Aware and Lotus Approach

Little Stone

Can anyone who is well familiar with Lotus Approach share his opinion about the differences between two and the advantages of Aware database. Please, this post only for those who used Lotus Approach for a long time.

Rem

Well I used Notes a "long time ago" so for what it´s worth I would say that if you have a runing Notesevironment today, stick with it, but if you don´t, go with Aware!

Notes is much more complex to get started with and will cost a fortune, but once you have the infrastrucure in place you can do almost anything.

With Aware you can be up and runing in 30 minutes from now (perhaps you have already tested). I don´t know anything about the webinterface och Notes today but that was the mainreason for chosing Aware, no client install.

But then comes the hard part, to figure out how the programming works. Where Notes has tons of material and courses, Aware has very little, yet, but hopefully more will come!

Good luck in chosing!

/Rem

jclark58

As far as I recall Lotus Approach is actually a different product than Lotus Notes. Approach is more of a desktop database in the ilk of MS Access but is also compared to Filemaker as is AwareIM. Hence the question I assume.

I think it depends on your requirements as to what functions are required but I believe that Approach may be less web able than AwareIM and I would be checking the underlying database technology to ensure you dont end up with your data locked in any sort of proprietary system. I also believe it is a Windows only product.

Aproach's genesis as a desktop database mean that it may have limits when scaling up an application ie when all of a sudden your cows come home and many more people than you ever expected start buying your product online.

The good points about AwareIM as it is designed from the ground up as a web enabled, cross platform and cross database system. To change platforms from Windows to Mac or Linux is almost trivial and it will run on industry standard databases which means you retain ownership of your data.

Unless Approach has been rebuilt or you only want a desktop database I would suggest that AwareIM would be a safer option.

Rem

Ahh, haven´t heard that name in ten years. Is that product still around? I looked at the Lotus website and couldn´t find it.

As I remember I agree with Jclark, it´s not really the same as Aware.

/Rem