A little something for the developers
And for all of you Web developers, rest assured that SWING didn't forget you. All the functionalities mentioned above are also available for Web applications. This is done through an ActiveX control that also has a lot of methods you can access, and all of these are described in the documentation, as well. Their sample document library application works from the Web, so go ahead and see how it feels. Besides a minor bug with transferring Currency type data, all you do through the Notes client works the same way on the Web. As long as the Web user has Office installed, of course. That was also quite impressive.

Wrapping it up
Here's a wrap up of the features I really liked about SWING:

• Lets you build self-contained applications, with no third party product installation needed;

• Ease of use for the developers (even inexperienced ones);

• Totally transparent for the end user (he will have no clue as to what's going on behind the scenes);

• A price tag that can only get you smiling (it's even royalty free if you're developing applications that will be sold);

• Can easily be translated;

I can only complain about one thing. The documentation was not available in a Notes database. Sure, the PDF is very well done, but since it's a Notes add-on product, it would have been nice to have the documentation in an NSF file. It would also be easier to search through all the functions that are available in the script libraries.

If you're looking for some integration between Notes applications and Office documents and you want the simplest and fastest solution around, SWING is the product that you definitely need. It'll get your developers and users really SWINGing in a fast, easy, and cost efficient way, either in Notes clients or over the Web.

Benoit Duboc works in the Montreal, Qc, Canada region. He is a PCLP R5 developer and has been doing Notes development for six years. He can be reached at dubuc_benoit@hotmail.com.