Which is better lotus domino server or vb,sql & exchange server ? 1

[punit]

HI Friend's,
Looking for a help from you. i am developing a school managment software. which contains form level cross connectivity & require mailing system . can any one pls suggest me whether i should use lotus domino server or visual basic with sql server & ms exchange server . Pls tell me the reasons also for using the same .
Thanx
Punit

 

[pmonett]

The comparison between Exchange and Domino is a persistent ghost that refuses to be laid to rest. Search this forum for Exchange and you will certainly find enough material to make yourself an opinion. I have personally contributed to such discussions here.
In brief, with as much objectivity as is possible, I will try to summarize what I remember of these discussions.
First, Domino and Exchange are two different products. Exchange does mail, and happens to integrate some processing abilities with VB. Domino is made for workflow processing and happens to do mail because it is necessary for workflow processing. Comparing them is therefore an exercise in futility.
So much for the summary. The rest is my own personal opinion.
And my opinion is that you will always be better off with Domino as an admin, since a Notes user is less prone to having his address book used abusively to resend virus mails to the world. That is the prerogative of Outlook and Exchange and that situation will not change any time soon.
If I understand correctly, you are evaluating the needs of a mail server for a school. I cannot help but strongly counsel you to go for Domino. If students are to have mail, you are sure to rip your hair out with pranks and foolish things kids are sure to be able to do with Exchange. There is much freely available info on hacking Exchange and SQL servers, and in a school you are statistically certain to have, every year, at least one student intent on finding out whether or not that info is true, to your expense.
Domino, on the other hand, is quite stable in the face of student attacks, since there is much less hacking info available on this subject, due to the fact that there are very few hackers that toy with it.
More importantly, if you are developing school management software, Domino will ideally help you with its robust design system and workflow methods. As far as I can see, Domino can only help you in your endevour by adding value to your application structure.
Finally, with Domino all you need is Domino, and upgrades are next to painless. With Exchange, you need VB and SQL server and upgrading Exchange is more and more a nightmare every year. Not to mention maintaining it.

Now, bear in mind that if you go to an Exchange forum, which isn't far off, you'll quite probably get an entirely different answer ;-).

Pascal.

 

[Sprowler]

I agree with pmonett! Domino is far superior in my opinion to Exchange. I have run Domino/Notes as a mail and calendaring product for 5 years now under NT4, and apart from the odd occasion when the NT service has stopped (simply rectified by restarting it in Control Panel) it has given no problems at all.

Another thing to consider from an Admin point of view is that if a user deletes their mail you are able to restore it from backup without affecting other users. The same is not (I believe) true of Exchange.

One final comment in Domino's favour is that it requires fairly low spec hardware to run. I work for a fairly small company (we have 40 Notes users), and Domino runs on a Intel PIII 350 MHz NT4 server with 256 Mb RAM. This server handles both our internal and internet mail very well indeed. If you run IBM AS/400, you can obtain a version to run on OS/400.

The one thing in Exchange's favour is that it is much cheaper than Domino, but requires higher hardware spec to operate efficiently. I looked at moving my company to Exchange2000 last year, but decided against it, because the cost of hardware outweighed the cost of upgrading my Domino version to the latest.

I suggest you look VERY seriously at Domino. Good luck

 

[RobotSmiff]

There's no better solution for the many things Domino can do for you in a small operation. The robust admin and design environments integrated with the database tool eliminate many admin\design headaches before they are ever created.

-Robot