You may have mixed feelings about the announcements from Lotusphere 2002. Some folks see dark clouds hanging over the future of Domino 6 now that it will be tightly integrated with the WebSphere platform and based on Java 2 Enterprise Edition (J2EE). But this is good news, isn't it?

I believe the move to J2EE is something IBM must do with Domino. Version 6 supports today's standards, such as XML, Web authoring, Java, etc. Domino and WebSphere Application Server (WAS) already talk to each other closely. But to comply with newly evolving standards, Domino has to come out of its box. The border between WAS and Domino will fade, and you'll find it more common to tap into WAS when using Domino, as well as using Domino when already in WAS. But, Domino will remain a separate product.

Eventually, the IBM DB2 relational database will become the data store for Notes/Domino, providing greater power and performance than the .NSF file format allows. Assuming this changeover is transparent to users, developers and existing applications, it is a positive step in Notes/Domino evolution.

The move to J2EE is excellent, and will keep Domino a market leader. Sure, it means you have to learn and use this new standard, but only when it benefits you. Domino 6 will continue to include the IDE and interfaces we're used to. The Domino Web application server will continue to be enhanced, remaining one of the fastest and easiest ways to develop data-driven Web sites.

Think of J2EE as an alternative model for building applications that will work with Domino, adding value to existing and new Domino installations. New architectural possibilities arise, taking advantage of the J2EE environment. For example, Web services is gathering attention and use worldwide.

Web services and you

Web services gives you the ability to connect Web applications using common, global communication standards such as the lightweight protocol SOAP. SOAP is a remote procedure protocol based on HTTP that uses XML to send and receive messages from service to service. With Domino 5's excellent support for these standards and the future expansions recently announced for version 6 and later, Domino and WebSphere Application Server will play a leading role in this area.

Beyond Notes and Domino 6, the promised modular approach to delivering functionality as a set of components will let new customers take smaller steps towards Domino, because the entire suite will no longer be required for collaborative applications. You can present components as Web services for contextual collaboration.

Fortunately, IBM has shown us the future early enough to give us time to get ready for Notes and Domino 6. Yes, one day you might have to learn J2EE, XML, JSP, WSDL, etc. But, you can use these technologies beyond Domino, so it will be easier for you to design applications that integrate.

The release of "pre-release 1" of Notes and Domino 6 lets us get a glimpse of how good the new version will be. You can check recent issues of Lotus Advisor for details about the new features. Here are some highlights.

Cool features in 6

Domino and Designer 6 are drastically improved to create more attractive and better performing applications. For instance, hide-when formulas are now executed using DHTML, preventing round trips to the server all the time, plus there's standard support for the Internet Explorer rich text editor. You can plug the Domino Web server into third-party Web servers, and it has been enhanced to support XHTML documents. IP Filtering on a wildcard basis is now available. The new Domino Custom Tag library provides easy access to Domino data for JavaServer Pages. A re-written @Formula engine eliminates many limitations, not only providing new features, but improving calculations.

iNotes now supports Outlook XP, sticky notes, and Outlook Today.

Notes 6

For the user, there's improved mobility, including roaming and multi-user support, more control over replication, and improved wireless access via PDAs, pagers, and Web-enabled mobile phones. The updated mail and calendar user interface, which you can easily customize, personalize, and maintain, improves the user-friendliness of Notes. There are enhancements to the overall user interface, including customizable Welcome pages and easier-to-use bookmarks.

The most noticeable performance improvement is that many features now "multitask," so you can do something else while the Notes client performs an operation in the background. Activities such as polling for new mail, detaching files, replicating, printing, and replacing designs, and copying databases take advantage of the new Notes 6 multitasking abilities.

Administration 6

For administrators, improvements and enhancements heighten availability and provide more reliability, scalability, and performance through improved transaction logging, clustering, and network compression. Policy-based management for creating broad user roles and remote management for configuring and distributing client updates, increased security and support for new security standards, and integration with existing infrastructure through tighter alignment with other IBM software technologies, including DB2, WebSphere, and Tivoli software, are all part of the long list of new features in Notes and Domino 6.

Looking towards the future

Will Notes and Domino disappear? I say look at the direction of the market and the direction of IBM. I believe Notes and Domino 6 will continue to lead the market, existing customers will only become happier with the capabilities, and Lotus will embrace more new customers than ever before.