In practical scenario there are so many instances where you need to integrate Lotus Notes with RDBMS. The company’s mission critical data storage system might be in RDBMS like Oracle or ERP’s like SAP. One of the examples is Leave Management System. The approval workflow is built in Lotus Notes and the leave data is updated in RDBMS once it’s approved. Similarly Purchase Requisition System may be built in Lotus Notes and the details are updated to backend RDBMS after approval workflow.
You are planning to create web interface for Lotus Domino application. Chances are that these datatypes exist as design elements. In notes environment, generally you create these fields and select address dialog for choices. But address dialog do not work in web. Even if you create a dialog list/Combobox field with formula as choices, this field is saved as text, not names data type. Solution?
Reporting in Lotus Notes has its own limitation, which does not provide much flexibility. You may use Rich Text field for generating simple reports but when your requirement goes beyond that you have to look at other alternatives. You boss may be well versed in MS Office and he will be happy in generating reports in Excel/Word documents. Once you export data in Excel the data may be manipulated in variety of ways.