Introduction to Domino Designer
Welcome to Domino® Designer. Domino Designer is an integrated application development environment that lets developers and Web site designers create, manage, and deploy secure, interactive applications.
This overview introduces some of the features you will use to create applications.
- Overview -- applications and databases
A major new enhancement in Notes 8 is the support for composite applications, a key element within IBM's service oriented architecture (SOA) and contextual collaboration strategy. Using IBM Domino Designer, developers can extend Notes applications to be Notes components in composite applications. A composite application can include any combination of Notes components or Eclipse components. The ability to combine multiple technologies into a single application provides significant business value: It enables companies to protect and extend their existing assets with increasing degrees of flexibility, and to respond quickly and cost effectively to their emerging business requirements, with applications that are significantly easier to assemble than alternative application development environments. - Starting Domino Designer
There are three ways to start Domino Designer from the Notes client: - Exploring Domino Designer
Building a great application requires the correct tools. You can think of Domino Designer as your workshop -- it contains all the tools you need to build a powerful application. Before you start building, examine the work area. - Creating a database
There are three ways to create a database: - Displaying, collecting, and storing information
How you display, collect, and store information is an important part of any application. The design elements you use to accomplish these tasks are: - Organizing your data
You organize the documents in your database using: - Creating navigation
Every application needs to include a way to navigate from one place to another. You add navigation to an application using: - Structuring your display
For an application interface to be intuitive and efficient, it must make good use of the user's screen. One way for a designer to accomplish this is to use framesets. - Adding automation
Adding automation to an application can speed up repetitive tasks, route documents, update information, perform calculations, run programs, and check for errors. - Sharing, locking, and editing design elements
Notes is a powerful tool because it helps developers work collaboratively. Domino Designer enhances team work by enabling developers to: - Autosaving Notes documents
Autosave is a Notes Client feature by which Notes documents are automatically saved to a local database at regularly scheduled times determined by the user. If Notes crashes, or if the user loses power, the user can recover the work that was done prior to the crash or power loss. - Extending access to applications
Domino applications are easily accessible to outside tools both during the design process and after application completion and deployment. - Communicating across platforms
Domino data can be shared across platforms because IBM Domino supports two of the most widely used, multiple platform technologies:
Parent topic: Application Design