pah@cs.nott.ac.uk (Phillippa Hennessy) (03/15/90)
I am also interested in Lotus Notes - all the advertising seems to say nothing whatsoever about the product - typical! Please email me any info Pip (the hairy one)
akm@spencer.cs.uoregon.edu (Anant Kartik Mithal) (03/16/90)
I believe that Irene Greif at Lotus plays a major role in the development of Notes. She was the conference chair of CSCW 88, and was one of the coauthors of a paper presented there (which, for some reason, is not part of the papers that are bound into the conference proceedings). The paper is: Kawell, Leonard//Beckhardt, Steven//Halvorsen, Timothy//Ozzie, Raymond (all of Iris Associates Inc.)//Greif, Irene (Lotus Development Corp). "Replicated Document Management in a Group Communication System." Presented at the Second Conference on Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Portland, Oregon, September 26-28, 1988. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------- Anant Kartik Mithal akm@cs.uoregon.edu Department of Computer Science akm@oregon.BITNET University of Oregon
Palevich@apple.com (Jack Palevich) (03/17/90)
In article <1990Mar16.002532.16031@cs.uoregon.edu> akm@spencer.cs.uoregon.edu (Anant Kartik Mithal) writes: > I believe that Irene Greif at Lotus plays a major role in the > development of Notes. She was the conference chair of CSCW 88, and was > one of the coauthors of a paper presented there (which, for some > reason, is not part of the papers that are bound into the conference > proceedings). As I recall, the reason was that Lotus didn't want to publish information about unreleased products. This is a general problem with corporate R&D -- researchers can't talk about their best work until it's either shipped or canceled. If it's shipped, then it's difficult to keep the paper or talk from sounding like an advertisement for the product. If it's cancled, well then you have to deal with the stigma attatched to cancelation . Isn't Lotus Notes basicly a customizable, souped-up, company-wide electronic mail/file transfer system? Jack Palevich, Meerkat Handler Apple Computer, Inc.
RFM@psuvm.psu.edu (03/19/90)
I found a computer mag in the bathroomt(What do you THINK it was doing there??? -- What do you think I was doing there???) -- Anyway, it is PC Computing, March 1990. It has a longish article on LOTUS Notes. Not technical, but informative. Bob M., Penn State - Harrisburg
wex@sitting.pws.bull.com (Buckaroo Banzai) (03/20/90)
I didn't think there'd be a wide interest in this, so I sent email to a
couple of people privately. But, since there's this discussion, I figure a
posting will help many people.
Herewith my observations and information on Lotus Notes. These were made at
a meeting sponsored by Greater Boston SIGCHI recently. The Notes product
was presented and discussed in detail.
It's longish, so 'n' now if you don't want the details
[Since this is going out to the net as a whole, let me preface it by saying
*THESE ARE MY OPINIONS* They are based on what I saw and what I heard.
They do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Bull, Lotus, Iris (see
below), or any other organization or person mentioned or present.]
This material Copyright (c) 1990 by Alan Wexelblat. Reproduction for
non-commercial purposes is hereby granted.
Last night I went to see the "unveiling" of Lotus Notes, their much-touted
groupware product. The product was presented by a team of engineers who
have worked on the product at Lotus and IRIS Associates (a Lotus-funded
startup which was created to do this product). Here are the notes I took
during the presentation. Sorry this is not better organized.
Executive Summary:
Notes is a very souped-up BBS system. Totally hierarchical in
nature, it represents only a small step beyond sophisticated email (e.g.
Lens). They appear to have hamstrung themselves but good by going with
CGA/MSWindows/Presentation Manager. It resides on a custom-built database
(DB) which is fully replicated over the network. The DB has some
significant weaknesses.
Their strengths are: a large installed & target base (Lotus users
and networked PC users, respectively); they're in beta test now and people
are showing significant interest; a strong Application Partners program
which has given them invaluable real-world feedback and promises of
forthcoming applications which will make Notes much more generally useful.
Detailed Information {my comments in curly brackets}:
[speaker: Irene Greif (groupware guru now at Lotus)
"Lotus Notes as CSCW"]
- Notes is really a field test of groupware technology. Unlike most UI
things, there's no good way to test groupware in a lab. It has to be done
in the field. To date, email is the only groupware technology to get
extensive field testing. Notes will change that. {AW agrees - it's a good
test bed with lots of internal logging capability}
- several organizations have "bought into Notes" to "change their
organizations." No details revealed; presumably confidential. {probably
true - Irene is a scientist, not a marketeer. When she says "change their
organizations" that what she means. we may want to sell our groupware in
the same way.}
- Notes is PC/MSWindows-based. Works over existing LANS, but "improves on
PC networking." Instead of solving reliability/commit/acknowledgement
problems at network level, Notes solves them in the application.
{Apparently, the state of networks in the PC world is godawful (something I
didn't know). TCP/Ethernet looks marvelous compared to the crap that gets
sold as PC networks (this from networking folk in the audience - I assume
they know whereof they speak).}
[speaker: Peter Orbeton (UI & development manager of Notes)
"Notes as group communication"]
- customers are dissatisfied with the little they can do over PC LANs
(networked file systems, email, print sharing). Notes will improve this -
give more power.
- Lotus' view is that the workgroup of the 90s is: distributed, mobile,
across companies, across OS. Notes tested with remote DBs at alpha sites as
well as across Lotus workgroup boundaries.
- Notes goals: retain knowledge w/in workgroup when people leave;
reduce learning curve as new people come in;
remove communication barriers between organizations;
WYSIWYG/direct-manipulation UI;
support the range of novice->expert users with one
product/one interface;
- Notes features: shared document DB
email (including putting email into applications' docs)
application design {users customize Notes}
data security (3 levels, incl. digital signatures, data
encryption & replication) {YAY - a Good Thing}
- Notes media: text (multi-color, multi-style, multi-font), spreadsheet,
business graphics, images {but no fax}, email, imported word processing
documents (e.g. MSWord).
- Notes uses a custom, highly-optimized, fully-replicated database to store
documents. Documents are seen through hierarchical views. Views are
predefined for each DB, though users can define "custom views." {this is
their biggest luze, imho. A replicated DB is a disaster waiting to happen.
Also, the idea of views is to give flexebility. By failing to support a
relational or object model and by failing to allow fully general views,
Notes appears to have hamstrung itself. Preliminary customer feedback seems
to support this (see below)}
- Notes operates over WAN by considering them to be amorphous seas with
islands of LANs which Notes understands
- Notes tied to DOS or OS/2 plus MSWindows/Presentation Manager plus one or
more of Novell/IBM/3Com LAN.
- Notes applications in production include:
Reporting system for bug tracking
real-time Reuters newswire
software reseller product evaluations
bank customer service tracking
{Note that all of these "applications" are essentially hierarchical
bulletin-board-like things. Looks good on a marketing slide, though.}
[speaker: Len Kawell, IRIS Associates
Notes demo (with intermittent Q&A]
{Iris associates is a 1-product, 4-person company, formed specifically to do
Notes. They are currently 100 funded by Lotus.}
- Lotus Notes history:
1976 Plato Notes (U of Illinois)
7 DEC Vax mail
8 DEC Vax Notes
83 Lotus 1-2-3 R2 ("Symphony")
84 Lotus Notes proposed
85 Iris begins development
86 Notes installed at Lotus
87 Lotus Application Partners get Lotus Notes installed
{all presenters agreed that the Application Partners gave invaluable
feedback during the specification, development and revision of the product.
As a result of their feedback, the UI was totally redesigned, keyboard
equivalents were added, some navigation features were added.}
88 Iris begins OS/2-based Notes {the move from DOS to OS/2 is the
major reason Notes is so late getting to market.}
89 Lotus Notes beta installations. {Note that the applications
partners got pre-Beta software!}
- Notes adds to OS/2 a "workspace" or "desktop" with 6 fixed folders
{top-level directories}, each with an attached DB. {This is an example of
how poorly Notes is implemented. Good ideas (like top-level directories)
are implemented in a really stupid way (restrict the user to have exactly
six). The reasoning is even more stupid: six labels is all they could
display across the screen with CGA graphics!! Talk about putting the cart
before the horse! Let's be sure and *not* hire these Iris guys.}
- a file browser is provided which gives directory listings plus
descriptive annotations {meta-comments written by the user}
- within each folder, multiple icons can be found, each corresponding to a
DB or sub-partition of a DB. clicking on one gives one of several "DB
views" which are built into the DB by the DB creator. The views are
essentially TOC browsers where different views allow different "section"
headings for the same documents.
- users can design custom views, but these are stored locally and cannot be
exported or shared (even with other users of the same DB).
- clicking on an item in a view expands to the next level. This can be
subsections or, if the selected item is a leaf node (a document), the
document is brought up in a content-browser window with next/previous
buttons.
- the outline expands and contracts levels as needed.
- Example: Topics in a conversation plus responses (essentially a BBS).
The documents showed contained text plus TIFF bitmaps).
- Example: Company DB with sales information on a set of products. The
leaf nodes were recorded comments from customers.
- Notes has edit and browse modes. The difference is indicated by the
presence/absence of brackets surrounding editable text.
- Documents are viewed through forms. The forms are predesigned and the
text in them is not editable. Forms can contain simple interaction
dialogues (check-boxes/radio buttons, etc.) to save the user some typing.
- views are composed of columns; usrs can add/delete/rearrange columns to
change views (e.g. USER by DATE / DATE by USER). {This kind of arrangement
maps naturally to a relational-record model, but Lotus hasn't taken
advantage of this fact. Dumb.}
- spreadsheets and business graphics (pie & bar charts, etc.) can be
imported as static bitmaps. No connection is retained to the original file
{i.e. no live links.}
- Notes has built-in email; not a standard like X.400 or Internet, though
gateways to/from standards are "in development." {Stupid}
- Notes email uses both local and server address books for aliasing and
deciding whether to send through a gateway or send locally or put into a DB.
- Notes email can be automatically directed to a DB by the receiving user.
- Notes does not have hypertext, but does support "hot links" which allow
linking from within a document to another whole document. Links are
unidirectional. This is how Notes on-line help is implemented.
- there is no query facility, but users can do simple find/grep operations
within a view or across a whole DB. No inter-DB find possible.
- to connect LANs/users at different sites, Notes knows how to handle
modems (using XPC protocol) or leased lines.
- Notes uses full RSA cryptography for authentication, digital signatures,
and data encryption. Kerberos was considered for authentication, but RSA
was felt to be a much more mature technology.
- each DB has its own access control lists, including acces types,
privilege levels, and user names.
- the DB is customized for documents (relatively small ones) and is fully
replicated at all sites. {the demo showed *fast* access to small-to-medium
sized text documents. Performance was noticiably slower with embedded
graphics, but still acceptable.}
- there is currently no outside access possible to Notes. Users must be in
the system. An API is in development.
- guides are provided so VARs can build importing/exporting gateways for
email, wp document, spreadsheets.
- FCS will not allow applications to be built on Notes (the internals just
aren't well-enough documented). This is coming "soon,"
- Notes is 520KLOC of C. {Jeezus! I could do *considerably* better with
half a million lines of C. I'll bet they're using a goodly percentage of
that on the DB implementation.}
- Notes comes with templates for typical types of DB, each of which has its
own set of template views.
- Notes is targetted to the existing Lotus market. Mac version is likely
next, then Unix (though there may be a Unix-hosted server sooner).
- intended for use by all levels of personnel within a business (engineer,
manager, secretary, etc.). It "takes a fair amount of skill" to design a
DB, even with the help of the templates, so most users won't design them.
Lots of documentation/examples are provided to help those users that try.
- Lotus hopes to take advantage of users spreadsheet-programming skills.
Thus, the Notes language looks a lot like 1-2-3's @ formulae.
- some problems they admit to: users don't understand the distinction
between the underlying "data" and the "form" through which they must edit
it. The database is lacking in a lot of capabilities users want: querying,
report generation, navigation.
- there is no revision control in the first version. This is also "coming
soon." {This looks like a major bone of contention between Lotus and Iris.
Iris clearly wants it; Lotus seems not to understand why it's needed.}
- significantly, Lotus 'fessed up to having a hard time explaining concepts
of Notes to potential users, particularly "What is Groupware and What Can I
Do With It?" {This is something I've been worried about for a while. I
don't have any easy answers for this one.}
- there is *no* concurrency control in the DB. Notes relies on the user to
not conflict. {!!! This one floored me. What's the point of having a
"groupware" system that gives *no* help to cooperative work? The one
example they have of two people working together (to edit a document), the
writers had to agree in advance which sections each was going to work on so
they would be sure not to conflict!}
--
--Alan Wexelblat internet: wex@pws.bull.com
Bull Worldwide Information Systems Usenet: spdcc.com!know!wex
phone: (508) 671-7485
Adapt, adopt, improvise!eric@cfi.COM (eric) (03/23/90)
In article <WEX.90Mar19131959@sitting.pws.bull.com> wex@sitting.pws.bull.com (Buckaroo Banzai) writes: >[Since this is going out to the net as a whole, let me preface it by saying >*THESE ARE MY OPINIONS* They are based on what I saw and what I heard. Your opinions are most welcome here, as we are going to have to face Notes implementation fairly soon. > - several organizations have "bought into Notes" to "change their >organizations." No details revealed; presumably confidential. {probably Only as confidential as the trade press - when Notes was announced, PW's purchase of some thousands of licenses was announced. The idea is to allow audit and tax information that is scattered across the country to be more easily shared. Right now PW's widely decentralized staff can't communicate - anything will be a big plus. The guy who bought Notes for PW is pretty good at looking down the road - he started doing financial planning on an Onyx (first Unix micro, I think) when they first shipped (1982?). Some of that software still runs on a score of Suns now ... > - Notes applications in production include: > real-time Reuters newswire > ... >{Note that all of these "applications" are essentially hierarchical >bulletin-board-like things. Looks good on a marketing slide, though.} This may not sound like much, but when combined with custom views I think the resulting application is powerful. Imagine sitting at your desk in the morning and reading wire stories about only your clients and vendors presented to you, so that you can react to it at once. Here's another - dissemination of progress reports on tax legislation in Washington is difficult now, lots of paper traveling all over the place. Again, transmitted and sorted, the information is much more useful. > - Notes is targetted to the existing Lotus market. Mac version is likely >next, then Unix (though there may be a Unix-hosted server sooner). It doesn't have the same sort of licensing - you buy for a whole batch of people, for a big lump sum. > - there is *no* concurrency control in the DB. Notes relies on the user to This sure is stupid. Of course, not much stupider than most Unixes. And I sure do hope that Unix server shows up before we implement! When we first saw Notes in December, I couldn't believe it - fancy Usenet for your organization! Seems like the administrational overhead is really going to be a bear ... -- Eric Read ` | ' harvard!cfisun!eric (617) 899-6500 Price Waterhouse / CFI --*-- Look! Skeletons 51 Sawyer Rd. ' | ` In their best holiday clothes, Waltham, MA 02154 viewing flowers. (Onitsura)