Access Lotus Notes mailbox from java application

After lots of searching, I haven't been able to find an answer to this question. What I would like to do is access a shared Lotus Notes (7.0.2) mailbox via a java application in order to extract attachments from all mails that arrive. Firstly is this possible, and second how?

This is the sort of thing I'm trying (just trying to connect to the database, I'll worry about extracting the attachements later)

      NotesThread.sinitThread();
      Session s = NotesFactory.createSession(<server>, <username>, <password>);
      Database d = s.getDatabase(<server>, <database>);
      d.open();

.. but I get a connection refused message. I am also surprised that the code I have seen makes no reference to an id file, I though I would need this to validate the connection.

Any help greatly appreciated.

Thanks