Lotus notes was great! I was a system administrator back around 1997 or so, managing Lotus notes running on a larger AIX server at HQ, and a bunch of smaller AIX systems at various remote offices. I really enjoyed working with it. Sadly, it was the only place I ever got to work with it!
*Garrett Meiers* BitHistory.org https://www.facebook.com/BitHistory/ <http://www.bithistory.org/> =Helping to protect and preserve our computing history= On Thu, May 24, 2018 at 12:27 PM, Grant Taylor via cctalk < cctalk@classiccmp.org> wrote: > On 05/24/2018 11:08 AM, Grant Taylor via cctalk wrote: > >> Though I've got to say, I think the absolute very BEST online / offline >> email client integration that I've ever seen was Lotus Notes and Domino. >> (I'll send a follow up email with details as to why I was /so/ impressed.) >> > > I was EXTREMELY impressed with how well Lotus Notes worked as an email > client for Lotus Domino when it came to online / offline use. > > First: I had Notes configured to replicate my email (DB) off of the > Domino server so that I could have access to it even if I was offline. > > I don't recall how Notes behaved if I transitioned between online / > offline in the event of a network (dis)connection. (It rarely happened.) > But I was easily able to change the so called "Location" from "Online" to > "Offline" (or any other location that I defined) on the fly with absolute > minimal impact by clicking a drop down and selecting a different location. > > The most likely small burp would be if I naively left it in the Online > location when starting up without the company VPN connected, thus unable to > communicate with the Domino server. In such a case, Notes might take 15 ~ > 30 additional seconds to open as it tried to connect before it would give > up trying to connect and say "Unable to connect to server, starting in > Offline mode." I could easily start the VPN after the fact and switch to > "Online" mode and do a Replicate (what Notes termed the Send & Receive). > > I could easily draft email while offline and it would sit in my outbox > waiting for the next time I replicated. > > IMHO it worked great. > > Aside: I had this same type of behavior for other non-Mail DBs inside of > Notes too. My employer used a LOT of Notes DBs for various things. > Vacation planner was a Notes DB. Inventory was a Notes DB. Team > documentation repositories were Notes DBs. Each team have a different > document repository (Team Room) Notes DB. Different people had different > levels of access to different DBs. > > Further Aside: I could easily enable DB level encryption of the local > replica of a Notes DB trivially. I could also turn encryption off or > change security level easily. > > *ALL* of my Notes DBs benefited from these (and more) features; > replication, online / offline, encryption, meta data indexing, full text > indexing, and many more. > > Second: The thing that I did with my email that was *SO* impressive to me > was that my email DB on my workstation was a replica of my email DB on the > Domino server. With the exception that my server replica was < 300 MB > (disk quota) and my local workstation replica > 2 GB. — Yes, the same DB > had bidirectional replication between > 2 GB and < 300 MB. > > This is what amazed me. > > I configured custom replication between the my workstation and the server > such that: > > 1) Deletes from the server copy were not replicated into my workstation > copy. > 2) The server copy only maintained messages that were < 30 days old. > (I needed to replicate within that window, but 30 days is not a > problem.) > 3) ALL modifications to the local copy were replicated to the server copy. > > This allowed me to use my email like I had no disk quota at all. (Based > on amount of storage on my workstation.) I could leave all my messages in > my mailbox /with/ attachments left in tact. (Many colleagues removed > attachments form messages to shrink their inbox. I didn't have that > problem.) All the while I was able to stay well under the 300 MB disk > quota and stay out of "Mail Jail". > > As an added bonus, I was able to leverage the company provided web mail > interface and access the email that was still on the server (within the 30 > day window). Anything I sent / received / marked as (un)read would get > replicated into my workstation copy the next time I replicated. > > In my (not so) humble opinion, Lotus Notes & Domino has got to be, hands > down, the absolute BEST replicated email infrastructure that I've ever seen. > > I do think the UI was fairly ugly and somewhat clunky. That being said, I > was able to do compose email / team documents with features that I LONG for > in Gmail. > > In hind sight I would have liked to have a tiny Domino server (which Notes > was in some ways) that was an IMAP / SMTP interface for a local copy of > Thunderbird. - I think that would have given me the aforementioned > features /and/ what I considered to be a better UI. > > > > -- > Grant. . . . > unix || die > ᐧ
