A Brief History of Lotus Notes

Lotus Development Corporation released Lotus Notes in 1989. At that time, Notes was primarily a distributed document-management system. Notes servers (now called Domino servers) ran under only OS/2, and there was a single client interface that bundled the end- user interface, server administration, and application development together.

Today, Notes and Domino is platform independent, with servers and clients available on all major operating systems. Domino servers also support Web clients, and Notes clients are server independent. The power of Domino servers has grown significantly, and the client interface has split into three separate clients : the Notes client, the Domino Administrator client, and the Domino Designer client.

A Notes client presents a very similar appearance from one platform to the next. Applications, which can consist of single or multiple databases in Notes, execute seamlessly from one platform to the next . In other words, as a developer, you can create an application that runs as well on the AS/400 as it does on the Solaris. More important, it will look nearly identical. Few application-development systems can boast this degree of cross-platform support.

Further extending this concept, Notes and Domino can stage multiple applications. When a user understands the Notes client interface, learning new applications is very simple. A user doesn't have to learn Notes all over again ”just the new application. The reduction in training costs over time can pay for the initial expense of Notes. Contrast this with a typical application-development system, such as one that is based on Oracle or Sybase, with applications developed independently, each with its own interface built from the ground up. Each time a new application is introduced to the user, that person must be trained in the interface as well as the application itself. Each time a user wants to switch applications, he has to launch a new executable file. In Notes, the user simply double-clicks a different icon in the Notes client.