Domino on AS/400 (George Gaylord et. al., IBM)
A really well prepared presentation demonstrated how good the AS/400 is as a Domino Web server (especially if you run Java) or as a mail server. It's very scalable and very easy to manage with the new AS/400 Operations Manager, a Windows program that lets you administer the AS/400 from an interface that resembles Windows Explorer. I was convinced.

Domino on Linux (Eddy Bell and Ken Brunson from IRIS, Jeff Conley from IBM)
A fascinating insight into the people at IRIS was provided by Ken Brunson, who admitted he first put together the Linux version of Domino in his spare time. Makes you wonder what he does for his day job, doesn't it?

Websphere and Domino (various presenters)
A number of sessions on Websphere throughout the week were well attended. Websphere excels at running Java servlets quickly and safely. It would be nice to think that the Domino agent manager could be simply replaced by the WAS (Websphere Application Server), but I suspect we're some way off from that at present. In the meantime, better integration between Domino and Websphere in R5.05 will have to do.

Architecting a Secure eCommerce Site (Carl Kriger, Lotus)
This was a practical look at how a badly-written Domino site can be hacked, including some URLs you should be aware of (and how to prevent the problem). Table A shows a sample of what I learned:

Carl drew our attention to security problems with reconstructed search URLs and denial of service attacks on WebQueryOpen and WebQueryClose agents. Get the full text of this presentation at http://www.lotus.com/99/session.nsf/eb208f93b3156e63852568400063d186/ec043e5cb43d4fde8525684e0066fa5d?opendocument!

iNotes
We should all get excited about the new Web client, which I'm told will consist of extensions to the Domino server and depend on IE5 and a new version of Netscape. Simon, who attended this session, tells me it's sometimes difficult to believe you're still in a browser. And with the DOLS (Domino Off-Line Services), you can take applications with you on your laptop.

Not so sure
The only session I wasn't so sure about was Java and Relational Databases (Mark Yuska and Paul Orsillo, Lotus). Although I learned a bit about making Java work with SQL (Structured Query Language) databases from this talk, the high-speed run through Java source code had Lisa off to another session after twenty minutes. It just shows how hard it is to pitch the content correctly. Maybe this session would be best read as an article after the conference?

The worst
Finally, the worst had to be the Partnering With Partners session on Business Partner day and the Building Applications for Web Clients session. I should have read the agenda more carefully. Twice I went to sessions I thought were relevant to me, only to be faced with another monotone commercial for IT Factory's monolithic software. I'll be wise to this trick next time.