|
|
|
|
|
|
| > developer > success |
|
| University of Kentucky |
|
| U-Connect Calendar Options Project |
|
|
University of Kentucky developers extend Novell NetMail™ to include a Calendar Subscription Service
|
|
|
| Reader Rating |
|
|
|
from ratings |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
background |
|
|
|
|
Open source software and resourceful IT managers have long been the driving force behind most large university messaging systems. But today’s budget-conscious universities and colleges are turning to off-the-shelf applications to reduce administration overhead, improve quality and availability of e-mail services, and especially, to provide better security. For example, The University of Kentucky previously used Sendmail and Qualcomm's freeware product, Qpopper* to process messages to mail client software such as Qualcomm Eudora* or Microsoft Outlook*.
|
|
|
situation before Novell development solution |
|
|
|
|
The University of Kentucky in-house system now uses a combination of Novell NetMail with Microsoft Exchange. Exchange is deployed for use by 2,000 to 5,000 users, primarily university administrators who need scheduling of campus resources. “However, NetMail is doing a good job of serving the university's other 39,000 users,” says Matt DeFoor, the university's directory engineer.
Searching for a replacement for its aging UNIX* e-mail system, University of Kentucky Information Technology wanted to deploy a product that was supported both by a major vendor and RFC compliant. “We chose NetMail for its Web-based interface, support for IMAP and POP3, and importantly for us, its native eDirectory™ support,” explains DeFoor. “We have a large NDS® (Novell eDirectory) structure, and we wanted to deploy an extensible and open e-mail platform that was directory-enabled and would leverage our existing infrastructure.”
NetMail is a standards-based messaging solution that provides e-mail, calendaring and schedule sharing across the Internet. NetMail leverages Novell eDirectory to allow organizations to easily set up, manage and host an e-mail system that can easily scale to over 200,000 users on a single server. NetMail uses eDirectory to store all user and server configuration information, providing a common point for managing NetMail in conjunction with other network resources.
The University of Kentucky U-Connect Calendar Options Project was conceived to allow users of the system to add and remove University schedules, such as sports and arts schedules, as well as allow students to add course schedules to their personal NetMail calendars. Notes DeFoor, “The driving force behind the project was to allow end users the convenience of including these schedules without having to key in the information themselves. Also, since these schedules count against the individual NetMail user’s mailbox quota, it was also determined that there should be an automatic removal of schedules when they become out-of-date, thus relieving the burden of this task from the end user.”
|
|
|
situation after Novell development solution |
|
|
|
|
U-Connect Calendar Options Project service allows users of the university's NetMail system to add static university schedules, as well as dynamic course schedules to their personal NetMail Calendars. The value added by the subscription service model allows for easy, on-demand bulk addition of selected schedule events to a user's calendar store.
The U-Connect Calendar Options Project relies on standard services and APIs such as LDAP and eDirectory to validate users before allowing modifications to their schedules. In turn, the NetMail NMAP APIs provide the means to read and write from the NetMail calendar store. The service also required the design and implementation of a database to track all schedule subscriptions to allow for their subsequent removal when they are no longer valid.
The project was implemented using the Perl programming language on a NetMail server running Red Hat* Linux. It required the writing of Perl modules, as well as a Perl wrapper to the NMAP APIs. Maintenance utilities were written to add and remove, en masse, calendar stores with the official university calendar, course schedules and other event calendars. A user-friendly web interface, and a MySQL database to hold subscription information were also needed to complete the project.
“Since the Novell NetMail calendaring system conforms to iCalendar RFCs RFC-2445 and RFC-2447 and since our solution utilizes the NetMail NMAP APIs, it is also RFC compliant,” said DeFoor. “Because they are all standards-based, the underlying technologies were easily tied together into a cohesive, easy-to-use package to benefit the user community at the University of Kentucky.”
The NetMail SDK includes documentation and sample code for the Networked Messaging Application Protocol (NMAP), an ASCII RFC-style protocol. NMAP provides full control over the NetMail queuing system and access to the message store. The SDK also includes ModWeb documentation. ModWeb is a template-based Web engine that eliminates the need for a JVM*, servlet gateways and CGI scripts in an HTML environment.
|
|
|
conclusion |
|
|
|
|
With the successful rollout of a calendar subscription service for NetMail in late 2002, the University of Kentucky’s IT staff is making campus life easier and more productive for thousands of students. Project lead Matt De Foor credits his talented team and Novell for its cross-platform products, development tools, and engineering support, noting that “…unlike other vendors who provide support for their platform only, Novell provides solutions for all leading platforms that are accessible, well documented, and easy to develop to. NetMail is an ideal example of what can be accomplished by a vendor that truly focuses on meeting the needs of its customers. With the U-Connect Calendar Options Project our team has been able to make a great Novell product, NetMail, even better.”
|
|
|
for more information |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
© 2003 Novell, Inc. All rights reserved. Novell and NDS are a registered trademarks, and eDirectory and NetMail are trademarks of Novell, Inc. in the United States and other countries.
*Eudora and Qualcomm are registered trademarks and QPopper is a trademark of Qualcomm, Inc. Microsoft and Outlook are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation. UNIX is a registered trademark of X/Open, Ltd. Red Hat is a registered trademark of Red Hat Software, Inc. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. JVM is a trademark of Sun Microsystems, Inc. All other third-party trademarks are the property of their respective owners. |
|
|
|
|
|
