First and foremost, the book is designed to be an overview of the product and an update on what is new. In many ways, it feels like the content you would get from a super duper "What's New in Notes" help file or something from Lotus Education to take the new certifications. I do not think that is a bad thing. If you were expecting a really detailed book on Xpages, this is not that book. I will get to the Xpages issue in a bit, but first - lets talk about what is good in the book.
I found the chapters on the Domino Server, Deployment, Upgrading, and Coexistence to be very good, even if there are two chapters about Domino (Chapters 4 and 10) which should have been consolidated into one. I thought for anyone who was a beginner to mid level IT professional would learn something from all of these chapters.
The chapters about the Notes client, Notes & SOA, Integration with other Lotus/IBM Products, and third-party applications were very detailed.
There is some great code to export Domino Configuration Tuner reports - a feature I have asked IBM to implement specifically. Nice addition - but would be even better if the code was made available for download.
The details about the Lotus Quickr Connectors is very detailed and great for any end user who has never used them.
The iNotes sections are very very detailed. Outside of presentations at Lotusphere and the documentation in the product, this might be the most extensive writing on iNotes I have ever seen.
Now on to some of the issues I have found:
There is a mix of 8.0.X, 8.5, and 8.5.1 in this book. And the book reads as its all supposed to be current. My guess is that they took the 8 or 8.5 content that was already there and updated pieces of it. The problem is that they did not update enough. You can find a picture from the Notes 8.0.X client on page 7 with pictures from Notes 8.5.0 with message recall on pages 23 and 24. When you get to the Lotus Notes 8.5 section on page 35, the book finally starts to cover modern features. But why not just write an entire chapter about the Notes client from the 8.5.1 perspective. There was no mention of the new 8.5.1 features like making unread mail red instead of bold. Just a lost opportunity to really hit home on the new features
Chapter 3 covers "Productivity Tools" - 8 pages on the editors that ship with the Lotus Notes client. But they use pictures from 8.0.2 - and don't talk about any of the integration pieces that tie Notes and Symphony together with 8.5 and Symphony 1.2 and 8.5.1 and Symphony 1.3. As the technical reviewer of "Lotus Symphony for Dummies" - this chapter does not serve anyone who reads it
There is a couple mentions of DB2NSF - and it has been known for at least 6 months that this functionality was sunsetted. The book shouldn't even mention it.
Chapter 8 talks about what is new in Notes/Domino 8.5 Development. The chapter goes 29 pages before it mentions Domino Designer for Eclipse (DDE) or Xpages. Sure, cover what's new otherwise - but this is very much a bolt on to an existing chapter from Notes 8.X. No screen shots of the new LotusScript editor. 1 page on Xpages. This book will not serve anyone who wants to be an Xpages developer.
Chapter 9 covers integration with other IBM/Lotus products - with products that have been out for over a year. Obviously they are using Quickr and Sametime 7.5.1 - could they not have used Sametime 8 and Quickr 8.2? One of the screen shots even shows the IBM version of the Lotus Sametime Connect client. I know the majority of the authors of the books work for IBM, but they should be using the out of the box software.
The Third Party Section could have been an amazing section for IBM to highlight great business partner solutions. The problem - they don't mention any alternatives to the tools they have. For instance, they have a section on reporting on Notes data but only offer one solution to the problem. They should have listed a bunch of products and then dived into the one's as they did.
It's great that there are books on Lotus Notes & Domino coming out - but we really need them to be accurate and up to date. If you are reading PlanetLotus.org on a regular basis - this book is not going to offer you new content. New administrators who find the book will find great info on upgrading and coexistence. As for end users, it may be a great book for some of your users - at least pieces of it. Personally, I would suggest they pull the "8.5.1" number off the cover.
If you are looking for a written resource about Notes 8.5.X, you should check out the book for yourself. These are just my opinions, and you might find the book useful for your purposes. In that vein, Packt has provided a free downloadable version of Chapter 8: What's New in Notes/Domino 8.5 Development - please, download; read; and make your own decision. If you would like to purchase the book, you can get it directly from here. You can get the physical copy or the pdf - and it does look good on my Kindle 2 DX :-)
New Media Tuesday - 3/16/2010
Tue, Mar 16th 2010 12:20p John Head Here is what's coming out today ... Movies Armored Barnaby Jones: Season #1 Broken Embraces Cannon: Season #2: Volume 2 Clash of the Gods: Season #1 Destination Truth: Season #1 Did You Hear About the Morgans? Dillinger Is Dead: The Criterion Collection Fourth Kind, The Hawaii Five-O: Season #8 In Plain Sight: Season #2 Monk: Season #8 Ninja Assassin One Piece: Season Two: Sixth Voyage Penguins Of Madagascar, The: Operation: DVD Premiere Ponyo Princess And The Frog, The (Blu-Ray + DVD + D [read] Keywords: mac
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Open XML SDK for Microsoft Office Version 2.0 has shipped
Mon, Mar 15th 2010 2:50p John Head A big day for the OOXML community ... On February 21, 2008, I posted on Microsoft Interoperability Principles, which are designed to make our products more open and more available to the broader software community. Since that day, Microsoft has made several strides in this area, too many to recount here and now, but largely explained by the Interoperability@Microsoft team. Today we are making an important advance in the area of document format interoperability for Office, as part of our ongoin [read] Keywords: application
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New Media Tuesday - 3/9/2010
Tue, Mar 9th 2010 7:20p John Head Here is what's coming out today ... Movies Boondock Saints II, The: All Saints Day Breaking Bad: Season #2 Brothers Warner, The Capitalism: A Love Story Greek: Chapter Four Hannah Montana: Miley Says Goodbye? Hunter: Season #1 In Plain Sight: Season #2 Iron King: The Complete Series Johnny Bravo: Season #1 Life with Derek: Season #3 Matt Houston: Season #1 Penguins Of Madagascar, The: Operation: DVD Premiere Pirate Radio Planet 51 Scarecrow And Mrs. King: Season #1 Stoning Of Soraya M., T [read] Keywords: microsoft
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New Media Tuesday - 3/2/2010
Tue, Mar 2nd 2010 1:50p John Head Here is what's coming out today ... Movies 2012 (Blu-Ray) (#1 in the DVDPS Top 40) 2012: 2 Disc Edition (Blu-Ray) (#2 in the DVDPS Top 40) Bitch Slap: Unrated Castle In The Sky: SE Clash Of The Titans (Blu-Ray) (#28 in the DVDPS Top 40) Designing Women: Season #3 Gentlemen Broncos Hell's Kitchen: Season #2 Kiki's Delivery Service: SE Matlock: Season #4 Plenty Ponyo (Blu-Ray) (#17 in the DVDPS Top 40) Ponyo SGU: Stargate Universe: Season #1 (Blu-Ray) Where The Wild Things Are (Blu-Ray) (#4 [read] Keywords: atlantic
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Reminder: OpenNTF.org IP Working Group Open Call Tomorrow!
Thu, Feb 25th 2010 4:31p John Head The first quarterly call will be tomorrow, Friday, February 26th 2010 at 10 AM Eastern. The agenda is that I will present our goals and top tasks for 2010 and then open the floor to comments and questions to anyone on the call. To access the call in info, go here. [read] Keywords: openntf
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Welcome to the updated JohnDavidHead.com
Thu, Feb 25th 2010 11:51a John Head So as you can see, this site has a new look. Something a bit more current, a bit more polish, and a bit more focus on what I do on a daily basis. The color scheme matches the PSC look, but this is definitely my site. A bit of the 'edge' is gone - notice that the website title is just "John D. Head" not "John D. Head aka Starfish" - and the World of Warcraft image is gone. Not that this site will go super stuffy, but I wanted this site to be more a reflection on how I have changed. I still play g [read] Keywords: domino
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This blog is getting a facelift over the next 24 hours ...
Wed, Feb 24th 2010 10:20a John Head Please pardon any issues as this blog gets a facelift over the next 24 hours. I am excited about the new look and feel and direction for my site. More as the facelift is complete and the bandages come off [read] Keywords:
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Today is Paczki Day!
Tue, Feb 16th 2010 12:10p John Head This time of year, one of my favorite days is Paczki Day. Today is Paczki Day (well, at least in my family tradition - some people celebrate Paczki Thursday), which just happens to be Fat Tuesday or the day before Lent. Paczki (Punch-key) are delicious, jelly filled dough balls covered with server types of sugar or glaze. The idea behind Paczki's is that on Ostatki (Fat Tuesday), Polish bakers make paczki because 40 days of fasting is about to begin and the cooks must use up the ingredients in t [read] Keywords: server
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