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The acronyms in that story led me down the memory lane - In the early 2000s, I worked at Microsoft building the Outlook to Notes connector. The theory was that
by umeshunni 2y ago
The acronyms in that story led me down the memory lane - In the early 2000s, I worked at Microsoft building the Outlook to Notes connector. The theory was that we could introduce MS Outlook to hardcore Lotus/Domino/Notes shops and that would be a trojan horse to the introduction of Exchange (and its high priced client access licenses).
Reading through the article, it seems like that theory was proven out and along with the awful UI that Notes was, it led to many IBM shops adopting Exchange/Outlook and later SharePoint.
Something odd about Lotus Notes/Domino, and part of the reason for its awful UI, is that everything is a database (the NSF mentioned in the article). All UI is a view on that database. Viewing an email? That's just view on a item in the database. Sending an email? That's just adding a row into the 'Outbox' table. The entire product was built with this paradigm at the center of it all.
- sk5t 2y ago> That's just adding a row into the 'Outbox' table No tables and no rows in Notes. Composing an email would create a new document using the "Mail" form; clicking the "Send" button would run a shockingly confusing script that would cause the document to render in the style of a sent email; some awful LotusScript "Agent," the details of which I've long forgotten, would soon thereafter urge the Domino MTA to send mail based on its apprehension of the new document in your mailbox database.
- umeshunni 2y ago> Composing an email would create a new document using the "Mail" form Oh that's right. You're now giving me PTSD from all this Notes internals knowledge that was hidden away in my brain.
- gadders 2y agoLotus Notes v3 still has better email search that Outlook now.