You can also rent them for a few days, which is great if you have a specific problem to solve. Better, you can try read-only versions for free. The free versions deliver a fair bit of value, enable you to see what you are missing and help determine what value the full products are worth to you, so you can demonstrate to yourself and your boss the value you will get from them.

Check Ytria's Web site for a comparison of what the free vs. paid-for versions offer. Note, while you are there, the tips and tricks pages as well.

To my mind, ScanEz is worth the price, regardless of whether you are an admin, a developer, or do application support work. The $697 two-year maintenance price equates to less than half-a-day of professional time saved, and you have two years to make that savings in.

For a hardened developer, you can also measure the value of ActionBarEz, ViewEz and DesignPropEz in the same way; chances are they're worth it if you are looking after a number of applications.

And for the admin guy who is maintaining and deploying applications, the ability of SignEz to manage database signatures and be able to delegate application signing without sharing the key signing ID is also likely to pay for itself in time saved, in errors and mistakes bypassed, and also in the extra security confidence in reducing risks with the signing ID. But the ultimate determination of price versus value delivery is yours, not mine.

All I can do is select the number of Dominos to award. I've already said that I'm restricting my selection to the five purchasable products. Given what the products offer, the price is fair and reflects the value that you should be able to get from them, and the investment that Ytria have clearly put into them.

From a technical perspective, they do what they say on the tin, and they do it quickly. They're easy to use, and in many ways familiar -- such as the use of a properties box that mimics the Notes one. You could say that ScanEz is overloaded with functions, and so learning all that it can do and how to get it to do it means that it can be hard to get done what you need to do now, and that's probably true.

I asked Benoit: four years on, are you still using these tools, are they still delivering it for you? He told me, "So, why am I still using Ytria tools after all this time? They let me 'go fast, be sharp and stay cool'. But seriously, they allow me to concentrate on the real issues and save me a lot of development time."

There's little to take away from this set of tools. Ytria are not resting on past laurels. So, as we don't do half-dominos, we're agreed. It's a 5.

OUR RATING: 5 of 5

Matt Holthe is the lead developer for Breaking Par, a company specializing in Domino development for small and mid-sized businesses. He's a Principal CLP application developer for Domino R4 and R5. He can be reached via email at mattholthe@breakingpar.com.