Preface

The purpose of Inside LotusScript is to make it easy to learn how to develop Notes and Domino applications, and to provide you with a practical, useful code base that you can use in your programs. This book is designed for novice and experienced Notes programmers. There is a strong emphasis on providing practical, usable code and solutions to common Notes programming requirements.

Lotus Notes 4.x is an extremely powerful software development tool. Using Notes, I can develop databases and groupware applications in one-tenth the time it used to take me using relational databases. This is partly because of the completeness of the Notes tool set. Notes 3 was already a powerful wide area network groupware database. Notes 4 added the LotusScript programming language, navigators, powerful agents, action bars, layout regions, subforms, new formula commands, new view features, and more. Notes 4.5 has added even more programming features: calendar views, LotusScript Libraries, new user friendly date and time popup fields, and, of course, Domino, the Internet programming tools covered in part 3 of this book.

Together these tools are a powerful combination. But it can be difficult, even intimidating, to learn such a large tool set. Inside LotusScript solves this problem by providing step by step tutorials for whatever you need to do, whether it's learning how to develop a Notes application from scratch, or adding a powerful feature like sequential number generation to an existing program. As you read this book, you will learn by doing, and, when you've finished it, you will have proficiency with all of the Notes tools.