Developing Add-in for Lotus Notes

I have created a .net Outlook addin that 开发者_如何学编程communicates with a WEB service. As .net provides the environment to develop addins in visual studio it self I was able to develop it without any trouble.

Now a requirement has come up to create an addin for Lotus Notes. I need to create several UI's and integrate them with the web service to transfer contacts, mails etc. to my SQL database. Is there any SDK or IDE that i can use to develop this? What should be my approach?

Thanks.

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As your question is rather broad I can only provide you with a starting point.

Depending how you intend for this to work as well as the mix of Lotus Clients you must develop any solution for Lotus Notes web-services in java. If you're using Lotus Notes 8.5+ then you can design a side-bar widget for this. Unfortunately it's a very complex process if you want to create it, (typical of IBM).

If your users are on a mix of versions from 6.5+ you should consider writing the webservice in java via Eclipse as a Java agent. Domino's webservices can support providing/consuming of webservices in version 7. There is some support in 6.5 but I do not recommend it. Once you're in java and coding with Eclipse I find that dealing with Domino alot easier and robust. Also the java integration with Domino is be pretty good and actually very fast and efficient.

As mentioned before, depending on your environment I would look at implementing this as a java agent that can be called from any version of Lotus Notes from version 6.5+. As an agent you can easily run it from within Notes mail as a custom action button or from the "Actions" menu list. Check here for a guide to JDK compatibility.

But I think the best approach is to use Eclipse, as the Domino IDE is woefully inadequate for java development. A starting guide for Java agents, they can be found here, here, and here. There are some experts in the field of Java development and integration with Domino like Mikkel Heisterberg and Bob Balaban. Bob is the guru, and Mikkel is one of the best java guys for development and integration of java with the Notes side-bar widget. Reviewing those sites will provide you with more pointers at what you may need to do.

Finally search for "Redbooks" there are many that IBM produce for Domino and can be a good guide into Java development for Domino (including servlets). Here is one, although quite old is still relevant for today. Hope this helps...

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It's hard to tell from your description how integrated the app needs to be. I don't believe Lotus Notes has API for integrating an add-in (I know it doesn't in versions before 8, but I'm not so familiar with the latest editions)

Still there is a decent API available for interacting with Lotus Notes databases, and you can call into that API from .NET. There's an example referenced on this SO question: Add a .net user control in lotus notes

Documentation for Lotus Notes can be found on IBM's site: https://www.ibm.com/developerworks/lotus/documentation/

I would approach this as an application that runs separately from Lotus Notes but calls into the Notes API to get contacts, mail, etc and move them to SQL. The application could be launched from a toolbar icon in Notes, or from a Notes database using LotusScript, but I'd do all the heavy lifting work in .NET as you'll have much more flexibility.