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24 June 2005
Hannover - Reviving Lotus Notes
Last week announcement of Hannover - the version 8 of Lotus Notes, @ Edbrill.com has been widely appreciated by the bloggers.
This release would be a major revamp of the software to provide a paradigm shift in Collaboration & Messaging Software domain. Hannover is intended to push IBM's Activity centric collaboration model. Which is quite different from the current email/inbox and related but unconnected documents that resides in multiple Lotus NSF Databases.
IBM has also taken this opportunity to provide a highly modern look for the Software which is something the Lotus community has been missing for long.
This step from IBM for one is to halt any migration away from Lotus for usability reasons. In many such migration cases, Users have cited Lotus Notes as begin a non-standard client, primarily due to its decade old-look.
The underling platform for Lotus Notes client software is also changed with this release, and it will be based on Eclipse RPC code base. But right from version 6.5 IBM has introduce API enhancements to support prior version applications in eclipse based Hannover. This is what IBM calls as composite applications.
Though its a very encouraging move from IBM, there is a huge community of Lotus Developers and Partners, who are providing consultancy and application based on Lotus technology. So what this new interface means to them?
There are many questions that would be answered as more material is available from IBM on Hannover, but these are my understanding on Hannover release.
1. The Lotus Notes Mail/Calendaring features will be only eclipse based initially. These same interface components as we see for the email views/perspectives will not be available for Developers to use in their Notes Application.
2. Hannover is only a Client enhancement release, and Lotus Designer will continue to provide the existing interface for Views/Outlines/Forms and other Notes application components
3. Customizing of Mail/Calendaring features as possible in current Mail Templates will not be possible; or atleast they will require high understanding of eclipse classes.
4. The Hannover Mail features will be based on POP3 architecture by default like MS Outlook, connecting to Domino Server for POP3 services and will use Derby database engine for local storage of Email/Calendaring documents.
Inshort, it is a Workplace rich-client for messaging rebranded as Lotus Notes which will continue to support Lotus Notes databases as composite applications, but will not support for long the Notes programming model (Formula, LS, RAD, etc).
These are my understanding of how things are or might be, and need not be taken as something Official from the Vendor.
15:40 Posted in Collaboration , Eclipse , IBM Workplace , Lotus | Permalink