex and has about 1,600 major design elements spread across nine databases.

The application is designed for both Lotus Notes Client access and is also fully web browser enabled. Many of our customers around the world are Lotus Notes shops but many are not. Even many of the Lotus Notes shops use web browsers for their shop floor staff, because they often don't have a PC available for each staff member. However, even some of the most ardent Microsoft shops in our user base prefer to use the Lotus Notes Client for "Power Users".

We find that development effort for the Lotus Notes Client is about 2-3 times faster than the web browser generally, however sometimes that productivity advantage is the reverse.

I would dearly love to see Lotus provide better web development tools in the Notes Designer Client, or even just provide more parity between the Web & Notes Client interface. Switching between both user interfaces dozens of times a day, surely makes me appreciate the speed and elegance of the Lotus Notes Client more.

I think that technologies such as AJAX and Exclipse are great steps forward, and appreciate that other development environments offer better development tools, but I am not sure that IBM truly understands what a wonderful and elegent development environment that they have in the Lotus Notes platform.

I look at what IBM tried to do with Websphere and the huge cost and developmenbt resources that they poured into that platform, and for what? perhaps 40% of what they already had in Lotus Notes and Notes was something that could be installed by a single person in a day or so, vs a team of consultants and ten times the cost and complexity to install and suppprt.

As a developer of a commercial solution to many large and small corporate clients around the world, I feel that the Lotus Notes platform with all it's warts is still a better alternative than other technologies that are perpetualy in beta and have a dubious commitment to backward compatibility. I wonder how many other development platforms allow you to develop a single software version that spans three major software releases and dozens of different system platforms.