The design philosophy embodied by this approach to configuration documents is pervasive throughout the product, which on the whole is extremely well engineered. As a developer who has seen firsthand how a flexible database architecture can allow a Notes development project to succeed in spite of shifting requirements and unforeseen complexity (in other words, for that flexibility to become an integral element of Process), I readily recognize the value of taking this philosophy to its logical extreme.

Notes development tool landscape--from 30,000 feet
For the last several years, my Gold Standard toolkit for Notes Development has been the TeamStudio Design System from Ives Development (at http://www.teamstudio.com). Every year I save hundreds of hours, and preserve my own sanity, by utilizing TeamStudio's Analyzer, Delta, Ciao, and Configurator to stay on top of my development projects. It's not for nothing that IBM has purchased a worldwide corporate license allowing all of its developers, and those at Lotus, to use the TeamStudio products. Whether I'm quickly identifying all the references to a specific field, doing a global replace of one view name with another, or figuring out exactly what's different between two databases, it takes only a few minutes or even seconds with these tools. Without these tools, these same tasks and other tedious and time consuming activities like them could take hours.

As the IT Factory products have evolved in recent years, an increasing overlap with the TeamStudio products has emerged, and what had been a largely apples-to-oranges comparison is now a little more complicated. For instance, both product suites have a design analysis tool, a design compare tool, and a version-control tool, with varying capabilities and features.

Which option is right for you will depend on several factors, including the number and complexity of your existing databases, the experience of your development team, and your planning horizon. I'll say that the one option you can rule out is doing nothing. Both of these products represent tremendous advantages over Notes alone, they will save you real time and money, and they will show an ROI (Return on Investment) in as little as a few days to a few weeks under normal use. If you've hired consultants to develop Notes databases for your agency, company, or institution, and they are not using one or the other (or both) of these products, they are wasting your money.

Next time
In my next article I'll offer a more detailed description of the individual products from both IT Factory and TeamStudio, as well as a comparative analysis of the overlapping functionality and the distinctiveness of the two sets of tools. In the meantime, I invite your questions and feedback on the topic of Notes development tools in general, as well as IT Factory and TeamStudio tools in particular. I would be especially interested in your input if you're currently using either or both of these tool suites. Please email me at kevin.pettitt@usa.net.