In this month's edition of Letters to the Editor, one reader wonders if we have a DominoPower tip archive, and another reader corrects our spelling and shares her experience as a happy victim of the "Notes Virus."

Where's the tip archive?
Do you have a list or archive of all the DominoPower tips that you send via listserv email, or am I expected to maintain a copy of each in my mailbox?

Thanks,
Kashif Khwaja

Editor-in-Chief David Gewirtz responds
You're not expected to maintain a copy, but it's probably a good idea. We've never gotten around to posting an archive, although it's been on our perpetual to-do list (along with a whole bunch of other things).

There's that Notes Virus again
I really enjoy reading DominoPower and am just getting into PalmPower. Do you know that your Team bio contains an it's that should be an its?

I, too, am a Notes virus carrier. About six years ago, a salesperson from my consulting company asked me to come down to see her ex-boss at this huge bank. He had a problem that needed solving, and she thought a DBA might have some insight. He explained the problem, which had to do with product specifications, forms, and mobile sales force. It came to me, "like a bolt from the blue," that a relational database was just not going to do and that he needed Lotus Notes for variable forms and off-line use with replication. I admitted that I had never used it. He said he wanted me to do a proof of concept, and that I should learn it.

I got myself the Windows 3.1 server and client and a license. In a couple of weeks I had something interesting running in Notes 3. I ended up knowing quite a bit about Notes, as I had to do everything myself (yes, we put the server on OS/2 eventually). Then the project ended.

Just as I thought... yeah... I had another job, fixing a Notes application at a big drug company that had been not quite implemented by someone else. I did that and gave them a reporting front-end. I did some on-line documentation elsewhere. Then I got busy with Y2K and thought I was done with Notes.

Then just as I... yes, there was actually some application for Notes in tracking Y2K, mostly reporting from RDBMS, strangely enough. I found some really good reasons to put in 4.6 (and later 5) and Webify it all. After Y2K, the project management applications were just too useful to scrap, so here I am in Domino again. Of course, there are lots more fun things with relational databases and servlets and HTML, but keeping Domino and Notes running for international intranet users is what I do. I can always think of some nifty way to implement something in Notes in about an hour, so I have some informal applications running for other departments. In the time I save by using Notes for Web development, I do research and read such things as DominoPower. If I had to write everything in Java/C and manage Oracle, when would I have time?