Customer Reviews

Sams Teach Yourself Lotus Notes and Domino 5 Development in 21 Days

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

As a 6 year Notes developer, I know many of the subjects in this well done, progressive book, but rarely lift it off the shelf until I need a refresher on a specific topic, such as lists and what functions work with them - then pulling out the chapter on Lists is very helpful to remind me about some rarely used commands that help with a lists programming problem.

You won't find heavy duty stuff here, and not much LotusScript, but Lotus doesn't even require LotusScript for a CLP, so the book is useful for many formula and function users, as well as new developers "assigned to support Notes". The title says "Notes and Domino" which implies using Domino web capabilities, but not much of that is here either.

What about the CD? Publishers love to add a CD so they can get advertising revenue from 3rd party demos and charge you and me $10-20 more. I searched all over trying to find what was on the included CD - nowhere was there a list of what was on it, until I figured out they had files to support each "day's" lesson.

I inspected the CD and found three sections:

- "3rd Party" containing over a dozen third party demo files WITHOUT ONE WORD DESCRIBING WHAT THEY WERE. There is no listing in the index, no readme.txt file, no appendix is used like other books, no info is on the back cover or in the table of contents or in any chapter I could find. If I was one of the firms PAYING to add these demo files, I would ask for a refund - as a reader, over 50% of the names were unfamiliar and what makes the publisher think I would run an .exe file on my system without even knowing what the file does, how much space it takes or whether I can unload it later. The SAMS project manager who handled CD files for this book should be fired for this sloppy implementation of what could be a useful feature.

The second section was "Examples" with a sub-directory for each day's lesson, and the files are described at the end of each chapter, but there is no comprehensive list of all the files and what they do that you could use later for reference.

The third undescribed section on the CD was "web" which again contained no "readme.txt" file, but did contain an HTML file that turned out to have lots of useful web links to Notes ad Domino related sites. Too bad most readers won't know about that document.

Finally, unlike some other Notes/Domino books, there is no included full text Notes .nsf searchable file of the book that the buyer can keep on their laptop for reference (don't ever give us pdf files, too many problems with search and different versions required).

In conclusion, this is still a good book for Novices to learn Notes, for experienced developers to use as a reference (I liked the LotusScript chapter which is better than Lotus provides in Help). Having the chapter files on CD is helpful, but they are overcharging for a CD where the contents are not documented anywhere I could find. The associate publisher of this book, Dean Miller, should be held accountable for that problem and demo advertisers should ask for their money back. That is the reason I marked the book down to four stars from five.

Vance Jochim, CLP R5, R4 WEBworks Systems vjochim@webworks66.com

This book gives you everything you need to pass the Domino Designer Fundamentals test (#510) and MORE!

Conversational style, well-organized lessons, all material presented in bite-sized chunks (perfect for a one hour bus commute).

Formula and Command reference is light (understandbly so, not the focus of the book). This should be viewed as the title implies - a self-paced tutorial. If you simply want a reference, consider Randy Tamura's book or Unleashed (More advanced, I forget the author).

My sincere thanks to the authors and I look forward to using their other offerings.

I had been waiting for a Lotus Note/Domino book that doesn't have 6 chapters on what's new here, what's new there type scenario. This book gets to point pretty much well straight away. Coverage of key point in Notes is covered throughout each chapter (Examples of forms, fields, etc and summaries of their properties) while using the examples and "End of chapter" summaries to build a multi - Dbase Workflow Application.

Based on a Work-flow model and building a single application throughout, the book covers key points which are new in R5 as well a "break down as you go" of the examples properties. This helps as a light on what other possibilities you can play with in the likes of using the full range of the objects' properties.

Of value were the explanation of/and building of hierarchical forms, Workflow, and a Good dose of Formula Language (All can be quite elusive to find decent Doco on). Little Lotus Script is covered but some points are covered. This was never the aim of the book and was so explained.

The feel of the book (and I haven't read all of it yet) is that you need to have a familiarity with Domino Designer as it seems a little quick or brief in the explanations of a few things.

But if you are starting to get more interested in Domino Applications Design, or like myself, have been thrown in the deep end and learnt how to things, but wonder whether you are doing it right, then this serve's as a good refresher and confidence booster for thing you felt were right, and fills in the hole of the thing you don't know (but should!).

I like the singular Application Example. It serve to better demonstrate what Notes does Natural, thereby it is fully applicable to real life.

This is a successful style demonstrated in the Cold-Fusion4 Web Construction kit by Ben Forta. A style that serves' the designer better than sporadic trivial examples that go no where.

This books is great for a beginner. It gives you everything you need to pass the Application Development I test for Certified Lotus Specialist, and then some! A few of the database examples on the CD are corrupt though, but it's not that big of a problem.

I've spent my time developing SQL and Access databases, so when it came to Domino, I was apprehensive at first. With the help of this book, halfway through it, I developed a functional database to contain work orders. I've received many compliments on it, and I've the book to thank. Many of the things used in it I learned directly from the book. If you are looking for advanced web development, this is not the book you need. If you are looking for a good "feet in the pool" starter, I recommend this book.

The last three reviews of this book do not seem to be fair to this specific book.

1. To purchase this book and assume that it contains the software is ludicrous. If the book doesn't state it has it, you shouldn't expect it. You don't expect an Oracle book to include the Oracle Database or a book on Microsoft Windows to include the Windows software. Why would you expect the publisher to simply give you this software?

2. If there are gripes about the publisher and the quality of their books in general, those gripes should be published on the publisher's site or communicated to the publisher. This specific book shouldn't take all the flack for an overall quality issue with the publisher.

3. The complaint about the missing code on the CD is legitimate, and if the publisher didn't respond, shame on them. However, it should be known that they did eventually respond and the missing pieces are now on their web site.

In my opinion, this book is very good. The authors are certified professionals who put a lot of time and effort into this product. I'd recommend it to anyone wanting to learn Lotus Notes and Domino!

I have to say that this book has taught me a lot about Notes Designer, and that it will definitely get you up and running in the application. Lotus products can be strange and difficult to work with, and this book is a decent--if occasionally frustrating--guide for getting through Designer. This being said, I am sorry to report that the text can be misleading or muddled. Often I find that important data is just breezed over without specifics; for example, the authors will tell you a setting needs to be made, but they don't tell you where. (Note to the authors: This can be frustrating and time-wasting, as in the case of the "Tip" on page 233, in which you are advised "to make sure you specify a date and a time", but it is unclear where this is done. I never did find it, and in this case, it made it impossible for me to complete the chapter-ending exercise. I spend a good deal of time on this, and got a little cranky. The CD examples were no help.) In addition, there were at least two examples of code (formulas) that had mistakes, and while it could be argued that there if you had been paying attention you would have caught them, I daresay that these errors may have wasted someone's valuable time. On that note--and I'll admit I'm being a little anal here--there were MANY typos such as missing periods, commas, messed up font cases and styles. Again, these (mostly) minor gripes notwithstanding, this book has been quite useful; I think some careful editing might have made it great.

We are the authors of this book and if you look at the older reviews, you will see reviews indicative of our work (4-5 stars). One file on the CD of this book is bad and the corrected file IS posted at Sams site. We apologize for any inconvenice this has caused. As far as the review by Mr.Spruce, we are sorry if he has had a bad experience with Sams Publishing, but we assure you that Sams editors and authors are all professionals. I find it curious that he wrote a bad review on this book - he obviously has not even seen our book - his review is simply a slam against the publisher. Regarding the gentlemen who says he is disappointed that we did not indicate that the software needed to be loaded on his PC in order to learn programming - we do aplogize. It has been our experience that programming students know that the software must be loaded in order to learn programming. In the future, we will consider the suggestion to inform our readers that if they want to learn programming, they must have the software installed. I hope this clears up issues regarding this book as we have written many successful software books and our books have always been met with approval. Jane Calabria and Dorothy Burke

I took the 3 basic Developer courses one year ago, onsite at an authorized Lotus training center. Lotus Notes is only one of the many databases I support, so I have not been able to use what I learned in the classes on a daily, or even weekly, basis. I consulted this book twice today, and found exactly what I was searching for both times immediately by using the index. Thanks to the concise index, I did not have to read through pages of other topics to find my solutions. The total cost of the book was justified in less than 10 minutes!

The style is friendly, the content good and the authors seemingly well-versed. But all the advertised web-support for the book has been removed by the publisher. And the CD doesn't work. The error message states that the ".nsf" file is in an invalid format. Sure enough, the book's web site has a one-question FAQ which says they have confirmed the problem, that the authors have been unresponsive to it, and that you can get a full refund for the book (if, as it turns out, you send it back to the publisher and pay shipping.)

I was very disappointed. I'm sending the book back to the publisher and hoping for the best. Don't let this happen to you.