Lotus Notes and Domino 6 Programming Bible [Paperback]

Let me hasten to provide detailed reasons for this highly enthusiastic summation.

This is the best single book compilation of Notes development information that I've ever seen. It's slanted toward detailing the new features of Notes/Domino 6 (new features are flagged in the text), but is hardly limited to ND 6 features. Even experienced developers are likely to pick up useful information from the ND6 Bible. While this might not be the only book you'd need as a beginning Notes/Domino developer, it will serve as much more than a starting point. It's got lots of wise advice on Notes database design. You could learn all this though bitter experience instead, but why do that when you can just skip over many pitfalls with the aid of this book? The early chapters give all the detail a beginner or novice will need to get going. More advanced chapters skip the basic details, but whatever the level, this book is very good at giving you the why along with the how.

Many of the code examples not only demonstrate the topic under discussion, but show how to do useful things besides. If you're tired of books with "toy" code examples, the ND6 Bible is for you. In particular, Advanced Formula Techniques and Advanced LotusScript Techniques are two chapters that will be of interest to all but the most experienced of Notes developers.

Particularly providential for me were Chapters 43-45 on relational database integration. I'm working on a project that will need to do something along these lines. Various data integration options are described. Capsule histories are given when relevant. Most important are the tips on when to use and when not to use each of these technologies. These chapters saved me hours of research.

Often, we techies are too busy to read a huge book from cover to cover, so a good index is a key feature. The book has a good index. One feature I hadn't encountered before is that the LotusScript classes are listed in the index in a separate font and each class's methods are listed with it, indented slightly. If you haven't been exposed to OO programming, that won't make much sense so just trust me that this style of indexing is a big plus. You'll find what you want faster. There are good cross-references in the text too, a detail that is far too often neglected in other technical books. I'll have to pay more attention to the publisher's (Wiley) technical books in the future. These details matter a lot.

Technical books need code, but not too much. I've seen all too many books shoveled full of code that does nothing but increase the page count. The ND6 Bible has a good mix of code to text. It's there when it needs to be; it hasn't been dumped in indiscriminantly. The book does not come with a CD, but you can download the files from the publisher's web site. This can be done all at once or chapter by chapter if your download speed is limited.

Good as this book is, it's not perfect. I would have liked to see a bibliography and an appendix of web resources. There are links in the text though. Maybe they'll make these things available in the second edition or on their web site. The section on web applications is only an introduction to the topic (though quite a good one). I'd guess that the authors preferred to devote the space to more advanced topics. As there are whole books on the subject of Domino Web Apps, I can see why they'd make that choice. And finally, I have to throw in a technical nitpick. I couldn't find a caution against using the @now or @today functions in view selection formulas. Notes allows this, but it can bog down a server amazingly. Given all the other sage advice, I'm surprised this wasn't included.

In conclusion; if you're doing Notes and Domino development, buy this book! You won't regret it.