There seem to be two main themes in this future world that I think we, as Lotus Notes people, should question. First, there's the idea that WebSphere Application Server is a rival to Lotus Domino and may eventually swallow it. This concern has been expressed often in various discussion groups but played down by recent IBM announcements. Second, there's the idea that Java and J2EE is a rational direction in which to take the development aspects of the Lotus product. Let's think about these two ideas.

Is IBM WebSphere a rival to Lotus Domino?
So what is WebSphere? What is its purpose and how does it relate to Domino? Well WebSphere is a server that runs programs written in the Java language quickly. You see the flaw in the argument that Domino will be merged into WebSphere straight away. Yes, that's right, WebSphere is not a replacement for Domino, it's a replacement for the bit of Domino that runs agents known as the Agent Manager. In fact, it's only a replacement for the bit that runs Java agents because, as you know, the Agent Manager can also run Lotuscript, Simple Action, and Formula language agents too.

From a technical point of view, if you were going to merge the products in some meaningful way, you would "upgrade" the Lotus Domino Agent Manager with WebSphere in order to make Java agents quicker. Merging Lotus Domino into WebSphere makes no sense as WebSphere only has the agent manager functionality. It's missing the rest of the things that Domino does, such as replication, rapid application development using forms and views, design templates, off-line applications, an email system, and so on.

If that makes WebSphere sound rather less useful, you should remember that WebSphere is intended for very large systems where scalability and performance are paramount. If you run the largest online banking system in the world or are setting up a site to process tickets for the next Olympic Games, you should think about using WebSphere or one of its competitors such as BEA Weblogic. Hopefully a little common sense and experience will tell you that Domino is not the right solution.

Conversely, if you're writing an application for your company's intranet (which happens to be spread around fifty countries in the world and on a number of laptop machines) to allow your staff to contribute to a set of documents or to process their travel expenses, don't even think about using WebSphere. In Lotus Domino you'll be finished and the application deployed in less than a week while the WebSphere developers are still contemplating the introspective qualities of their EJBs.

To summarize, there is no logic in merging the two products. They simply do not serve the same purpose.

Is Java and J2EE the right direction for Lotus Domino?
If you believe all (or even some) of the "J2EE 4 Domino" marketing you should read Bob Balaban's article "JSPs: A Total Waste of Time?" because Bob is someone who understands Domino inside out and has also been very closely associated with the Java and Lotuscript development features in Lotus Domino when he worked for Lotus.