I am new to Notes/Domino, hence am posting to this group to find some answers. We are building a J2EE App which will run on a App Server on a Solaris Box.This app will need to interface(read/Write) with a Notes Server running on some other box. While researching ways to communicate with the Domino Server from the App server,heres what i found:
1)Lotus has the LDDJ driver which provides JDBC-like functionality , but this Driver is type-2, requiring a Notes client on the App Server.This is a no-go as I think notes has no client for Solaris…am i right?
2)Another way ,from what i read in the “Building a J2EE Application with Domino and WebSphere” red-Book, is to include two jar files(ncsco.jar and notes.jar in your app servers classpath) and then use the Java API provided by these Jars to talk to the Notes Server. This appears to be do-able becoz there doesnt seem to be any platform-dependency. Am i missing something?
3)Another way is to use the JCA architecture to write a resouce adaper to Notes. But what i still cant figure out is how will the two servers communicate.
All help is sincerely appreciated.Thanks in advance!
Subject: interfacing with Notes 6 from a Unix-based app server.
Vik,
I’m no Java guru, but I believe one way to do this is CORBA as this does not need Lotus software on your app server. CORBA requires the DIIOP task to be started on the Domino server, but this task is a standard part of the server software.
Subject: RE: interfacing with Notes 6 from a Unix-based app server.
Thanks Ian. Your reply matches what I have found out elsewhere…use th Jar files, start the DIIOP protocol on the Lotus Server and it should be fine. One thing I have advised to do tho is to use the limited WebSphere app server contained within Notes Server(or the other way round?) to host a Java Servlet which will route the external call to the co-hosted server,using local classes .This is because DIIOP may be slow.Does anyone have any input on this?
Subject: interfacing with Notes 6 from a Unix-based app server.
1)Lotus has the LDDJ driver which provides JDBC-like functionality , but this Driver is type-2, requiring a Notes client on the App Server.This is a no-go as I think notes has no client for Solaris…am i right?
Correct, there is no Solaris client in current versions of Notes, but there is a server that runs on Solaris… However, that’s no help as the LDDJ code includes some native code as DLL’s which only runs on the Win32 platforms. So this isn’t really an option for you based on your description.
2)Another way … is to include two jar files(ncsco.jar and notes.jar in your app servers classpath) and then use the Java API provided by these Jars to talk to the Notes Server.
Bingo. That’s the ticket. But you only need NCSO.jar. Notes.jar contains many more classes that are not required and also contains the local version of the Java backend classes which requires a locally installed Notes or Domino to provide the native code. NCSO.jar talks directly to a remote Domino server running DIIOP and there is no local requirement other than the jar file itself. You might possibly need another Domino provided class called TrustedCerts.class if you need to secure that connection with SSL.
3)Another way is to use the JCA architecture to write a resouce adaper to Notes. But what i still cant figure out is how will the two servers communicate
Possible, but you’re back at #2 in order to get the underlying communication to work.
Of course, you could just get a Brightline Application Server, Enterprise Edition that natively talks to Domino for security information and provides you with a ready made Session to your J2EE application. Sorry, I just couldn’t resist
