What is Lotus Notes?

Lotus Notes is a collaborative application developed by Lotus and is also known as IBM Notes. It provides the following different functions to assist the groupware business firm:

• Email
• Calendars
• To-do-Lists
• Contacts Management
• Database
• Discussion Forums
• File Sharing
• Microblogging
• Web server
• Programming

Lotus Notes is a desktop application mainly used for emailing in the corporate environment. It also supports to access the distributed databases within the organization. Being a groupware application, it is a multi-platform i.e., it runs on many different platforms. It uses standard email protocols such as POP3 and SMTP to provide efficient emailing service.

• Lotus client and Domino server use Lotus Notes Storage Facility(NSF) to create and manage Notes databases.
• Only NSF function can create a Notes database from scratch and can access, modify and delete objects.
• The file extension used by Lotus notes application is .nsf

A Notes database contain any number and type of file. There is an information in database header and each note header supports simultaneous access and database replication.

Notes/Domino provides a robust security model by limiting the ways in which various user can access or manipulate the data in a database. It maintains to provide security at the following levels:

• Network Security: It protects the data confidentiality & integrity from the unauthorized access over the network.
• User Authentication: It is the process in which both Notes client and Domino server validate and authenticate the user when user tries to access the Domino server.
• Server Security: This refers to controlling access to each Domino Server. Server access is control using server access list in Domino Directory.
• Database Security: It controls the access to the database on Domino Server. Every database has an Access Control List(ACL) that specifies the level of access a user or server can have in the database. ACL determines what task can be performed by the particular user. Only a user having manager access can create or modify ACL. To secure local databases, Notes let the user encrypt a database and enforce an ACL on the local database.
• Design Element Security: It controls the access to forms, views, and folders. Although user can have access of an application, but may not have access to design elements. While designing the Lotus Application, the developer can use access lists and special field to restrict the access to specific design elements.
• Document Security: It controls access to the field, section, and paragraph in a document or entire document. Readers and Authors field are used to control the document access.

Domino Designer is an Integrated Development Environment for an application that runs on IBM Notes and Domino. It helps developers to develop and deploy Lotus Notes application more easily and quickly than through manual coding.