Except for the next section "Without the Domino.Doc ODMA," the forthcoming sections and articles will be based on the assumption that you have already installed the Domino.Doc ODMA.

If you want to read more on the supported applications, you can have a look at the IBM/Lotus site at http://www-10.lotus.com/ldd/today.nsf/11771028adef67c185256b7e006d37cd/0f8d0210fd458d7800256be6003dbb20?OpenDocument#Integrating%20with%20other%20ODMA-compl.

Now it's time to present some code and get a bit more technical.

Without the Domino.Doc ODMA
There are two ways to achieve a connection to Domino.Doc without the Domino.Doc ODMA. You can either use HTTP calls by using the WinSock DLL, or you can use the ODMA32.DLL.

The latter is by far the easier of the two.

HTTP calls
Without the ODMA we'll have to use the WinSock DLL and the HTTP protocol to get information from a HTML site.

The HTML site that we will access is the Domino server containing the Domino.Doc environment.

By doing this you can achieve actions such as:

• Get information from Domino.Doc (like all binder names);
• Fetch a file from Domino.Doc;
• Archive a file in Domino.Doc.

This can be done by connecting to the Domino server via http (assuming that the http task is running on the Domino server). All of these actions can roughly be described the following way:

• Refer to the winsock DLL;
• Set and parse the URL;
• Connect to the site;
• Send request;
• Close winsock;
• Interpret the result.

There are some restrictions, and you'll see that you might need to lower the security to achieve what you want (i.e., putting a file back into Domino.Doc).

You can download Visual Basic examples of the above from http://www.lotusdomino.dk/dominopower.nsf.

However, you'll see that you will have to interpret the HTML source to present some respectable information to the user.

I doubt that many will use this for their entire integration with Domino.Doc, but it might help some of you in getting ideas or workarounds when other connections fail.

ODMA32.DLL
A good alternative to the winsock DLL and connecting via HTTP is using the ODMA32.DLL. However, Microsoft might not include this DLL in future versions of their operating system (like they almost did in XP). Then you'll be back to installing additional software/files, like the Domino.Doc ODMA.

You will have to use declare statements, as with the winsock.dll. From there you can do almost anything with i.e. Domino.Doc (ODMA compliant document management systems), like you can from Windows Explorer (having installed the Domino.Doc ODMA).

By using the ODMA32, you aren't Domino.Doc dependant. The interface that you write will work on any Document Management system. This is a very interesting feature. You could, for instance, write an interface to IBM's Content Manager, which is ODMA compliant.

For the Content Manager description, visit http://www-3.ibm.com/software/data/cm/pubs/cm71/cminstal/frnp9mst02.htm#ToC_8.