Since its introduction Notes has become a more and more powerful and complex programming environment. The use of both Lotus Script and Java as scripting languages as well as the introduction of subforms, navigators and folders have substantially changed the way Domino or Notes are being used (and programmed) today. In Lotus Notes version 3.0, you usually found most of the fields of a document defined in the corresponding form that was used to create the document. So using a form as a template to create documents was easy and straight forward. In more Domino versions 4.5, 4.6 and 5, it is common practice to insert additional fields into a document using scripts. Even the structure of a form might be dynamically determined at application runtime by means of calculated subforms. When you create a form for a Domino 4.x database using VA Smalltalk Domino Connection, you may have to consider adding user defined fields to your Form Part in order to make the form work like its Domino counterpart. A good example how this is to be done, can be found in the mail sample described in this chapter.

VA Smalltalk provides capabilities with Domino R5. Be aware that backlevel Smalltalk programs will not work the same with Domino R5. In particular, if subforms were used in previous Domino applications, the documents will appear incomplete.