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Well, I'm at the airport waiting for my flight home, and reflecting on a quiet Deutche Notes User Group (DNUG) conference. I say quiet, but it was a thoughtful quiet rather than a morose one. Everyone seemed to be digesting the news and previews of the upcoming Notes releases. Of course 8.0.2 was interesting, but it was the demonstration of the 8.5 eclipse-based designer client that got people thinking. There was a short spell of concern when the presenter demonstrating it seemed to suggest that there would be no support for LotusScript editing in the eclipse based designer as the developers did not have time to include one! This statement was clarified soon after however - what she meant was that, unlike the other script editing, they did not have time to switch the LotusScript editing to the native eclipse editor, so 8.5 will call on the existing designer client editor packaged to run in the eclipse environment.

What seemed to get everyone thinking though was that the capabilities of an eclipse based Notes client, hinted at in the 8.0x client, are now becoming readily apparent in the 8.5 world. However, this also highlights the increased complexity of application development in that environment, and this in turn means that the more easy-going Notes development practices of the past will no longer cut it in the future. Creating scalable, maintainable and robust applications in the future is going to require much more developer discipline. It seems Notes is finally entering the real-world as far as controlled application development goes!

Exciting times.