Domino and MS Access – best friends forever ?


As part of designing an application that needs to take data from a collection of access databases and import that into a domino database – I fell back on a tool I used for another project for a similar task. It saved several days of effort and gave an immediate bost to that project so its worth mentioning this tool.

Its called strangely enough “Import Utility For Lotus Notes” and you can find it here

The developers describe is as

The Import Utility for IBM® Lotus Notes® / Domino® enables you to import data from the following file formats directly into Lotus Notes:

  • Comma Delimited (CSV)
  • Microsoft Excel
  • Microsoft Access
  • Microsoft Outlook (Contacts)
  • Fixed Width
  • Filesystem files (imported as file attachments)
  • Notes Structured Text
  • Other Character Delimited files

The Import utility includes the following features:

  • Existing documents can be found and updated with imported data (using view lookup or database search).
  • Options available for handling import of duplicate records.
  • Starting record number and maximum number of records to import can be specified.
  • Import can be performed directly from a specified file on filesystem or import can be performed from file attached to import profile document.
  • Imports can be run in the background on the Lotus Notes client enabling you to continue working while the import runs.
  • Imports can be scheduled to run at pre-defined times either as a once-off scheduled import or on a regular basis.
  • You can specify the field mapping so that imported data is put into the correct fields. Auto-populate field mapping option is also available.
  • Computed field mapping enables you to specify hard-coded or evaluated values (using Lotus Notes Formula) to be calculated and put into fields during importing.
  • The import can be previewed prior to running the import to ensure the expected data and field mappings are correct.
  • You can create your own customized scripts to be executed before the import begins, after each record is imported, and/or after the import has completed.
  • Pre-defined LotusScript® objects are available for use in customized scripts.
  • ComputeWithForm method can be called after each record has been imported.
  • Full help documentation.
  • Full error logging and online debugging to help with troubleshooting of problems. Any error logs can be easily sent to our customer support team automatically at the click of a button.
  • Intuitive user interface.
  • A full update history is available in the Help – About document of the application.

Nice to get an opportunity to use this again. Will pay for itself on the first use.