Lotus Notes and the Internet
Lotus Notes and the Internet
Lotus® will provide Web application developers and users with the full power of Notes' application development, client/server messaging and distributed object store technology by directly incorporating key Internet and Web standards HTTP, HTML and Java into the Notes architecture. This will allow Web developers to leverage the mature groupware functionality of Notes to reach non-Notes clients via Internet protocols and formats, providing all users with greater choice and flexibility. The marriage of Notes with Internet protocols represents an enormous opportunity for Lotus, its customers and its partners.
In pursuing this strategy, Lotus adds a new dimension to the value of the Notes server and the Notes client.
The value of joining Notes technology with Internet/Web protocols. By opening Notes fully to Internet and Web standards, Lotus extends the value of the Notes server to support Web browsers as alternative clients. The diagram below depicts the similar architectures of Notes environments and Web environments, and the impact of joining Web protocols with Notes technology.
The level of functionality that can be shared between any set of clients and servers is determined by the protocol over which the two components interact. Therefore, Notes clients will continue to take advantage of the native Notes protocol to exploit the Notes compound document (CD) object store, and Web browsers will leverage Notes' native HTTP protocol and native HTML document format.
The value of the Notes client. Full support for native Internet and Web standards also extends the value proposition of the Notes client to include end-user and team-oriented Web information management.
Just as Notes clients use the Notes server to provide a central access point for all corporate data (e.g., Notes documents, relational data, video and image, and OLE objects) the Notes client extends all of its services to data from Web servers. That is, the Notes client now applies its entire set of functionality disconnected use, client/server messaging, rich text, security, workflow applications, discussion databases and document libraries to information published internally and externally in HTML format on HTTP servers.
This paper discusses the Internet and the World Wide Web from the perspective of content providers, application developers, Web server administrators and end users. It examines the current status and future trends of the tools available for each of these Web constituencies, and points out the benefits of using Notes as a tool for Web content creation, Web site management, Web application development and Web browsing.
In addition, this paper describes how as part of its Internet strategy, Lotus has established the following priorities for Notes:
* Make Notes a thoroughly open, standards-based application platform.
* Make Notes easy to acquire, install, use and manage.
* Make Notes affordable for any user: from individuals, to teams, to departments to an entire enterprise.
The diagram below depicts the basic elements of a Web application, which may be deployed internally (as an "intranet") or externally over the public World Wide Web. The elements consist of HTML authoring and design tools, a Web server, and a Web browser. As Web applications increase in functionality, other infrastructure components such as database servers and application servers have been integrated with Web servers. Each of these components has evolved in functionality to its current state of the art, and each continues to mature rapidly.
Authoring tools were formerly specialized HTML editors, which were typically used by persons responsible for creating Web content or modifying content created by others with different authoring tools. Because anyone who creates a document is potentially a content provider, it was a natural step that standard word processors and other familiar personal productivity tools have become equipped with HTML translation and formatting features.
As the number of content providers has exploded to include virtually anyone with a personal computer, it is not surprising that Web authoring tools have begun to emphasize document management in addition to document creation. With so many documents becoming Web pages, there is a need to easily manage the hypertext links that are created on a home page or other Web page to lead readers to specific documents. Since each document may have several links leading to and from it, link management can quickly become a tedious and error-prone task that many individuals will forego in light of its onerous and rather boring nature. This is a task that has been assigned to one or more Web masters, but which increasingly will become an automated function of the authoring tool itself as Web sites begin to scale beyond their embryonic stage. Lotus Notes and the InterNotes Web Publisher, which already support link management internally, not only support HTML translation but also Web site creation and management.
It is important to note that, just as the use of a word processor such as Lotus Word Pro for Web page creation does not require the use of Word Pro as a Web server or Web browser, the use of a scaleable authoring tool such as Notes does not dictate that the Web server or the Web browser use the same tools for storage and access.
The first Web servers were simply HTTP servers that resolved universal resource locators (URLs) by extracting literally from the URL the path to a file that contained the needed page, and transmitting the page back to the browser. Such a server was very simple: it could only be used to access static pages.
Eventually, a common gateway interface (CGI) was introduced which provided a standard API by which programs could be launched. CGI's invoke a script typically written by the server administrator as a C shell or Pearl script which in turn performs a function that is resident on the Web server or which is invoked from a separate server, such as a database or an application server. Examples of functions invoked by CGI scripts range from relatively simple and co-resident actions (dynamically created Web pages, full text search queries) to straightforward and external actions (relational database queries, access to NNTP discussion databases) to complex, externally based actions (electronic commerce, workflow processing).
What is important to note here is that CGI scripts and the actions they invoke are not part of a standard Web server. Thus, as more of the work being performed on the Web is actually taking place on the "other side" of the CGI/script, the Web is evolving away from a simple two-tier model of client and server to a three-tier model of client/server/server. One server provides the basic HTTP services, and the other server provides the actual application-specific processing.
Examples of this second level of server include the large, back-end database systems, such as DB2® and Oracle®, which have been augmented by the introduction of CGI/script interfaces for access and update by Web browsers. Lotus Notes represents another example of a next-level back-end server for workflow processing that is triggered by front-end Web browsers via a Web server.
In addition to the integration of existing systems with the Web infrastructure, there is growing enthusiasm over the development of an entirely new set of applications specifically designed to take advantage of the Web's reach. These applications will focus on the Internet's ability to establish a direct relationship between a company and its customers, prospects, business partners and suppliers without the need for traditional intermediaries. Electronic commerce is the most obvious example here, although the development of Internet-specific applications such as publishing, customer service, and others are sure to follow.
Lotus recognizes this opportunity and has undertaken the development of specific "electronic applications" that introduce new core services (e.g., electronic data interchange, enhanced security, credit card processing, subscription management, billing, etc.). The first of these "eApplications," Lotus Notes:Newsstand, has already been delivered and is used by information providers to publish material to subscribers. These applications today run over private networks (e.g., AT&T® Network Notes) and require the use of a Notes client. In the near future, applications will be enabled for delivery over the Internet and will support the use of standard Web browsers as front ends.
Last, there is a trend among globally deployed Web applications to improve performance and response times by duplicating the content of one Web server located in one geographical region on a separate Web server located elsewhere. This addresses the issue of latencies that occur across a worldwide deployment of mission-critical Web applications for internal and external use. Also, as Web applications are used more and more for business applications that require integration with back-end database and application servers, the stateless connection from a Web browser to a Web server will change. That is, Web servers are highly scaleable in their ability to return HTML pages in response to a URL request, so that a Web site typically only requires a single dedicated processing unit. However, as the "transaction" between Web browser and Web server grows more complex, the number of concurrent sessions a Web server can support is constrained. This will naturally lead to the need for multiple, duplicated Web servers to support high volumes of processing. Notes, of course, is ideally suited to this task due to its robust and highly efficient bi-directional replication.
Of course, the HTTP server itself will undoubtedly change over time to provide some standardized functions (e.g., full text search). A critical part of this evolution will be the extension of HTML pages to contain programs in addition to data. Most observers recognize Sun Microsystems' Java as the emerging de facto standard language for these HTML-resident programs, though others are likely to emerge as well. At present, these languages have focused on client implementation, though their applicability to server-based functions is clear.
In this light, it will be incumbent upon vendors of server-based programs that have been extended to the Web to fully integrate their products with Web-based programming languages. It is Lotus' intention to forge seamless interoperability between Java and Notes and LotusScript, Lotus and IBM's strategic scripting language.
Like the rest of the Web infrastructure, Web browsers have improved in functionality at a startling pace. While early Web browsers such as Mosaic dealt only with HTML, commercial browsers quickly gained the ability to render other native data types such as Adobe Acrobat® and VRML. As alluded to above, they are now being augmented to include interpreters for program "applets" contained in Web pages. Specialized in-line viewers have been "plugged" into commercial browsers to support such exciting new capabilities as audio, video and animation.
Furthermore, general-purpose browsing tools are yielding in some ways to embedded, function-specific Web access tools. For example, standard desktop applications have begun to include context-sensitive browsing functionality. In this way, the user of a desktop tool will be able to click on a Web icon that automatically brings him to a Web site that includes new templates or add-on functions for those products. For example, a user of Freelance Graphics® (or any of Lotus' desktop products, for that matter) today from within Freelance® itself can easily access a page on Lotus' Web site that makes available any new SmartMasters for use with Freelance. Likewise, a user of tax preparation product will be able to access the vendors Web site to access the latest IRS regulations and recommendations. Thus, there is a healthy tension between general-purpose browsers that are acquiring more special-purpose function and special-purpose software products that are acquiring focused browsing services. It is likely that both models will be able to coexist, even on a single desktop.
In the same way, general-purpose browsers have been adding general-purpose groupware functionality (communication, collaboration and coordination), and general- purpose groupware products are adding general-purpose browsing functionality. Without a doubt, the former is vastly more difficult to achieve than the latter, though certainly not impossible. Nevertheless, it is likely that the typical user's desktop will include a variety of browsers. It is important to note that this is not meant to imply that groupware competes with the Web itself, but rather that it can effectively assume some of the functionality otherwise performed by traditional Web browsers. By virtue of the InterNotes Web Navigator, Lotus Notes R4 includes high-function, groupware-oriented browsing functionality.
The Internet and the World Wide Web will act as a central part of any organization's computing infrastructure. Lotus is concentrating its development and marketing efforts around Notes to take full advantage of this new computing paradigm to deliver greater value to customers and to expand the opportunities for Notes deployment.
These strategic efforts center on the following four areas:
* Open Notes more fully to Internet standards.
* Improve Notes' ease of use.
* Lower the cost of acquiring and owning Notes.
Notes is a complete platform for all Internet applications, including mail, discussions and World Wide Web applications.
Mail. Notes currently uses an SMTP/MIME add-in that provides standard interoperability with other messaging systems using the Internet as a transport. Notes R4 will include a native Notes implementation of the SMTP/MIME protocol for ease of use and administration.
Discussions. One of the essential functions of Notes is its support for group discussions regardless of time or location. The advantages of using Notes in conjunction with Internet-based Usenet News discussions are straightforward: multi-level access management, access for users not connected with TCP/IP, replication to Notes servers not connected to the Internet, support for mobile users, hypertext links to other Notes documents (including mail messages), support for embedded objects. For a description of InterNotes News, see Appendix B.
World Wide Web. As discussed in the previous section, the Web consists of three essential components: an authoring and design environment, the Web server itself, and Web browsers. In addition, extra-Web components such as scripting languages and databases are becoming integral parts of the Web infrastructure as well. From its inception, Notes was designed as a powerful development environment built around the efficient management of distributed documents, and has been extended to incorporate data from relational databases. As such, Notes represents an ideal platform for Web document authoring and design, application development and staging. For a description of Notes and the InterNotes Web Publisher, see Appendix C.
While the use of a Notes client is not required in conjunction with a Notes application deployed over Web protocols, it nevertheless provides a compelling alternative to traditional Web browsers. The InterNotes Web Navigator is a Notes application that is shipped as an integral part of every Notes R4 client and server. It was created to give the Notes user transparent and high-fidelity access to the rich content that exists today on the Internet. As a groupware product, Notes and the InterNotes Web Navigator naturally exploit Web browsing from a groupware perspective, transforming what essentially has been a personal productivity function into one that is based on such groupware notions as forwarding and routing (communication), shared databases for discussion and reference (collaboration), and custom agents and application development (coordination). Like any other Notes application, the InterNotes Web Navigator also fully supports disconnected use, so that users can make laptop-based replicas of databases and applications that contain Web pages. For a complete description of InterNotes Web Navigator, see Appendix D.
Next-Generation Web Applications. Much of the promise of the Web, of course, lies in its ability to easily and directly connect businesses with customers, prospects, business partners and suppliers, eliminating the use of traditional intermediaries. For example, a customer service application extended to the Web can reduce the reliance on telephone operators to answer calls while improving customer satisfaction. Industries that typically rely on face-to-face or direct telephone contact to establish a relationship with a prospect or a customer (e.g., retail sales, financial services, travel/transportation, etc.) now have a new medium with which to attract and retain customers. Inefficient processes between business partners such as invoice tracking, inquiry status, project management are now subject to automation using the Internet (or private TCP/IP network) and widely available and deployed Web browsers.
Notes R4 will ship with immediately usable application templates, providing Notes users with a set of applications ready for extension to the Web. Users will be able to download new templates from Lotus directly from the Internet.
Of course, many of these applications will depend on more than templates and instead on "application frameworks" that consist of specialized editors, services and application development tools. Lotus has already delivered the first of its application frameworks, Notes:Newsstand, to support the vertical application of high-end publishing, today produces output that can be directly translated with high fidelity into HTML by the InterNotes Web Publisher. More important, Notes:Newsstand has added new services to Notes to manage on-line subscription, usage tracking and billing. Lotus is also developing a series of horizontal and vertical application frameworks like Notes:Newsstand specifically designed for deployment of the Internet and private networks, such as AT&T Network Notes and the IBM® Global Network. For a description of Notes:Newsstand, see Appendix E.
As discussed in the previous section, Notes already supports a variety of Internet standards. This support will be extended and enhanced in Notes R4 and in subsequent releases.
*SMTP/MIME. Notes will include a native Notes implementation of the SMTP/MIME protocol.
*NNTP. Notes already supports the NNTP open protocol for Usenet News discussion groups through the InterNotes News product. In the future, the InterNotes News functionality will be migrated directly into the Notes client and server.
*HTML. Today Notes supports HTML indirectly through the InterNotes Web Publisher by translating Notes documents, views and forms from Notes format to HTML, and in turn translating HTML forms remitted by Web browsers into Notes document form. In the future, the functionality of InterNotes Web Publisher will be migrated directly into the Notes server. In addition, the Notes R4 server, using the InterNotes Web Navigator, can translate HTML pages from external Web servers to Notes document format. Users can also preserve "raw" HTML text in a Notes compound document.
*HTTP. Today Notes supports HTTP indirectly through the InterNotes Web Publisher, which resides on any standard HTTP server from a third party. In the future, Notes itself will support the native HTTP protocol, so that a Notes server itself will be a native Web server. Furthermore, in Notes R4, the Web Navigator provides native HTTP 1.0 support to the server, and eventually the Notes client itself will support the native HTTP protocol, allowing it to access the Internet directly.
*SLL and SHTTP. There are two emerging standards for encryption over the Internet in World Wide Web applications: Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and Secure Hypertext Transport Protocol (SHTTP). Lotus will augment Notes existing RSA-based encryption technology designed for use between Notes servers and clients, to include direct support for SSL and SHTTP.
*FTP. The InterNotes Web Navigator includes full support for FTP and Gopher. The Notes client will also support other Internet protocols such as WHOIS, FINGER, Acrobat, Shockwave and VRML.
*Java. Notes will support the execution of Java applets in the Notes client.
This support for open Internet and Web standards is a major step in Notes overall support for industry de facto standards. Notes servers have been open to desktop products through OLE, to relational databases through ODBC, to front-end query tools through SQL, and to alternative messaging front ends through support for MAPI. By supporting native HTTP and HTML, Notes servers are now open to standard Web browsers as alternative clients as well. Lotus fully embraces Web browsers and recognizes them as alternatives to standard Notes clients for certain types of Notes applications. Likewise, Notes clients now can access Web servers in addition to Notes servers.
One of the attractions of the World Wide Web is the browsing metaphor employed by Web clients, which lends itself to intuitive, easy use. One of the principal design features of Notes R4 is its improved ease of use. For end users, work in Notes consists of finding, viewing and creating (or modifying) information. Notes R4 improves the user experience for each of these activities.
Finding information. R4 introduces a multi-pane user interface that allows users to "surf" through folders and lists of documents, reducing the amount of effort required to browse through a Notes database for a specific document. Some Notes R4 applications actually depart entirely from the standard Notes view, employing Navigators a fully graphical interface that makes use of hotspots to guide users to particular documents or functions. (The InterNotes Web Navigator is only one example of a navigator.) Users will also be able to conduct easier and more complete searches for information. The standard Notes full text search facility has been enhanced with a point-and-click query builder. Furthermore, users will also be able to search on attachments and OLE objects in addition to fielded text.
Notes also includes a point-and-click agent builder for commonly performed end-user tasks, such as browsing through popular Web sites or creating an "on vacation" message for e-mail.
Viewing information. The end user's ability to customize a view that meets his or her specific needs has been one of the hallmarks of Notes. Notes R4 makes this function easier to perform, so that any user without design knowledge or access can create and customize views. Reading a document itself is easier in Notes R4. First, users can view file attachments without having to detach or launch the attachment, even if the application used to create the document does not reside on the user's desktop. Users will also be better able to organize information into logical categories using drag-and-drop hierarchical folders.
Creating and modifying information. Notes R4 includes a significantly improved document editor that simplifies many common end-user tasks. Bullets, named styles and enhanced table formatting, as well as context-sensitive menus and SmartIcons, make common editing tasks easier to perform. Notes R4 is a full OLE/2 container and client: it supports OLE 2 in-place editing, drag-and-drop and OLE automation.
For a more complete description of the ease of use enhancements in Notes R4, see the document titled "What's New in Notes Release 4.0."
The Notes pricing model has evolved over the various releases of Notes to reflect its target audience. The first two versions of Notes were targeted at enterprise-wide deployments, and were priced accordingly with a minimum 500-seat license with a price tag of $62,000. With Release 3, Notes was made accessible to small and departmental workgroups, and licensing changed to accommodate this new target. During the course of Notes Release 3, many Notes customers had developed and deployed custom Notes applications, and they requested the licensing of a runtime version of Notes without the full development capabilities and a lower license fee. Lotus responded with Notes Desktop, while also lowering the cost of a developer's license.
Notes R4 specifically includes messaging system evaluators as well as Internet users, and the Notes pricing model has again evolved to reflect the licensing habits of those constituencies.
* Notes clients. There are three separate Notes R4 client licenses. A Notes Mail® license, a new Notes client designed specifically as a messaging client, is $55; a Notes Desktop license is $69; and an application development version of Notes is $225.
Notes Mail is a mail-centric client that includes the mail application, the discussion database application, the document library application, the InterNotes Web Navigator, and the serial/parallel approval cycle application. Notes Mail was designed to deliver a new user experience, easy message management, state-of-the-art mobile support, and robust security.
* Lotus will also make available free evaluation copies of the Notes client. Users will be able to use the Notes client to access the Internet and the Web, as well as to access Notes servers on the Internet. The Notes R4 server supports "anonymous" access, so that a user of a Notes client simply needs to enter the IP address of a Notes server on the Internet to take full advantage of Notes functionality, without having to invest internally in a Notes server.
Of course, the cost of a software license only represents a fraction of the overall cost of software ownership. The infrastructural services and systems integration required of enterprise scale Internet implementations will quickly outpace the cost of software acquisition, installation and training. Indeed, the enduring value of Notes servers and clients is realized over time as its complete infrastructural services are exploited. Notes represents a robust messaging and application development infrastructure that is fully extensible to the Internet. In a single architecture, Notes provides users, developers and administrators with the following infrastructure services:
* Mobile user support. All users of Notes clients have the ability to make laptop-based replicas of Web information.
* Application development. Web application developers can create Web programs using Notes templates, LotusScript and agents. Notes integration with Java makes Notes fully interoperable with all Java applets.
* RDBMS integration. Many applications require access to relational data stored in legacy systems. Notes fully supports integration with DB2, Oracle, Sybase® SQL Server and any ODBC-compliant database.
* Document management. As the number of documents and hypertext links number in the thousands, Web site administrators require a robust document management facility. Notes automatically updates and refreshes all links between documents and views.
* Desktop integration. Notes is a full OLE 2 container. Notes also features tight integration with Lotus SmartSuite® and Microsoft® Office.
*Local databases. All information to be published to the Web or captured from the Web is stored on a local Notes database, where it inherits all Notes services. Even users without Internet access enjoy access to Web information stored in Notes databases.
* Back-end systems management. Notes R4 includes enhanced systems management. In addition, NotesView provides systems administrators with a complete SNMP-based management environment to manage their intranet and Internet Web servers.
* Replication. In order to reduce the costs of maintaining an enterprise or inter-enterprise scale Web site, many organizations will deploy synchronized Web servers throughout a region or the world. Notes replication is ideally suited to this task.
* Security. Although information on the Web is intended to be broadcast, many organizations will want to keep some information confidential at least until it is ready for broadcast. Notes security ably supports pre-publishing security. In addition, when Web users contribute new information through a Notes form, Notes security is applied to that information as well.
The power of the Notes infrastructure, which reflects Notes' ten years of development, provides immediate value to any Web user, developer and administrator, with no additional costs or systems integration required.
Notes integration with the Internet has followed a steady and measurable path since the shipment of Notes Release 3 in May 1993, which included native support for TCP/IP. Since then, Lotus has added new Internet connectivity and application functionality.
* October 1993 Windows version of Mosaic shipped.
* 1994 Notes SMTP/MIME Gateway shipped.
* April 1994 Netscape Navigator shipped.
* October 1994 InterNotes News beta.
* January 1995 InterNotes Web Publisher beta.
* September 1995 InterNotes Web Publisher 2.0 beta.
* October 1995 Notes R4 Test Build 2 InterNotes Web Navigator.
* December 1995 Notes R4 will ship.
* 1996 Notes native client and server support for all Internet standards.
Clearly, Notes integration with the Internet has mirrored industry and commercial acceptance of the Internet, especially the Web. Of course, from a functional perspective, Notes preceded and anticipated much of the commercial exploitation of the Internet and the Web, and it continues to set the functional benchmark for collaborative applications both on publicly available Web protocols and on proprietary networks. It is the relatively recent and explosive commercial use of Web protocols and the tools that support them that has prompted a new and evolving relationship between it and Lotus Notes.
InterNotes News is a Notes server application that exchanges Usenet news articles between Notes and news servers using the Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP), giving Notes users a secure and easy way to access and participate in Usenet newsgroups from the familiar Notes environment. With InterNotes News, users can leverage key Notes functionality, including hierarchical views of discussion threads, full text search and multiple indexed views of the news articles.
InterNotes News offers users:
* Use of Notes macros, full-text search and mail forwarding to manage Usenet newsgroup articles.
* The ability to participate in newsgroups by writing and 'posting' a response from Notes, or reply directly to the author using Notes mail (with an SMTP gateway).
InterNotes News offers administrators:
* A centralized Notes configuration database that simplifies configuration and administration of the News service. It allows administrators to subscribe to individual Usenet newsgroups, create customized Notes News databases and control News replication.
* Replication for easy distribution of News databases throughout the organization.
* Notes Access Control Lists to provide selective access to News databases.
Many companies with a need to distribute information to customers, business partners, and other public audiences have identified the World Wide Web (WWW) as the solution for their organization. In addition to providing a rich, graphical interface, the Web offers global reach and a growing base of clients or "browsers." The challenge for most organizations, however, is setting up and maintaining an enterprise Web server, which typically requires significant investments of both personnel and equipment. Web servers where several authors and/or departments are contributing to the information are time-, labor- and resource-intensive because all documents intended for the Web server must be translated into HTML, the lingua franca of the WWW, and linked to other documents. This often requires a staff of dedicated HTML and WWW specialists. Moreover, WWW documents typically have links that refer to other documents on that same Web server or on other Web servers. Any time new documents are added and others deleted from the server, links and pages that refer to those links must be updated. The complexity of creating and maintaining documents and links on a Web server inevitably creates a management bottleneck, making the entire process less than ideal.Designed to make publishing information on the World Wide Web easier and less expensive than it is today, the InterNotes Web Publisher automatically converts Notes databases and documents into HTML so that they are accessible to popular Web browsers. Rather than requiring a dedicated, central staff to convert existing documents into HTML, the InterNotes Web Publisher leverages Notes' distributed authoring and management environment to populate WWW sites. Individual authors prepare their own information in Notes as an integrated part of their everyday jobs. Using Notes' replication and distributed storage model, authors from geographically decentralized workgroups can conveniently contribute documents to the corporate Web server. The InterNotes Web Publisher also creates HTML documents of Notes views to provide Web browsers with the rich navigational structure of the original Notes database. Most important, as content changes and as contributors submit new material, the InterNotes Web Publisher automatically updates the overview or home pages as well as all links to refer to the new documents, without any manual intervention.
Forms Support. InterNotes customers can capitalize on the reach of the Internet. InterNotes Web Publisher allows Web browser users to fill out Notes forms and submit them directly into a Notes database, an action which in turn can trigger business process applications such as customer service, lead generation and tracking, and sales management. For example, a company may invite browsers to fill out a form requesting more information, to be added to a mailing list, or to be called by a sales representative. Notes captures, tracks, and manages this customer interaction. InterNotes Web Publisher transforms a Web site into an interactive environment.
Enhanced Web Publishing. InterNotes Web Publisher provides for the automatic conversion of Notes documents, forms, views and attachments into Hypertext Mark-up Language (HTML) for publishing on Web sites. By translating Notes documents and databases into HTML, the format used by standard Web browsers such as NCSA Mosaic and Netscape, InterNotes Web Publisher provides a single solution for creating and managing Web sites and integrating Web information into Notes applications. InterNotes users have the flexibility and discretion to publish only selected views designed for public use. In addition, InterNotes makes it easier for browsers to navigate large views by separating them into a series of linked pages.
Notes Full-Text Search. Anyone with a standard Web browser can easily search a site managed with Notes and InterNotes Web Publisher to find the information they need. Users enter their search criteria into an HTML form and submit it. Web Publisher executes a search against a Notes database and returns a list of links to the user. The full range of Notes search options, including a full-search query language, is available to Web browsers.
The InterNotes Web Navigator allows companies to integrate Internet resources directly into their core business process applications. It retrieves and converts Internet content into Notes documents for management in Notes R4. The InterNotes Web Navigator is a feature in Notes R4. Accessing the Internet via the InterNotes Web Navigator brings Internet information into Notes and provides a number of significant benefits that makes Internet resources easier to manage and more valuable.
Advanced Web Browsing and Information Management
* Save frequently used pages. Notes automatically caches Web pages in the InterNotes database. The cache improves performance and exposes Web pages to the full breadth of Notes services (agents, full text search, views, mobile replication, etc.).
* Improved full text search. Need to find a particular document, but can't remember what site it was on? Verity's full text search is more powerful than search engines in Web servers and it returns a relevance-ranked view.
* Forward Web pages. Users can forward a Web page while browsing the Web. All hypertext links on the page are maintained, so that recipients not only receive a high-fidelity rendering of the page, but they can click on any link on the page and be brought back out to the Web for more browsing.
* Create public and private bookmarks. Like most standard Web browsers, the InterNotes Web Navigator can create bookmarks of frequently visited sites. However, because Web pages are stored in a Notes database, those bookmarks can be shared for use by others with access to that database. Using Notes' flexible security, in fact, bookmarks can be displayed to selected individuals and kept hidden from others.
* Rate and annotate Web pages. Not all Web pages are created equal some contain information that is more important or urgent than other pages. InterNotes Web Navigator lets users "rate" the value of a particular page on a scale from 1 to 5 and make annotations to notify other users of its value. A corporate librarian, for example, could rate and annotate Web pages.
* Create Web Tours. Many times important information is discovered on several linked Web pages. The InterNotes Web Navigator keeps track of the route a user took to reach a page, and saves that route as a Web Tour. Notes users can save the tour for future reference or forward the tour to a colleague who can then follow in the same footsteps.
* Customize Web workspace. Users can customize their Web workspace, changing views, SmartIcons®, and the window layout to suit their needs. For example, users can add icons to the InterNotes Web Navigator workspace that will easily bring them to frequently visited sites, such as Lycos or Yahoo.
Greater Control over Web Access and Resources
* Control access to sites. Not every site on the Internet has productive value, and many organizations are concerned about the effect that unlimited Web access can have on individual and team productivity. By accessing Internet information through the InterNotes Web Server, administrators can deny access to specific sites using the Web Navigator's features.
* Eliminate need for TCP/IP on every client. Because InterNotes Web Navigator uses the Notes R4 server itself, there is no requirement for direct client access to the Internet. This eases the administrative burden of supporting TCP/IP on every desktop.
* Enhance security. Every organization is concerned about exposing their internal systems to malicious individuals or programs on the Internet. By accessing the Internet and the World Wide Web through a Notes server, an organization can more easily protect against unwanted intrusion.
Full Internet Support
* Native recognition of Internet addresses. Users can enter a URL, such as Gopher, FTP or Mailto as a text item within a Notes document, and that item will be treated as a "hot" link to the actual document. For example, a user could type http://www.lotus.com into a mail message, which would retrieve the Lotus home page when they click on that text item.
Lotus Notes:Newsstand is a Lotus Notes network-based publishing medium for companies wanting to provide their corporate knowledge workers with business publications in Notes formats; and for publishers and other information providers wishing to reach the Notes network user community with extension to the World Wide Web via the Lotus InterNotes Web Publisher with their products.
Access to Lotus Notes:Newsstand publication databases is subscription-based, with subscription fees established by the individual information providers. All network users have access to the Guide to Newsstand electronic catalog, where they can find the publications they want and learn about how to subscribe to them. Subscription requests are routed to the information providers. When the appropriate agreements are in place the subscriber simply replicates the publication from the server and distributes it in accordance with the agreement(s).
Organizations and information providers are faced with numerous choices for information delivery and access, including on-line services and CD-ROM. Lotus Notes:Newsstand provides mission-critical information in Notes format, and via replication rather than constant on-line connection. Notes:Newsstand is targeted to companies using public and private Notes networks, including the Internet, in order to provide employees with timely data in the format they use for key business processes.
Customers enjoy access to favored business and trade publications in Notes format, including ability to use Notes Index, Search, Retrieve, etc. features. Notes:Newsstand also helps customers manage connection fees, using replication to minimize connection time.
For information providers Lotus Notes:Newsstand provides product development and automation tools; an established distribution channel designed for dependability and security; access to the customer and the ability to facilitate subscription management; and the opportunity to leverage the technology and gather critical market data. In addition, using the InterNotes Web Publisher and the forthcoming Notes Web server, information providers can translate their Notes documents to HTML format for publishing to the World Wide Web.
Updated: 01/18/96 04:21:34 PM
This page created and managed with Lotus Notes and a pre-release (Beta 2) copy of Lotus InterNotes Web Publisher® Release 4.0.
License expires March 1, 1996.