Passing my R7 upgrade exam did make me appreciate the personal return on investment that I have with Notes and Domino.

I've chosen not to use products and platforms before on the grounds that they have poor architecture and basically get re-written every other version... I'm not mentioning any names, but I think quite a few people can take good guesses! ;-)

And that's JUST for email. Once you look at Domino and Notes as a collaboration stack, the comparative return on investment over time is HUGE.

Of course, the return on investment I'm talking about here is in terms of training - basically, for how long is my knowledge still valid?

So I've had a think on how to express this. And here's the result - my own Lost Knowledge Of Notes and Domino list...

It works pretty simply. It's a list, and it contains everything I think is obsolete knowledge in Domino/Notes.

• R3 - DOS Client and server retired(?)
• R3 - NSG/NSH database file types retired
• R4.6 - UNIX and OS/2 Client retired
• R5 - Re-architected HTTP, performance & advanced settings changed
• R5 - Replaced Reporter task for Statistics & Events Reporting
• R5 - Replaced SMTP MTA with Native Notes SMTP routing
• R5 - NetWare server (NLM) support retired
• R6 - NNTP task retired
• R6 - cc:Mail MTA retired(?)
• R6 - X.400 MTA retired(?)
• R6 - OS/2 Server support retired
• R6 - Cluster Administrator task removed as Clustering was optimised
• R6 - Shared Mail re-architected
• R6 - Re-architected HTTP (again!) - Can now (optionally) use Site documents
• R7 - DDM replaces (enhances, really) Statistics & Events reporting
• R7 - RnRMgr replaces old Rooms & Resources system
• R8 - Out of Office Service can be used instead of the Agent
• R8 - Clustering between R8 servers now uses Streaming Clustering
• R8 - Client (optionally) uses the Eclipse platform

(Some items I'm not sure about end with a (?) - please let me know where I made a mistake!)

Now, I'll be the first to admit that this list probably isn't complete, and that some of the items on this list are quite minor.

My goal in compiling it was to find the changes over the years that either removed functionality or changed functionality enough that administration and troubleshooting was significantly impacted.

It wasn't to list new features which required further investment in learning - just to identify which investments turned out to have a shorter lifespan than others.

Still, I've come up with a fairly wide brief, yet it's still a pretty short list. And I bet that the same list for developers would be a short one. (Anyone want to produce one?)

Naturally, all additions and corrections are welcome, so if I missed something let me know with a comment!

On a personal note, some of these changes mattered for me more than others.

The change from the SMTP MTA to the R5 built-in SMTP routing & SMTP Listener was a huge change for administrators. And whilst the web server changes might look minor - and were often optional - they could have a huge impact, as high-profile intranet sites would fail or succeed based on your successful understanding of them.

Of course, other changes were incredibly minor. Few people remember the Report task on an R4 server, or care that it's retired and the functionality moved elsewhere. The same goes for the removal of the Cluster Administrator task. But that doesn't change the fact that time invested in learning about them has now ceased to give a return.

Basically, the summary should be this:
If you learn to administer a feature of Domino/Notes, the chances are that knowledge will last you a decade or more.

Now that's a return on my investment!

BOOKMARK THIS CONTENT

	Bookmark at:

CREATE A NEW COMMENT

	Name:
	Email:
	Website:
	Content:	HTML is not allowed. Hyperlinks will automatically be converted.