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Lotus has selected not to publish the exact binary format of the Notes database and it's internal workings. The only way to access Notes data is via the Domino server, Notes client or any of the Lotus published APIs. This is where the Notes APIs come in, as one of the legitimate ways to work with Notes data.
This doesn't mean that you can't access the data directly, but that is definitely not for the faint of heart!!! The Notes databases are a huge binary collection of many, many different components and it's extremely easy to mess it all up (ie. render the database completely unusable, and beyond recovery). The only place I've come across direct manipulation is with very limited search and replace functionality.
Voith's CODE or the author does not, repeat NOT, recommend accessing the Notes data directly. It's far to easy to render the data completely useless! Don't bother! Use API instead!
So even if you could try to access the data directly, you would probably end up with some errors or malfunctioning application.
If you fore one second think that secret binary formats are bad, take a look at other applications! This approach is often the case with many of todays popular applications. IBM DB/2 don't reveal the inner construction details of their DB/2 databases, but instead focus on how the users can access the data via SQL. Microsoft doesn't tell you how an Excel spreadsheet is built in its binary form, but again; they tell you how to manipulate the data via APIs.
The binary format often becomes the raison d'être for the software companies.