Holy Notes

in Israel, Lotus Notes is a dying product and Lotus is a dying brand. There are still 30-40 active customers but not even one new customer in the last 5 years or so, at list not a significant one. There are also very few programmers and system people that know what it is, and how to handle it so finding someone for a new project is almost impossible. In the last months I had 2 projects that could benefit a lot from using Notes and Domino as an application server for their Intranet/Extranet environment, one of them even had Domino as one of the last 3 candidates, the other one didn't even wanted to consider it, one of the managers involved said something like "it's a dead product, even IBM not pushing it to the market any more". There were times when I would consider trying to convince him that it's not true, but I found that it's almost impossible, so I stopped. if a customer want a PHP open source like WordPress or any other, I'm fine with it.

Usually the decision about what tool to use has nothing to do with things like ROI, TCO and the general suitability of the tool to the task, if this was the case - I could bring IBM a new customer every month. but like so many other things in life it is all about trends, brands and the 'Everybody Does It' syndrome and when it come to this - IBM has nothing to offer, at list not here.

The Israeli market is so small and IBM doing so well here selling their hardware and services that I can almost understand why they make no effort to market Lotus products here (as far as I know they have one guy dedicated to this job), I mean what is the difference between 30 customers to 60? nothing in IBM numbers.

At my small consulting firm, We are no longer a 100% notes shop as we used to be, so we will keep doing business even if notes will completely disappear, but I have to admit - it's just not fun any more to make a living from a product that is always 'on the way out'. looking at the near future, lotus will still pay some of my bills, but in a year or two ? I hope to keep at list one Lotus customer just for the fun and to keep myself updated with the product, nothing more.

I'm using Designer 8.5 (or should I call it Designer plug-in for eclipse)  in the last 3 days, and also it's very far from being production ready, it's a huge step forward for Lotus Notes as a product. Code editors are still not implemented but they will, and since we already know how they look like in eclipse, I'm sure they both (Java and LS) will bring great improvements to this problematic area of the Lotus Notes Designer. I also installed Domino 8.5 one production server, my experience so far with Lotus beta releases is that you can trust the server to be stable and functional from Beta 1, I hope that I'm not wrong here. so far - so good.

Domino 8.5 and the new Xpages and Custom controls are not only cool -  they bring up a real revolution in the life of the domino developer life. The ability to implement paging, calendar control,  tab navigation and so many other thing that until today required external JavaScript libraries and tons of tweaking to implement will make the development off domino web 2.0 ready applications as easy as notes client development. No more prototype and jQuery extensions for simple pagination, and no more TinyMCE hacks just to get a decent rich text editor, just drag and drop (or almost) and you have it. The fact that IBM selected Dojo for all this was never clear to me, I always was a ProtoType/JQuery guy but for many of us it is no longer important as these design elements are now working out of the box, you don't even need to know JavaScript to run them.  

Almost 6 years after IBM came with the stupid idea of Workplace, it looks like they finally found a way to bring up Java to their developers in a non-frighten way. the new IDE let you stick with your old Formula and Lotus Script and every new feature is offered to you as addition and not as a replacement to what you already know. Notes 8.5  bring (back) the RAD concept from Notes Client to web applications, Super users can now be Super Web Users too, and create complex applications with zero or almost zero coding.

But, and with IBM there is always a but, Also this release , or at list the next one (8.51) with the new code editors, will make Lotus Notes a true web development environments that can be appreciated by people who use to Java/NET environments before, I'm not sure it's not too late for branding Lotus Notes as such. The amount of money and efforts that IBM will need to spend on making the market ready for this monster, and the presumptions about Lotus Notes as an old system that only few people know how to manage and create applications with making this release a real bet for IBM. For many developers R8.5 is a life saver, it will make our work much easier and efficient so we have a good chances to keep our customers with the product, but for many none-developers or half developers the new IDE can look scary and make them stick with the old version they are using.

Bottom line-  will it be the release that will make a start-up or a growing business consider Lotus Notes products over the default Outlook and SharePoint? I strongly doubt it. Will the typical "everyone are using Microsoft" CIO will consider it as a solution for new legacy application? probably not. But will it make my life as a Notes Consultant better? absolutely. 

1. IBM typical installation message "Disable is complete":

2. XPages - drag and drop pagination, tabs and more:

3. The results:

4. Something to do during the installation and the first launch (about 20 minutes):

I know IBM is a huge company. I know they have thousands of brands, product lines and product versions. I know there is no way to for a web site of such an organization to have all the information about all the products and still be easy to navigate or use but I'm sure it can be done in a better way than the way IBM are doing it. 

Earlier today I saw at Ed Brill blog that something called Quikr Entry 8.1 is now available at the IBM Passport Advantage site for 'regular' Lotus Notes customers. I never so this product at work, at list not since QuickPlace R2 so I thought it would be nice to give it a try and maybe suggest it to one of my customers (rest are already using Sharepoint or Sharepoint services so this thing will be too little too late for them).

I will share my Quikr Entry experience in a later post but this is not the subject here. When I was finally managed finish the endless clicking journey in the site (10 clicks from the passport advantage homepage until the file download actually start) I saw something weird. The file it self is 242 MB, which is a reasonable size but the Quick Start Tutorial is 324MB!!! .

Now, maybe it just me but I never saw a 324 MB quick start before - for someone who is downloading the files from Israel on a 2.5 MB ADSL connection such download can take 30 minutes. Usually I would not even consider to download a 324 MB QuickStart of anything, but because I had a hunch as for what I will going to find inside this file, I gave it a try and as usual - IBM didn't fail to fail:

this 324 MB zip file have 2 main folder in the root: linux and Windows, almost the same size - which mean that if I'm using Windows (and I am) file could be 50% smaller and there is more:the windows section contains about 12 languages, I only need English, which mean that IBM could reduce this file size by about 60%!This is only a small example of a really not very important issue but it demonstrate how unfriendly and annoying IBM web site can be.

Here is another example. This is what you will need to do in order to get the Notes SQL Driver from the IBM site:

1. open google and write: "download notes SQL driver"
2. Click on first link "developerWorks : Lotus toolkits"
3. locate "NotesSQL" on the first table and click on it
4. You get a 'Search Result' table (I ain't no Jacob Nielsen but I don't remember myself searching in the previous page), let's assume that I know that I need 3.02j and let's ignore the fact that it appear twice in the 7 items list, in two different dates and names and just click on the latest one.
5. you get into a page which is titled: "Trial download: 3.0.2" ??? . notes sql driver is not a trail at all - it's free and I know it, but what about someone who is downloading it for the first time ? again let's assume that I know that this title is wrong and click the 'Continue' button
6. Now you getting a screen titled "Lotus Support" that tells you that you need to sign in and to be an IBM registered user in order to do it. if you are not you can, at this point, go and register, or like most people will do - close your browser and say some not very nice words about IBM. for us, lucky owners of an IBM site id, let's just click the 'Sign In' button.
7. Login screen - enter your user and password and click 'submit'
8. You personal IBM site profile suddenly appear on the screen! ignore it, scroll down, locate the license section, check the 'I agree' checkbox and click on the 'I confirm' button at the bottom
9. download screen finally here (also it titled 'Lotus Support') click on the 'Download now' button and your download is start

Quick and easy, don't you think so ?

One of my first projects, about 10 years ago was developing a support call tracking system for one of my customers. Back then, the system content was generated by the 3 people of the support team using a notes client on a single server here in Tel Aviv. One of the requirements was that each document will have a support call number, and that numbers will be consecutive (or should I say sequence?), as I said  all 3 people worked on the same server so it was not a problem at all. a year later they hired a new support guy who worked from their North American office, since this office was very small they didn't had a server there so he worked on a local replica. To solve the numbering issues we decided that numbers will only be given on the first time someone opening the document here (on the server) or if no one did, by an agent that running over night and giving numbers to document without any. The problem became bigger when they installed a server on the North American office and doubled the team there, but we kept the old methods and just added an option for the team members there to initiate the numbering agent by themselves if needed, It was very slow as the agent ran on the server here but it was enough and we had no better solution. Then we added a 3rd server for the European office and another one for the Australian office , and then another one for the customer web site - where customers could open their calls directly and not by email or phone. This is a typical scenario with lotus notes applications: you create a simple system for 3 people with one server and few years later you find yourself with 300 users, 7 servers and dozens of local replicas. Also people got used to the fact that call numbers sometime can take hours to be added, we were still looking for a better solution when Notes 7 came for the rescue with the new (then) Web Services feature (I know it was available as a 'hack' in R6, but I didn't like this 'Agent as Web Service' approach).

What I did is writing a simple counter web service that running on the public web site, all this web service does is adding one number to it self on each call, and it also have a simple check in/checkout mechanism to minimize the option of duplicate numbers. Calls that are opening on the site using it directly as it on the same server, calls opening on the intranet using the browser or on the different notes servers around the world using a notes client are calling this web service using the Microsoft.XMLHTTP object. As a matter of fact even documents opened on a local replica will get their number as long as the user is connected to the Internet. Now with R8 you can do the same using the Web Service Enabled script libraries to avoid the use of an Object in your code and if you are a real IBM addict you can also use the SOAPConnect. No matter what you will choose the concept is the same - one web service serves numbers to many clients around the globes.

As is assume that every notes developer know how to write the counter function, and since you have all the other code needed in the pages I am  linking to, I will not post any code here but if you have any question, feel free to ask it in the comment section.

More useful links about this topic are:

• Quickly create Domino Web services: New Web services function in Domino 7 speeds development
• Web site rule: Overwrite session based authentication
• Lotus Notes 7 Web Services Article

Few days ago I watched a repeat broadcast of "Wall Street" with Michael Douglas, with the unforgettable "Greed is Good" speech. I remember the first time I saw it was in one of my first vacations from the army (everyone here have to serve 3 years from 18-21), I was really impressed by the wonderful performance of Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko. 20 years later - it still one of the best Hollywood movie player performance I saw.

Taking this to the Software world, Microsoft will defiantly be a good Gordon Gekko - the capitalist unfair unmoral bad guy who care only about money. In my opinion, and not only, Microsoft is one of the most cynical brutal and unmoral money making machine this world ever saw. They will do anything in their power to make more and more money, to win every battle and any war with any competitor. They don't care losing on court, trial after trail, verdict after verdict as long as they know that they making more money breaking the law than keeping it. for some of you, probably Americans, it might make sense, but I think that at list in most of the world, making money without go to jail, is not, and should not, be the first and only question a company asking herself before deciding on doing something.

But does the fact that Microsoft is what it is must put the competition in the "Teldar Paper" shoes? I don't think so (Teldar paper is the company Gekko is taking over to sell and close).I think Companies like Google, IBM, SAP and other giants, even Yahoo, can still compete and win their own battles, and actually keep the Google "Do No Evil" rule. I know they are all doing what they do for money, me too, and I know their is no other way to produce good products than being competitive and making your share holders happy but still, I prefer companies who doing it in the good old clumsy IBM way, or the young ambitious Google or SalesForce way over those who use the Microsoft way (this is why I didn't mentioned Oracle in the first list). At the end of the day - when choosing a product or environment to make a living from, between the one who lost in court and the one who won, I will always prefer the one who never got there in the first place.

I'm a lotus notes professional writing about lotus notes related issues, and there are some pretty good lotus notes blogs templates available like the IBM Lotus Notes blog template, OpenNTF BlogSphere, Ferdy Christant Blogo (my favourite) and few others. All of them are results of a great development efforts done by their creators, but the reason I'm not using any of them is more or less the reason I started this blog: it's too damm hard to use them, too expensive to host them, and I'm afraid that the fact that they are just a notes databases will make me spend more time on customize them than on writing in them - it is so much more natural for me to add some JavaScript to a notes form than adding a post to a blog.

Now, if the reason I choose not to use notes blog is a bit strange and unclear even to my self, the reasons for doing it on a Microsoft Site (and not a very good one, in my opinion) using a Microsoft desktop software (the new and amazingly cool Live Writer) are at list as strange:

1. I wanted to be the only notes blogger Space, BTW, no one I know here at Israel use Live Space, and I mean no one.
2. Microsoft Live Writer is so simple and fun to use, so why not using it ?
3. My first thought was to use Blogger, because Google is always my first choice for anything I need on the web, but I'm afraid I'm starting to be like those CIO's and IT managers who use more and more Microsoft products just because they already did it before - when I'm finding my self doing something without thinking (drinking Coca Cola and not Pepsi for too long) I'm usually forcing myself to do the opposite. 

This is the second post I'm writing using the Microsoft Live Writer and I have to say, I really like this software, Microsoft are so good writing software for Windows, It's a shame they are not focusing on it and leave things like Search, CRM, ERP or CMS for those who actually know how to do it. Think about a Microsoft SAP client for windows, and I'm not talking about the lousy Outlook add- in, I'm sure Steve Balmer will find the way to sell such a thing and make customers pay one license for SAP and one for Microsoft and feel good about it,  don't you think so ? 

Welcome to the HolyNotes blog, the first and only Lotus Notes related blog published on Microsoft Live Space by a person who only learned English when he was 27 yo and it shows !

Why using Lotus Notes at all ?

Well, if you, or your organization, are using it as your mail client and only for mail, no reason at all. Also it have all the features you need, and much (too much) more, It's slower than Outlook, Windows Live Mail client, Thunderbird or any other mail client or web mail service you know . It looks different than any other mail client you ever sow, most of your users don't know, and will never know, how to use it, you must install a 0.5 GB of software to run the latest version (R8), sometimes it take more than a minute to launch it, and when it crushed, and it sometimes does , most people will have to restart their machine to recover (there are tools to avoid it, or you can go to the task manager and kill the processes by yourself, but 90% of the people don't know how).

IBM claims that more than 130 million around the world using it, I believe the true numbers are lower by at list 30% because they count every license ever bought and ignoring the fact that in many organizations Notes is no longer used by the majority of users, as they migrated their mail Exchange. Yes, they keep paying the maintenance for their R5/6 licenses because part of their users are still using notes for other purposes, which I will discuss later, but from what I see and saw at my customers sites - about 30% of the licenses are not actually used. Still, it leaves us with 90-100 million users, all of them of course are business users, no one will just buy notes for his private use, and at list some of those 100 million are actually love it, how come ?

Because Lotus Notes 8 is still, by far, the best collaboration suite available in the market, and even if as a mail client it always lag behind the competition, it is the best tool to developing business applications, to maintain them and to use them. it's about 50% cheap to run a Lotus Notes environment from any other alternative, it have the best offline capabilities you ever saw, backward compatibility is amazing (applications developed on notes 3.0 back at 1994 years will work as designed on R8 server and clients with no changes at all!) and same application can run on a client and on a web browser.The domino server, unlike the client, is the most stable piece of software I ever saw, it can run for months and years without a reboot! and it takes 10 minutes to install, how different from SharePoint. And most important - creating a new simple or complex application will  take a good notes developer about 10-20% of the time it will take to a good .NET or Java developer to do the same on SharePoint, Websphere or any other Collaboration environment out there.

I was a witness to many migrations from notes to exchange as a mail server, in all of this cases, some of them happened early as 1998, Lotus Notes is still there side by side with exchange , alternatives where too expensive or just could not deliver. In this blog I will try to explain what makes Notes a tool that can help any organization out there. I will not try to convince anyone that it should be the only tool to use, unlike Ed Brill, I'm not working for IBM. as a matter of fact last check I got from them was back at 2001 when I delivered my last Lotus Notes Application Design course at the Israeli IBM Education Center. Since then, I think IBM did everything in their power to damage the product and my livelihood, includes trying to kill it on 2004 (the famous doesnotworkplace) , trying to sell it as something it's not (an outlook replacement), use it to sell things nobody needed (like domino.doc) spend almost nothing on marketing, at list here at Tel Aviv, and in general - acting like IBM. The fact that is still here live and kicking after all this years is just another prove of how efficient, scalable unique and stable Lotus Notes is, even IBM could not hide this simple fact from at list some of the IT managers and CIO out there.

As someone make most of his living from Lotus Notes at the last 10 years I consider my self as a kind of expert in how people are using it and for what, what can be done to help them get the most out of it, and how to do it fast and simple. What I'm not, and never will be,  is a true Lotus Technical expert, people like Jake, Julian and many other Lotus Notes bloggers out there are inspiration for me, I learned a lot from them and I have very little, if at all, to teach them or other developers. I'm also not a real part of the Lotus Notes community, I never been and never will be at the Lotusphere (also I did promise my children's to take them to Disney World sometime in the future) and I know very few people at IBM so I have no internal stuff to share, I'm using vowe as my source for this kind of information.

If you got this far you should know 3 things:

1. This blog is not about cool domino development tips.
2. It's not about strategic IBM decisions and their consequences
3. My English sucks.

I just hope you can find this blog interesting enough to overcome these 3 limitations.