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HISTORY OF NOTES AND DOMINO

As you might expect of such complex and successful software, Lotus Notes and Domino share a long and rich history. In some respects, this history mirrors the evolution of the computing industry itself—the development and widespread adoption of PCs, networks, graphical user interfaces, communication and collaboration software, and the Web. Notes and Domino have been there nearly every step of the way, influencing (and being influenced by) all these critical developments.

This article briefly retraces the history of Notes and Domino, starting with the earliest conceptual and development stages and continuing through major feature releases. Along the way, it examines: Where the idea of Notes originated Notes pre-release development Release 1.0 Release 2.0 Release 3.0 Release 4.0 and 4.5 Release 5.0 Notes/Domino 6 Finally, we'll take a quick look at Notes and Domino 6.5, the upcoming new version, and talk a little about what the future holds for these storied products.

The early days: The birth of an idea You may find this a little surprising, but the original concept that eventually led to the Notes client and Domino server actually pre-dates the commercial development of the personal computer by nearly a decade. Notes and Domino find their roots in some of the first computer programs written at the Computer-based Education Research Laboratory (CERL) at the University of Illinois. In 1973, CERL released a product called PLATO Notes. At that time, the sole function of PLATO Notes was to tag a bug report with the user's ID and the date and to make the file secure so that other users couldn't delete it. The system staff could then respond to the problem report at the bottom of the screen. This kind of secure communication between users was the basis of PLATO Notes.

In 1976, PLATO Group Notes was released. Group Notes took the original concept of PLATO Notes and expanded on it by allowing users to: Create private notes files organized by subject Create access lists Read all notes and responses written since a certain date Create anonymous notes Create director message flags Mark comments in a document Link notes files with other PLATO systems Use multiplayer games PLATO Group Notes became popular and remained so into the 1980s. However, after the introduction of the IBM PC and MS-DOS by Microsoft in 1982, the mainframe-based architecture of PLATO became less cost-effective. Group Notes began to metamorphose into many other "notes type" software products.

Ray Ozzie, Tim Halvorsen, and Len Kawell worked on the PLATO system at CERL in the late 1970s. All were impressed with its real-time communication. Halvorsen and Kawell later took what they learned at CERL and created a PLATO Notes-like product at Digital Equipment Corporation.

At the same time, Ray Ozzie worked independently on a proposal for developing a PC-based Notes product. At first, he was unable to obtain funding for his idea. However, Mitch Kapor, founder of Lotus Development Corporation, saw potential in Ozzie's work and decided to invest Lotus's money for its development. Kapor's business acumen, creativity, and foresight were critical in changing Ozzie's vision into reality.

Development on Notes begins Near the end of 1984, Ozzie founded Iris Associates Inc., under contract and funded by Lotus, to develop the first release of Lotus Notes. In January 1985, shortly after Iris Associates began, Tim Halvorsen and Len Kawell joined Ozzie, followed soon after by Steven Beckhardt. All brought extensive knowledge and vision to the company, as well as career-long interests in collaboration and messaging software at a time when such concepts were considered novel at best and impractical at worst. They modeled Lotus Notes after PLATO Notes, but expanded it to include many more powerful features. Alan Eldridge from Digital Equipment Corporation soon joined Iris Associates, contributing to the database and security features of the Notes architecture.

The original vision of Notes included on-line discussion, email, phone books, and document databases. However, the state of the technology at the time presented two serious challenges. First, networking was rudimentary and slow compared to today. Therefore, the developers originally decided to position Notes as a personal information manager (PIM), like Organizer, with some sharing capability. Second, PC operating systems were immature, so Iris had to write a lot of system-level code to develop things such as the Name Server and databases. Eventually, as networking became more capable, Iris began to speak of Notes as groupware. The term groupware (which eventually grew virtually synonymous with Notes itself) refers to applications that enhance communication, collaboration, and coordination among groups of people.

To meet these goals, Notes offered users a client/server architecture that featured PCs connected to a local area network (LAN). A group could set up a dedicated server machine (a PC) that communicated with other groups' server machines (either on the same LAN or through switched networks). Servers exchanged information through "replicated data" (that is, there were potentially many copies of the same database resident on different servers, and the Notes server software continuously synchronized them). This made it just as easy for users to exchange information with co-workers in a branch office as with those in their own office.

The vision of the founders quickly evolved into the idea of creating the first virtual community. Tom Diaz, former Vice President of Engineering at Iris, said, "It was eccentric to think about group communication software in 1984, when most people had never touched an email system...the product was very far ahead of its time. It was the first commercial client/server product."

Another Notes key feature was customization. According to Tim Halvorsen, early on there was debate over the structure of Notes. He said the developers wondered, "Should we build applications in the product or should we allow it to be flexible and let users do it because we don't know what they will want?" They eventually opted for a flexible product that allowed users to build the applications they needed. Thus, Notes architecture used a building block approach; you could construct group textual applications by piecing together the various services that are available. "This was big in the success of the product," stated Halvorsen. "In no case do we say, 'no, this is the only way you can do it.'" Notes has survived the changes in the industry because it is a flexible product users can customize to fit their changing needs.

Around this time, Apple Computer released the Macintosh with a new easy-to-use graphical user interface. This influenced the developers of Lotus Notes, and they gave their new product a character-oriented graphical user interface.

Most of the core development was completed within two years, but the developers spent an additional year porting the code for the client and the server from the Windows operating system to OS/2. During this time, the developers at Iris used Notes to communicate remotely with people at Lotus. Halvorsen said, "Simply using the product every day helped us develop key functionality." For example, the developers needed to synchronize data between the two different locations, so they invented replication. "This wasn't in the original plan, but the problem arose and we solved it," said Halvorsen.

The development of Notes took a long time by today's standards. But according to Steve Beckhardt, this extended development period helped ensure the success of Notes. This made Notes a very solid product with no real competition in the market.

In August 1986, the product was complete to a point it demonstrated all of its unique capabilities and had preliminary documentation. It was ready to ship to the first internal Lotus users. At that time, Lotus evaluated and accepted the product. Lotus bought the rights to Notes in 1987.

Lotus Notes was successful even before its first release. The head of Price Waterhouse viewed a pre-release demo of Notes and was so impressed he bought 10,000 copies. At that time, it was the largest PC sale ever of a single software product. As the first large Notes customer, Price Waterhouse predicted that Lotus Notes would transform the way we do business. As we now know, they were right.