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Original Spec for Lotus Notes (1984) [pdf]

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Re: Original Spec for Lotus Notes (1984) [pdf]

#71

Post by Jaruzel »

Havoc wrote: post #47
topspin wrote: post #13

A well run Notes system was a real pleasure to deal with. I worked for a 300-ish employee company spread over 4 countries and 2 US states around 2001-2004 and we used Notes for all internal document management, email and later even web content management. The thing just quietly kept everything in sync; distributed servers, mobile users and their laptops and traditional desktops, and never lost a byte of it despite fl…

>A well run Notes system was a real pleasure to deal with. [...] 2004 Well then its become progressively worse since. Been using it for 3 years now and each version has gotten progressively worse (unstable, slow, bloated). Random people's Notes crashes multiple times a day, others have mysteriously slow ones, sync issues etc. Its only redeeming feature is SameTime...

> Its only redeeming feature is SameTime...

Which started life as a re-skinned AOL Instant Messenger.

Re: Original Spec for Lotus Notes (1984) [pdf]

#72

Post by astannard »

Notes got me over my email checking addiction. Having to use it at work I checked my email twice a day rather than 20 times, since I hated the interface. I guess that made me way more productive in itself. People started using unofficial channels instead such as skype messaging for some communications or just speaking in person.

Re: Original Spec for Lotus Notes (1984) [pdf]

#73

Post by Intermernet »

TsomArp wrote: post #57
sengork wrote: post #56

I've seen Lotus Notes client installation's folder being migrated from Windows XP to Windows 7 then onto RHEL and finally onto macOS. Suffice to say that all of the user settings were preserved and the data was readily usable on each platform. This happened over the span of 10 years. Given the observation, I wonder how many other applications with similar complexity would last even one migration, let alone rolling mi…

I have done a Windows Server, to Linux to AIX... it was only a matter of moving the "DATA" folder... and it worked perfectly each time...

Once they introduced transactional logging (highly recommended for busy systems) there were a few more steps to the migration, but they are all well documented and surprisingly resilient.

I managed to migrate a few TB of email from a dying server and it handled mid migration crashes surprisingly well!

I think the domino stack was getting better while the notes client was losing the plot. Most people where I used to work were happiest with mobile clients connected via exchange active sync to the domino servers.

Re: Original Spec for Lotus Notes (1984) [pdf]

#74

Post by Intermernet »

dang wrote: post #3
robert_tweed wrote: post #2

Strangely, the words "spawn" and "satan" do not appear anywhere in this document.

I understand the trope, but comments like this tend to push discussion in a shallow direction. Not that 'shallow' is a direction. It would be better if you wrote substantively about some of your experiences with Lotus Notes.

Hi dang, I agree with your moderation and comment here, but as a previous long term notes / domino dev and admin who quite liked the platform I thought that comment was, in this particular context, apt.

Also, shallow is a direction, but only in a relative sense ️

Re: Original Spec for Lotus Notes (1984) [pdf]

#75

Post by scrumper »

codingdave wrote: post #54
scrumper wrote: post #19

Notes is a real mixed bag. On the plus side, its open-ended, fully customizable document database is a phenomenally powerful tool for creating information management systems that map very closely to the unique workflows and structures that arise in any business. As an expression of the promise of office automation, it's pretty compelling. On the other hand, it's the world's worst email & calendar client and much of i…

> solution that became prohibitively expensive to change as the business evolved That sounds like bad coding. The downfall of many Notes systems is that it made it so easy to write simple apps, you ended up with a lot of poorly written apps because you did not need to be a proficient coder to deliver a working product. I, too, have seen downright horrific apps. I've seen teams of consultants hired just to maintain on…

It was more that you had a set of Notes documents and associated workflows which conformed perfectly to business operations when created, but then gradually got heavier and harder to change as they were adapted along with the business. There was nothing wrong with the coding as such, more the accrual of features and exceptions and new types of related document.

It's a kind of tech debt for which a re-write is the appropriate solution, but that was the prohibitively expensive part.

Re: Original Spec for Lotus Notes (1984) [pdf]

#76

Post by topspin »

m_mueller wrote: post #68
Havoc wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>A well run Notes system was a real pleasure to deal with. [...] 2004 Well then its become progressively worse since. Been using it for 3 years now and each version has gotten progressively worse (unstable, slow, bloated). Random people's Notes crashes multiple times a day, others have mysteriously slow ones, sync issues etc. Its only redeeming feature is SameTime...

Agreed. The eclipse client made everything worse IMO.

Apparently the Eclipse based client appeared in 2007 with Notes 8, long after my last contact with any of this. Someone pointed out that the old UI is a subject of the Interface Hall of Shame. It was weird, no denying that. But it was also fairly efficient; you got a lot of function out of it on a circa 2003 laptop. It was also stable if the host itself wasn't a mess.

Not surprised to hear the Eclipse based client isn't loved; I imagine you'll see a 5x memory usage increase right off the bat, and every operation will take 1k more CPU cycles than it should.

Anyhow, mostly I limit my praise to the trouble free and robust replication and distribution of content through Domino, the server side of the platform, a name this thread reminded me of after 12 years. A client could dial in to any Domino server in the company, efficiently and quickly sync all of their databases with the global network and immediately and get to work using their fast local storage. No drama, no glitches, no calls to the help desk. Good stuff. It obviated the need for shared file systems anywhere, which would have been next to impossible anyhow given the degree of distribution and poor connectivity available. It mostly obviated the need of backing up clients and several of the further flung servers; Domino naturally does multi-way replication, so the backups at the best resourced sites are sufficient.

Re: Original Spec for Lotus Notes (1984) [pdf]

#77

Post by dang »

Intermernet wrote: post #74
dang wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the trope, but comments like this tend to push discussion in a shallow direction. Not that 'shallow' is a direction. It would be better if you wrote substantively about some of your experiences with Lotus Notes.

Hi dang, I agree with your moderation and comment here, but as a previous long term notes / domino dev and admin who quite liked the platform I thought that comment was, in this particular context, apt. Also, shallow is a direction, but only in a relative sense ️

I hear you, but even if that's true, the comment is uninformative to readers who haven't had direct experience.

What we want instead is comments that share experience, so others can benefit from it. It's basically a variant of 'show, don't tell'.

Re: Original Spec for Lotus Notes (1984) [pdf]

#78

Post by lenk »

The date on Mitch and Ray's spec is December 1984 and we designed most of the core parts of Notes soon after that in 1985.

Sorry to hear that many of you had to deal with our 1985 design choices all through the subsequent years. But I think many of the commenters here are maybe forgetting or not aware of what personal computing and networking were like 32 years ago: Windows 1.0 (beta), EGA graphics (640×350 w/16 colors), 640KB main memory (kilobytes not megabytes), Ethernet/TokenRing LANs, dial-up 9600 baud modems (kilobits/sec not megabits/sec or gigabits/sec). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_1.0

The Internet was just being formed out of the Arpanet and other research networks. Mail services and protocols like SMTP and POP3 didn't exist.

We worked with Ron Rivest to define BSAFE and build the first real commmercial product with public key crypto.

As far as the Notes database (again circa 1984): it seemed obvious to us, especially Ray, that relational was not the best model, but we took endless grief for not using a relational database.

In hindsight, we obviously could have made quite a few better decisions and evolved the design and code more quickly, but as one commenter pointed out, we were trying to maintain app and data compatibility across multiple client and server software and hardware environments that were continually evolving around us.

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