Lotus Notes Domino UI and Backend Development with an eye to the future!

02/09/2010 12:46 PM by Chris Toohey

I was helping out a fellow Lotus Notes Domino developer (and dominoGuru.com reader) last night who wanted to create what I typically refer to as milestone updates of Parent/Child NotesDocuments. Simply put, when the Parent NotesDocument's Status was changed to from -- for example -- Status1 to Status2, all Children NotesDocuments would be updated. Of course, this is pretty simple once you get the concept down, but I'm brining this up as I believe the majority of us would use the following approach to address this need:

Sub Postsave(Source As Notesuidocument)
 
 Dim newstatus As 
String
 
 Select Case 
Join(source.Document.GetItemValue("status"), "")
 Case "Status1": newstatus = "subStatus1"
 Case "Status2": newstatus = "subStatus2"
 Case Else 
: newstatus = 
"subStatusDefault"
 End Select
 
 Call source.Document.Responses.StampAll("status", newstatus)
 
End Sub

Sure, this gets the job done... but what happens when your customer wants to take this Lotus Notes Client Application to the web? What happens when they want to access the NotesDatabase via a Blackberry or another mobile device?

I've talked countless times about the absolute need for Lotus Notes and Domino Application Developers to adapt their development practices and future proof their code... and the first step is often understanding the difference between UI development and Backend NotesDocument development.

Application Logic is typically integrated with the NotesUIDocument either through UI intereaction or via Form Events like QuerySave or -- as shown above -- PostSave.

Again, while this is good enough for Lotus Notes Client Application Development, you can immediately see the need to re-write all Application Logic for Web Browser Client or Mobile Device Client access. And while you might think that's not a problem -- most web/mobile-enablement projects allot for such an activity -- this approach becomes a complete maintenance nightmare when 6 months later the project champion tells you the application logic needs to change.

So we need to work smarter up-front, during the application architecture phase of the build. Specifically, we need our applications to be as future-proof as possible and adaptive to the ever-changing business environment where our applications (and most importantly our users) live.

To do that, we simply move the App Logic away from the NotesUIDocument or Form and into the backend of the NotesDatabase.

To apply this approach to our above example, let's revisit our PostSave Event.

Sub Postsave(Source As Notesuidocument)
	
	Call logic(source.Document)
	
End Sub

That handles our NotesUIDocument/Form for the Lotus Notes Client, but what about the Web Browser or Mobile Device Clients?

I use a $$Return Computed For Display Text Field with the following Formula:

"[" + basehref + "logic?OpenAgent&DOCID=" + @Text(@DocumentUniqueID) + "]"

(basehref in the above example is another Computed For Display Text Field that evaluates the Web URL to the give NotesDatabase...)

As for the logic Agent Design Element:

Sub Initialize


      Dim s As New NotesSession
      Dim db As 
NotesDatabase
      Dim a As 
NotesAgent
      Dim cdoc As 
NotesDocument
      Dim pdoc As 
NotesDocument
      Dim pdocid As String
      Dim qs As 
Variant

      Set db = 
s.CurrentDatabase
      Set a = 
s.CurrentAgent
      Set cdoc = 
s.DocumentContext


      pdocid = cdoc.Query_String_Decoded(0)


      If pdocid <> "" Then
            qs = Split(pdocid, "&DOCID=")
            pdocid = qs(1)
      Else
            MsgBox a.Name + |: Unable to process 
UniversalDocID from Report Form Elements $$Return|
            MsgBox a.Name + |: $$Return redirected to 
| + pdocid
            Print |[$DefaultView]|
            Exit Sub
      End If


      Set pdoc = db.GetDocumentByUNID(pdocid)

      If pdoc Is 
Nothing Then
            MsgBox a.Name + |: Can't find a document where 
| + pdocid + | = UniversalDocID|
            Print |[$DefaultView]|
            Exit Sub
      End If


      Call logic(pdoc)


End Sub

Your logic Function can now handle all workflow and business logic for your given NotesDocument, from updating Status fields to maintaining NotesDocument History tracking fields to creating milestone event-driven pushes to workflow notification utilities.

Simply store all of this application logic in your logic Function in a Script Library, and you can switch out User Interfaces for your applications at will!

... of course, you could always write a business logic controller engine that uses Project Champion-maintained NotesDocuments for it's configuration -- but that's getting into MVC, and we wouldn't want to do that now... would we?