Lotus adds to Domino

At its second annual Domino Developers Conference, Lotus Development today said it is shipping the latest version of its server-based data distribution package and it has made several Java enhancements to Domino 4.6 Web application development tools.

The IBM (IBM) subsidiary introduced NotesPump 2.5, a server-based data distribution product that enables the exchange of data between a number of host systems and relational database packages. Priced at $7,995, NotesPump supports OS/2 Warp 3.0, Windows NT 3.51 or 4.0, HP-UX 10.01, Sun Solaris 2.5.1 (SPARC and Intel), and IBM AIX 4.1.4.

The new version of the data distribution package includes RealTime Activity, which allows database administrators to establish persistent, synchronous connections between Domino applications and NotesPump-supported back-end data sources with no programming required.

Supported data sources for NotesPump include IBM DB2, Lotus Notes, Oracle, Sybase, ASCII text EDA/SQL, ODBC, and HTML.

At the conference, held in San Francisco, Lotus executives also said that Domino 4.6 will support the JDK (Java Development Kit) version 1.1.

The company said it is extending developers' options to create Web applications by exposing the use of Domino back-end objects through Java and by offering new ways for developers to share data between Domino and non-Domino applications.

In addition, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company said it will begin shipping Lotus BeanMachine for Java 1.1 later this month. The BeanMachine supports JDK 1.1, including the ability to import JavaBeans.

With Java 1.1, API support developers can create, copy, replicate, and delete Domino databases, as well as set database design properties, create, copy, and delete folders. In addition, Java code can be attached to events in Domino forms, written as Domino server ad-ins, or run as stand-alone applications on the Domino server or Notes client.

"This really ties all the components together. It truly fulfills the NCF [Network Computing Federation]," said Paul Castiglione of the DominoWeb Applications division at Lotus.

The NCF is IBM's road map for developing its Internet, e-commerce, network computing, and enterprise businesses.