Lotus Notes refuses to die, again, as HCL debuts Domino 12
- Reference: 1623132810
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2021/06/08/hcl_domino_12_debuts/
- Source link:
“Notes and Domino have been transformed”, HCL proclaimed in a launch video. That’s strictly true, even if many of the “transformations” are, in truth, merely attempts at catching up.
The new HCL Nomad, for example, enables Domino apps to run in a browser. It also allows Domino developers to write for the web and an app without altering any code, which will be welcome.
[1]
The new Domino Volt is billed as a low-code development environment that allows business users to create apps and forms without needing to know much about Domino’s workings. HCL talked it up using examples that included its own marketing department creating forms, and law firm providing its staff with access to documents and workflow facilities.
[2]
[3]
Domino is now also able to run in clouds. AWS, Azure and Google are all available as hosts, deployment on Kubernetes is possible, and the software has been certified for RedHat’s OpenShift platform.
[4]India's Big Four services champions want to become software vendors
[5]New t-shirt slogan: 'My job was outsourced to an Indian company that moved it to Vietnam'
[6]Congrats, HCL, on your £1.5m contract to upgrade a county council's ERP system to SAP S4/HANA within a year
[7]India anoints little-known Zoom clone as its home-grown videoconf tool of choice
And that’s all the stuff that Richard Jeffs, HCL’s Senior Vice President and General Manager for Digital Solutions, deemed worthy of listing as a “wow” in what he termed a “breakaway release” for Domino.
The title of Jeffs’ keynote address in the virtual launch of Domino V12 was “The World Is (Still) Powered By Domino”. He then revealed that the platform has 15,000 customers, that 42 per cent run 2020’s version 11, and some (such as LG) are expanding their use of Domino.
That’s evidence that Domino may still be a profitable business, and HCL’s [8]virtual launch event includes a testimonial from a new customer who migrated away from Microsoft Exchange.
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But Domino 12 wasn’t deemed worthy of an HCL press release, and the virtual launch event’s production values are rather less slick than almost any other virtual event your correspondent has attended in the last year.
Long story short: HCL is not throwing megabucks at marketing this release, and its new bits are nice catchups — not Exchange killers. HCL seems to know this, as it HCL is also making generous upgrade offers. Free licenses for Volt and HCL's no-cost assistance developing a Nomad app are on offer for those willing to move to version 12 in the next 12 weeks.
Domino users can, however, take comfort from the fact that HCL has created three major releases since [10]acquiring Domino in 2018 . Users stuck with Novell’s GroupWise, which tussled with Domino in the 1990s, haven’t had a major release since [11]2017’s version 18 . ®
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[1] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YL8-wpudBFNz0BvVhwekqQAAANE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[2] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YL8-wpudBFNz0BvVhwekqQAAANE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[3] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33YL8-wpudBFNz0BvVhwekqQAAANE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[4] https://www.theregister.com/2021/03/15/india_services_software/
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2020/12/14/new_tshirt_slogan_my_job/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2020/11/05/derbyshire_county_council_sap_s4hana/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2020/08/21/winner_of_indian_videoconferncing_competition/
[8] https://hcldominov12.virtualeventpro.com/event
[9] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YL8-wpudBFNz0BvVhwekqQAAANE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[10] https://www.theregister.com/2018/12/07/hcl_18bn_ibm_software/
[11] https://community.microfocus.com/collaboration/gw/groupwise/w/groupwise/2714/groupwise-release-history
[12] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
allows business users to create apps and forms
>> allows business users to create apps and forms
Nuke it, now.
Domino
Now that's a name I've not heard in a long time...
From what I recall of my Lotus Notes days, it was a mediocre email server mated with an even more mediocre database. Maybe things have improved in the intervening, ummm, decades? I do love these Reg stories that remind me how bloody old I am. As if the aching joints and increasingly fuzzy memory aren't enough. Now, where are my glasses?
Re: Domino
Well, it could be used as a business application platform, too
Re: Domino
I think that was generally the whole point of it - a decent database/application platform with email tagged on as an afterthought, probably as part of Zawinski's Law - "Every program attempts to expand until it can read mail. Those programs which cannot so expand are replaced by ones which can."
Re: Domino
I used Notes for a few years in the early 00’s. That was always my take. I quite liked it, except as an email platform.
Re: Domino
I'd dispute your first statement on a technicality - Domino was an excellent mail server. It was a mediocre mail client, true - but the mail server was excellent. It had good routing controls (including least-cost routing across multiple paths), it was robust, and it was fast.
But the one I want to really take up is that it was a mediocre database. By what measure? What other non-relational database are we comparing it to? Does that database engine have transaction logging for integrity & performance? Does it have a cluster replication engine capable of syncing a database across up to six servers? Does it have 64Gb and later effectively unlimited database sizes? Does it have a replication engine capable of field-level replication? Does it have robust security that allows access control down to the field level? Does it allow encryption of the database? Or field-level encryption? Does it allow single-object storage of attachments across multiple databases? Compression of objects within the database? Honestly, I could go on for quite a while here.
The Domino database engine is far from mediocre. It was one of the first non-relational databases to get widespread deployment, and it did exceptionally well. If there's one thing that Notes should be remembered for getting right, it's that database engine. Modern NoSQL databases are only just beginning to catch up to what it could do.
Re: Domino
I totally agree, it was an excellent email platform and NoSQL DB and I still support a couple of sites running it, sites that never give me issues. The security was also excellent! The largest implementation I was involved in amounted to 45,000 users across 80 countries and it worked like a dream.
Re: Domino
Yep, it's very reliable.
I can't say I've never seen corrupt Notes databases. When you work with a product for over fifteen years you see a lot of things. But the corrupt Notes databases I have seen were usually client-side, and caused by crashes - mostly on laptops, not always even Notes itself crashing.
The server-side corruptions were exceptionally rare - the only ones that spring to mind were mail.box databases. That's the mail queue that the router uses, and as you can imagine with every single email being written into it and then deleted it takes a pounding, especially in larger environments. Even then, these were rare and were usually caused when a third party tool like McAfee crashed.
Our solution was to move them elsewhere and let Domino generate new mail.box file(s) - then to run the database fixup tools and manually copy any unprocessed mails into the new queue DB(s). On at least one memorable occasion that proved that it was indeed McAfee dying whilst scanning something, and I can't blame the Domino database engine for that failure!
(Plurals in parenthesis because most of our servers actually had more than one mailbox queue DB for performance reasons. This doesn't change the story.)
I can honestly say I've lost more work to Word crashing or corrupting its files than I ever lost to Notes doing the same.
Wow, a blast from the past. That was the platform a previous employer used. Wasn't it Notes that displayed those odd hieroglyphics as you typed your credentials?
Mind you for a while I managed to avoid it. I and a colleague were using OS/2 Warp so we got to enjoy ccMail instead. To be fair the integration with [1]WPS could be quite awesome at times (I still think WPS was the best graphical shell I've ever used) but unfortunately ccMail would occasionally barf and lock the WPS message queue.
That would require us to ask someone to Telnet into our machine and kill the WPS process. It was solved eventually when IBM relented and gave WPS multiple message queues.
Happy days :)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Workplace_Shell
It was Notes that displayed the odd hieroglyphs, yes.
In a piece of software not known for its usability touches, I thought that was quite a nice one. Made it easy to see if you’d typed your password correctly without actually giving it away.
I seem to recall it was actually somewhat secure too. I forget the exact details but it was a little more sophisticated than a simple “A = bird, B = wavy line, C = head, etc” substitution.
It wasn't all bad
I do think that Notes' time has passed. Just as Outlook's time is running out.
But sometimes when I'm trying to get things to work in this wonderful web-based world, I realise I could have done whatever it is I'm doing both more easily and faster in Lotus Notes. It was a remarkable platform.
And the knots Microsoft tied itself into to compete with it would have been amusing, if they weren't so damned awful for us all to implement and administer. Even when delivered via Microsoft 365, SharePoint is something of a rushed dog's dinner by comparison. I know which one I'd rather have to use!
Notes was the past.. and the future!
Microsoft have said Exchange 2019 is the last version they'll sell for on-premise customers.
After support runs out for that, what will companies that want all the e-mail in house do?
It's time to dust off your old Notes skills, boys!!
Scrotus Bloats
1/2 an application for 1/2 a brain cell.
Nothing sucks like Notes does - been there, had to sysadmin it at one point. On Solaris
memories...
...from the dim and distant past when i started an "IT career" as a data analyst with a sideline in making hopefully-useful apps for my co-workers with my new plaything Notes/Domino 5.
But then i get those every morning when i online-clock in on the virtual punch clock web app our outsorce-happy HR department bought from an obvious low-code peddler with the telltale .nsf URL extension and requiring 5 mouse clicks where 2 at most would do.