However, the applications that are offered in these chapters do indeed show many of the things that Notes does well. Some of the resulting applications will indeed be useful after they have been built.

I do have my doubts about the Connection Document repository application. I can see the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet generator components being quite popular -- these are a few components that can be added to a new or existing application that enable a view to be exported as a spreadsheet.

The Workflow application section offers a set of building blocks for the development of request/approval type workflow applications, very common things in many Notes shops. The Web Applications chapter, though, I think largely fails to deliver.

There's a lot of what is necessary detail that is not really joined up very well, with little explanation of why each piece is necessary, and the book delivers a largely uninspiring Web site at the end.

Since this book claims to be a Lotus Notes Developer's Toolbox, rather than a Lotus Domino Developer's Toolbox, it seems to me that Web applications don't really belong as a main focus of the book. Perhaps Domino applications could have been mentioned in the beginning, perhaps other books recommended, and then the subject of Domino ignored in favor of the book's main topic: Lotus Notes.

Moving on
The rest of the book then starts to look in detail at hints and tips on various subjects, offering code fragments and examples to show how to do various things. For someone who has been around Lotus Notes for any length of time, this is the meat of the book.

Experienced developers will ignore all of chapters 1 through 12 -- just over half of that 1070 grams of paper -- and go straight to these sections. But let me say straight away that chapters 19, "Security" and 20, "Application Deployment and Maintenance" should not be at the back of the book.

They need to be at the front.

Security should not be an add-on to any application. It should be designed in from the start, as anyone who has tried to retrofit Readers or Authors names fields into any application and add hide-whens for actions based on ACL roles will tell you.

And you should have an idea as to what processes and standards you want to use for application development before you start doing it in anger, so that you can be sure that you will not have accidents with production apps being redesigned accidentally with development templates.

I'm also a little surprised that third party development tools such as TeamStudio's family, and utilities such as those from MartinScott Associates or Ytria are not mentioned.

The hints and tips presented in Chapters 13 through 17, on LotusScript, Formulas, Views, Agents, Miscellaneous and Data Management are, however, not very advanced, though the one in LotusScript for adding a calendar event programmatically is something I remember sweating through a few years ago.

I do wonder if the code presented is workable with Notes 7 calendar documents, though. Calendar documents seem to get fatter and fatter with each Notes mail template release.