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developerWorks: This is a developerWorks podcast. I'm Scott Laningham, here with Peter Janzen, Senior Product Manager for Lotus Domino Designer. He joins us to talk about the decision to offer a no-charge development license for Domino Designer. Welcome, Peter.
Janzen: Hi, Scott.
developerWorks: Thanks for making time for this.
Janzen: My pleasure.
developerWorks: Now what is Designer, for those who don't know Domino Designer? Let's get that clear up front.
Janzen: Sure. Domino Designer it's an Eclipse-based rapid application development tool for building collaborative Web 2.0 applications that run on Lotus Notes® and Domino.
It includes some XPages technology which is a new technology that we added that's based on JavaServer Faces and allows developers to easily go ahead and use CSS JavaScript skills to build applications by dragging, dropping controls onto a Web page basically.
developerWorks: Cool. Now, what about this announcement, what are the specifics here?
Janzen: So what we're announcing is the ability for anybody to go ahead and freely download Domino Designer 8.51 from developerWorks. This means that you can come out here, get the tool, download it, use it to build applications, you can go ahead and run those applications locally on the client that's part of Domino Designer or you can also go ahead and preview that via browser with a built-in HTTP functionality that we have within Domino Designer.
developerWorks: And then once you want to roll these applications up to the server and go live with them, then that's when a license would come into play, right?
Janzen: Exactly. So you can go ahead and use it in perpitude, but once you want to go ahead and deploy your application to a Domino server you need to go ahead and purchase a Domino Enterprise Client Access license.
developerWorks: Now, is there a reason that this is a big deal for developers beyond the fact that they don't have to pay for the development license? You know, talk about that and kind of what IBM would like to see happening here.
Janzen: Well, certainly. What we want to see happening is that a lot more developers out there can go ahead and see the value of Notes and Domino application development platform and Domino Designer itself is a rapid application development tool.
So whether you're a university student who's building an application for a project, a business partner building for SMB or enterprise, or somebody who's interested in development within a corporation and want to build applications for your lines of business, now you can go ahead and see the true value of Domino Designer, very easily.
developerWorks: And I love this, when we let things speak for themselves like this. That's nice. So Peter, where do they go to get this? I mean, you did say developerWorks, it's rolling out this week, I guess it'll be in the download area.
Janzen: Exactly. So for developerWorks there are various developer zones and what a developer would want to do would be to go to ibm.com/developerWorks/lotus. And when you get there, you'll be on the main landing page there for Lotus and you will see a bunch of information on how to go ahead and download it, how to go ahead and experience the capabilities of it, and to learn from other developers in the Domino community.
developerWorks: Peter Janzen, Senior Product Manager for Lotus Domino Designer. Thanks Peter.
Janzen: Thanks, Scott, I appreciate it.
developerWorks: Check us out at ibm.com/developerWorks, IBM's premiere technical resource for software developers with tools, code, and education on IBM products and open standards technology. I'm Scott Laningham.
Scott Laningham, host of developerWorks podcasts, was previously editor of developerWorks newsletters. Prior to IBM, he was an award-winning reporter and director for news programming featured on Public Radio International, a freelance writer for the American Communications Foundation and CBS Radio, and a songwriter/musician.
