HCL Certifies Domino 11 on IBM i/Power

August 5, 2020 Alex Woodie

Domino 11 officially shipped in late 2019 by HCL Technologies, the company selected by IBM to continue development of the Domino family of products in 2017. Last month, the company announced that Domino 11 running on IBM i has been certified on select Power9 servers. Among the new capabilities that it brings is the new low-code Volt environment.

The Domino family of products, including Notes, Sametime, Connections, and Traveler, has been through quite a bit over the past few years. After nearly a decade of neglect by IBM, HCL Tech made the development of Domino 10 a priority for the company. The Indian firm delivered Domino 10 in late 2018 (and delivered support for Domino 10 on IBM i in early 2019), breathing new life into the storied software platform.

HCL Tech moved quickly to develop Domino 11, and released the new software platform (including Notes, Traveler, and Sametime) in December for mainstream operating systems, including Red Hat Linux, CentOS, and SLES.

There are a few changes in version 11 that are worth calling out, according to HCL’s “What’s New?” document. For starters, HCL Tech is moving away from the IBM Java Development Kit (JDK) and is now using the Eclipse OpenJ9 environment that’s available through AdoptOpenJDK. It also has replaced the IBM-supplied cryptographic libraries with OpenSSL. Not surprisingly, HCL has also eradicated all references to IBM in the product.

Administrators will appreciate the new Directory Sync feature in Domino 11, which allows them to grant access to people and group data from external LDAP directories into the Domino directory. Currently, Domino only supports syncing data from Active Directory.

There’s also a new Domino Attachment Object Service (DAOS) storage feature that lets customers offload attachments objects that haven’t been accessed in a while to an S3-compatible storage service, thereby minimizing data stored on Domino servers. Users accessing Domino over the Web will appreciate the ability to use their Notes ID password when authenticating over the Web, instead of having to remember a separate HTTP password.

HCL has eliminated several components from Domino, which including XWork Server, console mode installation on Windows, express mode installation on Windows, GUI mode installation on AIX and Linux, remote installation on AIX and Linux, xSP mode, and DOTS (Domino OSGi Tasklet Service).

But it has added one big new component: Volt.

Volt is a low-code development tool designed to make it very easy for users to create Domino applications. Starting from a spreadsheet or a template, users can drag and drop elements onto the screen to create Web-based applications that features built-in workflow capabilities.

Volt includes both development and runtime components.

The low-code experience means that users “can create Web applications with forms, views, and workflows in minutes, do so without any Domino specific knowledge,” says Andrew Manby, HCL’s senior executive for market strategy and product management. Users can “easily extend them using common Web development skills [like CSS, JavaScript, and HTML] and easily integrate them into existing systems and data,” including SharePoint.

Volt works with Domino version 10 and 11, and doesn’t require any extra hardware or software, Manby says. “What’s really cool is under the covers Volt is creating real Domino apps, each with its own NSF forms, views, and documents. This means you can open them in Designer to extend them for non-Volt clients. And you can use them in Nomad.”

HCL Nomad, of course, is the new mobile client that allows users to take their existing Domino applications and work with them on Android and iOS devices with minimal effort.

With Domino 11, HCL introduced a new database connector called the HCL Enterprise Integrator (HEI) for Domino. Available only for Windows and Linux, HEI can perform high-volume data transfers, synchronize disparate data sources, and provide real-time integration between Domino and backend data sources like Db2, SQL Server, and the Oracle database. With Domino 11, HCL is no longer providing the Progress Datadirect ODBC driver, although ODBC drivers from Progress and other vendors that work with HCL and its HEI program will still work, the company says.

HCL has also improved the Sametime client. With Sametime version 11, HCL has focused on improving the security and privacy of conversations that take place on the software. The company has eliminated the need to download software to start a chat or enter a meeting. Users can also more easily recall what was said or written with support for video recording of meetings and saving chats. And the Sametime server is supported on Kubernetes, which expands deployment options in private cloud environments, the company says.

Traveler has also been enhanced. On both the Android and iOS versions, Traveler gains better support for viewing, exporting, and sharing calendar attachments. The Traveler server component gains support for Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync for iOS devices, which improves calendar synch functions.

HCL has certified Domino 11.0.1 running on IBM i on some Power Systems machines, but not others. Manby says certification for Traveler on Power9 expected soon. For specific system requirements, see this HCL page.

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