APPLICATION DESIGN

Connecting to enterprise data
Incorporating back-end data into everyday business processes maximizes the value of an IBM® Lotus® Domino(TM) Designer application. Designer includes a range of technologies for the security and control of business processes, forms routing, and approvals management. With enterprise integration technologies, you can incorporate traditionally difficult-to-reach data into your business applications.

Using data integration tools and services, you can create applications that contain connectors to relational databases (such as Oracle and DB2), Enterprise Resource Planning systems (such as SAP, PeopleSoft, and J.D. Edwards), and transaction systems (such as CICS, IBM MQSeries®, and IMS). You can accomplish this either programmatically or with visual tools that work with native database drivers.

The following connection solutions are available either as part of Domino Designer or as add-on tools:


Data Connection Resource (DCR)

A Data Connection Resource is a design element you define within Designer to establish a data exchange between an IBM® Lotus® Domino(TM) application and an external data source. Like other design resources, you can define a DCR and then use it in many places within an application, or use it in another application. For example, you might establish a connection to an inventory catalog stored as a table in a Microsoft Access database. You could then use that connection in a variety of forms in your application, or in several related applications.

DCRs provide a convenient alternative to using the DECS Administrator that ships with the Domino server.

@DB commands
As in previous releases, you can use @DB commands and the LotusScript Data Object (LS:DO) to exchange data with relational databases using ODBC.

For more information on @DB commands and LS:DO, see the Programming Guide.

Domino Enterprise Connection Services (DECS)
Domino Enterprise Connection Services (DECS) is a visual tool and high performance server environment you can use to create Web applications that provide live, native access to enterprise data and applications. The visual tool includes an application wizard and online Help to assist you to define external data source connections -- for example, DB2, Oracle, Sybase, File directory, EDA/SQL, or ODBC -- and fields within your application that automatically contain external connector data.

For more information on connecting to legacy databases, see the Domino Enterprise Connection Services User's Guide.

LotusScript and Java classes
LotusScript and Java include classes for enterprise data access. Use these classes to customize applications to incorporate information from relational databases, transaction systems, and enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications according to your business needs. The Domino Server includes the Lotus Domino Connector LotusScript extension (LSX), permitting programmatic access to Domino Connectors from LotusScript.

For more information about the Domino Connector LSX, see the LotusScript Extension for Domino Connectors Reference Guide.

The Domino driver for JDBC, providing standard JDBC access to data in Domino databases, is also available from the Lotus Web site at http://www.lotus.com. Using this driver, you can write Java applets and applications that use JDBC to access information in Domino databases. JDBC classes now ship with Domino in the java.sql classes. These classes may be used when writing Java agents to access relational data via standard JDBC drivers.

Domino Connectors
Domino Connectors are modules that provide native connectivity to external, relational databases. You can access these connectors through the forms-based development tool in DECS, or through the Domino object classes using LotusScript or Java languages.

Additionally, Lotus supplies connectors for ERP systems. These are sold separately. For information about these connectors, visit the IBM Web site, http://www.ibm.com.

For more information on Domino Connectors, see the Domino Connectors Setup Guide.

Lotus Enterprise Integrator
Lotus Enterprise Integrator(TM), a module previously called Lotus NotesPump, extends DECS functionality beyond real-time data sources to include support for high volume data transfer and synchronization. Lotus Enterprise Integrator provides visual tools to manage integration between data sources without programming, including the capability to initiate event-driven or scheduled high volume data transfers between Domino applications and relational databases and other enterprise applications. Lotus Enterprise Integrator also supports programmatic data transfers using LotusScript and Java Classes.

For more information on Lotus Enterprise Integrator, see the Lotus Web site at http://www.lotus.com.

See Also