ABSTRACT
Lotus Notes® is the industry-standard client/server platform for developing and deploying groupware applications. Groupware is a category of software that enables teams of people or workgroups to integrate their knowledge, work processes, and applications to achieve improved business effectiveness. It allows people across multiple computing platforms to access, track, share, and organize information in ways never before possible, even if they are only occasionally connected to a network. Groupware applications differ from traditional transaction processing applications in a number of ways:
Unstructured information management. Much of corporate knowledge typically resides in unstructured format in documents that include text, image, voice, and video.
Collaboration among users. Business information flows from one set of users to another in both defined and ad hoc patterns.
Crossing traditional boundaries. Because qualitative information flows across departmental lines in many business processes, multilevel data security is essential to protect sensitive information without denying access to information to the appropriate users
Asynchronous updates. Business process applications are typified by long transactions, in which information is "checked out" for use over a relatively long period of time. Meanwhile, other users may also be checking objects out and in.
Remote users. Many business process applications include users at remote sites, on the road, or who work at different organizations (such as a customer or a business partner). These users are only occasionally connected to the system.
