IBM Notes and Domino Server

IBM Notes and IBM Domino are simply classified as client and server respectively. It is developed by Lotus Development Corporation.

IBM is an email client application that can be installed on the IBM Domino application server. Both IBM Notes and Domino supports IBM and third party software including free applications such as add-ins, plug-ins, add-ons etc. IBM Notes application provides various features which are as follows:

1. Email

2. Calendar

3. Lists

4. Contact Management

5. Discussion Forums

6. Instant Messaging

7. Blog

8. File Sharing etc.

IBM describes Lotus Notes software as an “easy to use”, single point of access to everything to get work done quickly including email, feeds, business application and much more. IBM Notes provides client server architecture runtime environment. Previously Lotus Domino was known as Lotus Notes Server and was originally the component of Lotus corporation client server messaging technology.

Domino provides the infrastructure to create, test, manage and arrange distributed application including database, security, connectivity, administration, directory, web-server and so on. It is used for enterprise e-mail messaging, scheduling and collaboration. For hosting business application IBM Domino platform is an advanced version which delivers following features:

• Security Rich: Provides better security to your precarious business resources. With this feature you can protect information by controlling information access and guarantee document authenticity.
• High Availability: Provides advanced and improved functionality such as clustering of data, replication, automated diagnostic tools and server fault recovery.
• Low Cost Ownership: Minimizing the need of administration by monitoring higher value tasks, automated installation and policies.
• Minimized Infrastructure: It reduce the cost by utilizing less power, storage, memory and network bandwidth.

Architecture of Domino Server

Lotus Notes and Domino Server uses the hardware and software both components. In which hardware consists of Notes client computers, Domino server computer and a network to connect them. Software architecture contains three level same as hardware components but software components reside on the client and server computer and each component belong to one of the level.:

1. Client and Server program
2. NOS (Note Object Services)
3. Databases and Files

NSF Files

Files that ends with .NSF extension are most commonly belong to IBM Notes database files. These files are generally used to store Lotus Notes data or information. The information consists of metadata, user data and design information. NSF stands for Notes Storage Facility. It changes with different version of Lotus Notes. The format is known as On Disk Structure (ODS). ODS is nothing just retrieve back information to the server from the hard disk.