Sidebar: Glossary of Domino Web server terms [return to either: The Architecture of the Domino Web server, Part 1 or The Architecture of the Domino Web server, Part 2]

About page
Every Notes application has an "About Page". The application designer can use it to provide information about the application, links to various functions, and so on. When an application is set up so that it launches the About Page whenever it is opened, this page essentially acts like a "home page" for the application.

Design elements
Notes and Domino programmers deal with forms, subforms, and views to create applications. These are all examples of Notes design elements, as are fields, agents, layouts and scripts. On a form, subform or view, there will almost always be a mixture of fields and ordinary text, tables, or graphics, essentially creating a template or mask that is used when presenting information from Notes documents. The parts of these templates that are set by the application designer and are constant are referred to as "static" design elements. Everything else, whether dependent on information from the document or from the environment (such as the identity of the logged-in user) is a "dynamic" design element.

Domino Server task
A Domino server task is an add-in, or plug-in, that extends the capabilities of the Domino server.

ID file
A Notes ID file is a small file that contains encoded information that uniquely and securely identifies users who have been issued Notes client licenses. Domino servers also must have ID files to uniquely and securely identify them. Whenever a Notes client talks to a Domino server, or whenever to Domino servers need to talk, the software automatically performs a comparison of "certificates" extracted from their respective ID files so that each side can authenticate the other side's identity.

Navigator
A "navigator" in Notes is a graphic page that contains links to views and documents, to other navigators, or to Actions that perform special functions programmed by the application designer.

Notes agent
An agent is a set of formulas or commands that can act on Notes documents. Agents are stored in NSF files along with the documents, and can either be executed manually by users or automatically by a Domino server according to a schedule or when triggered by an event like mail delivery.

Notes API
The Notes and Domino environment contains a rich set of programming tools, including a built in formula language, and a VB-compatible language called LotusScript. The Notes API is the lowest level programming interface to Notes and Domino internal functions. C or C++ programmers can use it to access and manipulate data in Notes databases.

Notes document
Notes and Domino provide a "document-centric" application development environment. A document is simply a collection of named fields of both structured and unstructured types. It is the unstructured information contained in documents that separates Notes and Domino from traditional databases and makes it an ideal platform for groupware application development.

Notes security model
Notes and Domino implement a multi-stage, multi-level security model. Individual users and servers can be granted or denied access at the server level, the application file level, the view level, the document level, and even down to the level of sections and fields within individual documents. The most important concept in this security model is the Access Control List, or ACL, which is applied to an application file. The ACL assigns each user or server one of seven levels (Manager, Designer, Editor, Author, Reader, Depositor, or No Access), optional application-specific roles (such as "Approver" in a workflow process, or "Webmaster" in a web publishing environment), and some other specific privileges.

Notes views
A Notes database contains documents, potentially of many different types. Each document contains named fields of a variety of types. Views are indexes of documents that are selected, sorted, and presented according to information extracted from document fields. An application may contain many views. Some are visible to users, and others are hidden and used only for internal lookups. The application designer specifies the selection, sorting, and presentation criteria for each view.

NSF files
NSF, which stands for "Notes Storage File" (or sometimes "Notes Storage Facility" is the three letter file extension that is traditionally used for application files created and managed with Lotus Notes and Domino. These application files, also known as Notes databases, contain all the documents stored by the application, along with structural information (that is, indexes -- which Notes and Domino refer to as "views"), and document layout information (which Notes and Domino refer to as "forms" -- whether they are intended for simple document displays or for interactive creation and update).

Reader fields
The Notes security model includes document-level access control. This is controlled by named fields in the documents themselves. These fields have a special type, known as "Readers" (or "Reader Names"), which allows them to list one or more users, groups, or application specific roles whose members are allowed to access the document.

UNID
A UNID is the "Universal Identifier" for a "note" in an NSF file. Just about everything that Notes and Domino works with is a "note." Notes have different types. Data notes are what we usually refer to as documents. The Access Control List for a database is a note. Forms and views are notes. Notes requires a unique identifier for each note in order to coordinate replication, which is a process through which multiple copies of the same NSF file are kept synchronized. The UNID of a note never changes and is always the same in all replicas of the database file.

@UserName or @UserRoles
These are examples of the built-in formula language, which provides the simplest way to program Notes and Domino applications. The @UserName function returns the name of the user, either extracted from his/her Notes ID file or established through Domino's ID and password login procedure for Web clients. The @UserRoles function extracts information from the application's Access Control List and lists all the application-specific roles that have been assigned to the user. Roles are used to separate jobs from people. For example, the "WebMaster" role may occasionally have to be transferred to someone new, so the use of the role for programming purposes rather than specific individual's names makes this process much easier.

Copyright 1997 Iris Associates, Inc. All rights reserved.