Lotus notes agents - registering a Agent on a database

Question

I am writing a remote Lotus/Domino NSCO (Notes CORBA API) Java client for reading and writing to a Domino server. The client should roughly be able to act and simulate all the features of Lotus Notes desktop client for a user's mailbox (Mail, Calendar, Tasks).

Those of you experienced with NSCO.jar are probably already aware of many limitations it has. One example is marking a document as read/unread, which isn't implemented with this API. To bypass this, my latest direction is writing a Java Agent on the server side, which would use Java Notes local API to mark a document as read/unread. I can later call this client using the NSCO API. I would like to be able to call this agent for every user (every user has his own database), but I dont like the idea of creating an instance of this agent on each database. According to this, my question is: - How (if possible) can I register an Agent in Domino so that is available for every user?

Apart from this specific question, I would very much appreciate any links towards good documentation or books on this topic. (I believe I have already browsed through most of online documentation, and it's quite poor or out-of-date so books might be more useful)

Thanks.

Answer 1

Your question is very broad but I will attempt to answer what I can.

First, I don't think you realise the huge task you are attempting to do in simulating the Notes Client.

Much of the functionality in the front end will not be available for you, and creating back end agents to get to that functionality is going to put undue stress on the server. You are going to have to do some serious load testing to see what impact it has.

How (if possible) can I register an Agent in Domino so that is available for every user?

The proper way is to create the agent once in a template and then have the mail files update their design (Admin related help). The agent is then run within each users mail file as they need it. You also need to factor in how the agent runs. For example if you run it scheduled then AMGR may not run it as you expect it to.

If you plan to have one agent you kick off to process all databases, then you start having to deal with security of your agent.

Alternatively you can go the route of DOTS tasklets. These are OSGi bundles which can run like a service on the server.

I would very much appreciate any links towards good documentation or books on this topic.

The help within the Domino Designer client will be the most up to date on the API. The Domino Wiki will have a lot of resource material you are looking for.

Personally I think what you are attempting to achieve with just NCSO is not going to cut it. I would recommend to leverage already existing standards to talk to the server. For example POP3/SMTP/ICAL/RnR/DDS (REST API). Or use iNotes which would have much less overhead then what you are trying to achieve.