It hasn't been that long since Release 6.5 came out, but the Release 7 Beta is already underway. Not too many people seem to have looked at the beta release yet, but maybe you are one of the lucky few who have had a chance. I figured a good way for me to get my butt rolling on the task was to write an article, forcing me to get into the nitty-gritty and tell you all about it.

At the outset, the first thing I noticed was there were not very many changes since R6.5.1, but how could there be? IBM does promise that there will be additional new features in future releases and betas of R7. IBM's new strategy is to put fewer changes into each release, but to put out a new release almost annually to keep up with the fast-changing technology that Lotus Notes needs to remain compatible with other software.

On one hand this sounds great because it will help avoid some of the issues that Lotus Notes has with compatibility with the latest releases of all the other software. It will give companies a choice about which release to use depending on their existing environment and software needs.

On the other hand, this makes it harder on the developers and administrators. Remaining certified in the current release may become a job in itself, and trying to tackle all the different issues among one release and another and trying to upgrade servers and clients will become significant challenges. I think we're going to start seeing more and more companies skipping a release or two. Why upgrade to the new release if the current version you are on is stable and working just fine for your company?

The major changes in Designer 7.0
Since I am primarily a developer, I decided to target just the Notes Designer in this article. There soon will be more articles on this release floating around where you can gather information about the other aspects.

Integration
The most obvious change that you see when you first start up Designer 7.0 is that IBM is attempting to get Lotus Notes customers up-to-speed with IBM's other software platforms (Lotus Workplace, WebSphere, and DB2 are the new ones in R7).

There are buttons on the left-hand side that link directly to Lotus Workplace and WebSphere. The WebSphere button is very convenient for those developers who design for the Web browser and like to use editors for their HTML, Java, and JSP code that they will be implementing into their Notes/Domino applications. The button is also useful for anyone wishing to use WebSphere as their Notes remote Java debugger, which is a new feature I talk about later in the article.