PACKT publishing asked me if I'd like to review their new book: IBM Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.1: the Upgrader's Guide. As the lead user experience designer for Notes, I welcomed the opportunity to see what other people and organizations think are the important parts of upgrading.
The book is written with an informal, easy-to-understand style. It starts logically with a list of the new features in the client, followed by new features in the server, and then application development. It has lots of screenshots, which I think makes a world of different to people trying to understand what is new -- or simply what might be important to their organization-- in a new release.
Most of the chapters divide "what's new" into what's new in Notes /Domino 8 and then what's new in 8.5, which I think is very helpful. The title of the book is 8.5.1 and I was disappointed that the chapter on what's new in the client did not actually cover any of the new things in 8.5.1 (although they did a good job with what was new in 8.0 and 8.5). Nor did it cover much of anything about Widgets or Live Text (which appeared in Notes 8.0.1). It could be that they didn't think these things were significant enough to warrant the space, but even a simple list of what was new in the 8.5.1 client would have been nice for completeness and for fidelity with the title.
While the organization of the book overall makes a logical progression from Client, to server to application development, it feels like chapter 10 on "Domino 8.5" enhancements was tacked on at the end. I read through chapter 4, entitled "Lotus Domino 8.5 Server Enhancements", flipping through it several times asking myself "where is DAOS? How could they have missed DAOS" -- then I found it -- and ID Vault and a few other things-- covered AFTER the application development chapters, in chapter 10.
For upgraders, I think that the chapters on deployment enhancements, specific upgrading tips, and coexistence between Notes/Domino releases will be the most valuable. No upgrader's guide would be complete with out a hefty section on what's going on with development-- and this book gives a good overview of Domino Designer in Eclipse, Xpages, and even a little section on the blog template (which, of course, I am using to write this review).
I was happy to see the chapter on "Integration with other Lotus/IBM Products. " It provided a good overview of some of the major considerations, and also, simply because the chapter is there, it gets readers to think not only of one product, but also about the various products in the Lotus portfolio.
I was also pleased to see the chapter on "Lotus Notes 8.5 and SOA" because it provides a broader picture of how Notes and Domino plays a part in the overall IBM "Services-Oriented Architecture" approach.
The book is available in English as hardcopy or as a PDF, ISBN: 13-978-1-847199-28-7. More about it here:
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