LotusScript for Visual Basic Programmers - IBM Redbooks

Chapter 2
The Notes Integrated Development Environment
Introduction
Lotus Notes provides a complete application development environment. A
Notes application consists of several or all of the following:
Forms — which provide the templates through which data in the
application is entered and displayed. Unlike a traditional template,
forms can also act on the data. For example, when a user inputs
information in the form, the form might, depending on the contents,
send an e-mail message to another user.
Views and folders — which provide different ways of looking at all or
part of your data, according to specified criteria. A view might be
thought of as similar to a report in a traditional database program,
except that the view is dynamic and includes links to information in the
application.
Navigators — which provide graphical means of moving between
views.
Agents — which add functionality to the application. For example, you
might create an agent that once a day scans the documents in the
database, checks the contents of certain fields, and places documents
that meet specified criteria into a special folder.
There are, within Notes, Integrated Development Environments (IDESs) for
developing each of the above named elements. These IDEs share many
common elements. For example, the tools for writing LotusScript are
identical among all of the IDEs. We will focus on the forms IDE since it is
the most complex, and therefore the most interesting one. Keep in mind,
though, that much of the discussion in this chapter applies to the
development of all Notes elements, not just forms.
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