>Out of the respect for the level of expertise available here, I thought it might be a good idea to get some feedback from you prior to my "opening my mouth and inserting my foot". So any and all comment regarding the following would be highly appreciated. Here's the deal:
>
>The company I work for is considering implementing Lotus Notes as its primary email server (if that's the right word). Part of the reason, as I understand it, is the ease of maintenance when compared to our current email server, ccMail 6.0. What I'd like to know is the pros and cons of this. Also any and all information on alternatives, Outlook, Exchange, or other MAPI compliant servers.
>
>My only experience with this is manipulating ccMail 6.0 through it's DDE interface (in FPW) since it's not MAPI compliant.
>
>Naturally, we're looking at integrating email into applications, so the more first hand experience I can draw on, the better.
>
>tia,

Hi George,

I was working with Notes extensively before leaving my last company. And I was using VFP 3.0 to setup working demos showing Notes adding/updating and retrieving VFP data. Notes I believe stores it's data in one large flat file. In the training class I took, they flat out admit, "this is not a relational database" and it's not designed to handle the data we'd normally put into VFP.

If lots of people are already using Notes, as was the case in my situation, then Notes was going to be used for interface design (although weak), but clearly when large amounts of data made the Notes data store unsuitable, then a relational backend was required. I didn't have any problems with getting Notes to talk to VFP.

I've never worked with Outlook but I hated ccMail and haven't seen it for years. I don't think that you'd have much trouble with Notes/VFP but I can't comment on Outlook.

Steve