Not for Beginners
I'm surprised at the rave reviews that everyone is giving this book. I have this book and I've been reading through it and it starts off fine as it has you build a simple application in the beginning. I found that promising because I've never used Lotus Notes before so I thought this would be an excellent book. The only problem is that once you're finished with that chapter, it goes from good to really bad. The book then becomes a reference manual for the different aspects of Lotus Notes. It provides no tutorials whatsoever as one astute reviewer on here points out. If I wanted this kind of reference I could have read the help documentation for Lotus Notes. This book is only useful for people who have mastered many aspects of Lotus Notes and even then its explanations of aspects like commands are dry and not put into context.
5 words for a 5 star item
go and buy it NOW...!
waiting for a ND7 version -
Must Own Book for All Domino Developers
Before I go any further, I have to disclose up front that I personally and professionally know all three authors who contributed to Lotus Notes and Domino 6 Programming Bible (Brian Benz and Rocky Oliver, 2003, John Wiley And Sons, 1032 Pages, ISBN 0764526111). And Rocky, Brian and Richard will all tell you that I would still be the first one to call it like I see it, regardless of relationships. So with that in mind, to every person who works with Lotus Notes and Domino, regardless of version, and to every person who has ever posted to the Lotus developerWorks forum asking about good reference material for development: buy this book and put it on your bookshelf. I may approach coding somewhat differently than the authors, but that is the nature of all application developers. But this book does something often overlooked in too many technical books: it not only talks about how things work in Notes/Domino, it also puts out best practices and explanations for these best practices based on the authors vast depth and breadth of experience.
Make no mistake about it, this book is a tome. You are not going to read it like a novel. You are going to pick and choose the pieces you need based on your experience levels and problems you are trying to solve. The publisher wisely categorizes this book as a "beginner to advanced" level, a point I think one early reviewer of this book missed. In a systematic format, the authors walk the reader from the very beginning of Lotus Notes as a product to the point where even the most advanced developers can benefit from the content.
Lotus Notes and Domino is all about design items and objects, stored as 'notes'. So the authors make no assumption of the reader's experience level. They start at the very beginning by laying the framework for a simple application. They then explain the notes storage model, which is often a hard concept for may people to grasp, especially outside auditors and non-Notes people. As a reader you are then given a detailed thorough explanation of the Notes//Domino integrated development environment, and then even more detail on each design element that makes up an application. For the advanced readers, there is detail coverage of data integration with Lotus Enterprise Integrator (LEI), Java and XML.
As I said earlier in this review, this book will be of value regardless of what version of Notes/Domino you are running because of the coverage of the underlying concepts surrounding development on this platform. Sure it will not help you with the introduction of DB2 as an optional back-end data store, but that is not fundamental to the platform (yet).
There is one, to me, glaring weakness in the book and I discussed this with Rocky. The book is huge and is packed full of great content. But the layout of the book by the publisher makes it hard for tips, notes, and new feature highlights to really jump out of the page and grab you. This is not the fault of the author's, but is something the publisher should look at down the road.
A Tip for Readers of this Book
This is a book that will get used a lot and as such, will fall out of the binding because of its size. The first thing I like to do with a book like this is beat the binding to the punch. I will remove the pages from the binding and put them in a three ring binder or binders. This will make it much easier to handle and give it a much longer shelf life.
Who Should Own and Read This Book?
This book should be on the desk of every Lotus Notes and Domino developer that cares about their work. It should also be in the possession of every internal and/or external auditor charged with auditing Lotus Notes and Domino applications, so that they understand what they are auditing.
The Scorecard
Double Eagle on a long par 5 playing into the wind.
Fantastic book - A must have for Lotus Notes and Domino developers
By far and away the best (and almost the only) book around for Lotus Notes and Domino 6 application development. A lot of technical books (especially for Lotus Notes) seem to re-hash the same old stuff, often glossing over or completely ignoring complex topics. However this book has it all and it an absolute must for Lotus Notes and Domino developers.
Not for Beginners
As with any book, it's only useful if it has what you want. Like many of the Bible series, it is rated for "Beginning", but it is really for experienced techs to add Lotus Notes to their skill set. The book assumes that you are familiar with scripting languages. If you aren't, don't expect this book to help you much. There are no reference materials for any of the functions or commands, no syntax helps, and no tutorials for the programming at all. Yet most of the chapters rely on programming extensively.
(12 reviews)
