Blair Armeau

What is Domino?

A Domino database is somewhat different than a conventional relational database, nor can the application be considered merely a messaging, workflow, or knowledge management application. There is really no way to compare Lotus Domino and Notes to any one product.

For web applications, rather than a relational database such as an Access, Oracle, or DB2 database being accessed via scripting methods such as PERL, PHP, ColdFusion or other CGI executables the Domino server and databases are an integrated platform. The back end code is contained in the same file as the data and executed directly by the Domino server. This allows for greater security and flexibility at a fraction of conventional development and application licensing costs. No only that, but the Domino server is cross-platform, scalable, and also performs numerous other Internet services including SMTP, MAP, LDAP, NNTP, POP3, as well as other more complex services and applications (and you can set up Domino to run those old CGI scripts, too).

From an IT management and cost of ownership point of view, imagine consolidating the functions performed by that expensive Oracle server, your Exchange Server (Outlook 98/2000 is even supported as a mail client by Domino), your web server, your corporate CRM system, and more than likely a few other systems in your organization into one centrally managed application with one set of client licenses (third party Notes/Domino applications may require additional licensing), all running on the hardware and OS of your choice.

But in either case you don’t need to toss out your old applications to start using Domino. There are nearly endless ways that Domino can coexist with other products either permanently or during a transition. Domino is powerful stuff! Call us today at (604) 788-9336 or email info@mbarrick.com to find out more.

The following explains in some details the basic similarities and differences between Domino and a conventional relational database.

3.4.1 Domino database concept

A Domino database is a collection of related information stored in a single file. A Domino application uses at least one database. A database holds information about its design as well as data. Domino data is organized as documents. A document is defined as an object containing text, graphics, video, or audio objects, or any other kind of rich text data.

Domino databases contain documents, as opposed to relational databases, which contain tables. Unstructured or structured data, as well as associated programming logic, are stored within the database.

Domino databases are essentially a complete application with its associated data. They contain all of the forms, views, agents, fields, and code required to store and manage data. The databases can reside on a Domino server or Lotus Notes workstation.

There are many design features that are available for Domino databases.We will evaluate the forms and views as the main design element that we are concerned with in this project.

3.4.1.1 Form

The form is the skeleton provided to users to enable them to enter data, either by typing or by using other control buttons. A form can also be thought of as an abstract structure of a document. It defines all the fields and its type for a document. There is at least one form in a database, although a typical business application will have many forms, each targeted to the type of information that the user wants to save in the database.

The form contains all the design elements: Fields to store the user’s information, static text, buttons, sections, images, and subforms that help the user enter the data into the database.

3.4.1.2 View

A view shows a list of documents stored in a Domino database and can be thought of as a table of contents of a database. Views provide a means to organize documents in a database to be presented to the users or a program. Each row listed in a view represents data taken from a single document. Each column represents a field or a result of a formula taken from that document.

Domino databases have at least one view, but most of them have more. A view can display all the documents in the database, or it can display a subset of the documents. Views can present documents sorted on different fields, for example, sorted by topic, creation date, or author.

3.4.1.3 Documents

A Domino document is a container for data and is similar to a row in a database management system (DBMS). Each document is a collection of fields. A unique identifier is given to each document upon its creation and is used by the Domino database as a primary key.

A document’s design is held within a Domino form, which specifies what a document can contain in each field, for example, a form number, a date, text, or rich text.

(IBM Redbooks, “Linux Web Hosting with WebSphere, DB2, and Domino” PP 70-71)