How does this differ from an RDBMS?
There are several areas of difference between Notes and a traditional relational database management system.
1. Notes keeps application code and data in the one database.
For sure, many RDBMS keep code in the database, as stored procedures, but this code is mainly database management code that deals with properly managing database operations, rather than implementing business and application logic.
Notes does not have any concept of code that is attached to data storage events. QuerySave and other events are attached to UI objects, and their operations. Notes’s application code is all kept in the database, and replicates with it.
Read more…
Viewed 11037 times by 3889 viewers
So how does the Notes database work?
Basically the Notes database contains a header, and then just one type of data object, called a Note. There are different types of Notes, one for ACL (Access Control Lists), one for Design elements, and one for Data notes. View indexes, built when a view is indexed, are also kept in Notes. View indexes don’t replicate. As it says in Inside Notes
One pillar of Notes/Domino design is the use of a single and simple data structure, called a note, to store all information — including design elements such as forms and views, as well as standard user documents — within a Notes database. This simple design feature leads to an incredibly powerful benefit: NOS (Notes Object Services) implements a single set of note-oriented services to create and manage all the different types of information that can be in a database.
Read more…
Viewed 9207 times by 2864 viewers
The power of storing Notes databases in DB2 comes not just from the performance improvements that will be available for applications that need it, but more from the ability to see the Notes data in some kind of relational form and work with it from there, while still maintaining the Notes access controls against the data.
Just don’t get too carried away about your Notes data magically being relational, though! Firstly, the DB2 option is only available on servers. Local databases on clients are still stored as .NSF files. The server’s NSF layer maps the data to DB2. The storage in DB2 is that of the Notes data model, it’s not suddenly made the data all fully relational. While you can read — and write — the data with SQL from non-Notes applications, you will still be dealing with the Notes data model.
Read more…
Viewed 7750 times by 2888 viewers
