Part III

Internet services are, by their very nature, scriptable components that can be combined in novel ways. This part shows how to build custom groupware solutions—a collaborative document-review system, a helpdesk, a group calendar, a subscriber-oriented docbase notification system—based on HTTP, NNTP, SMTP, and Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) services. Discussion plays a key role in several of these solutions, and this part concludes with a tutorial on setting up and using NNTP discussion servers.

Chapter 9

A reviewable docbase; transforming XML into HTML; a transitional HTML/CSS approach to XML; instrumenting a docbase for collaborative review; XML::Parser case study; using the NNTP API; an alternate email-driven solution; a conferencing-enabled HelpDesk application; advanced newsgroup scripting.

Chapter 10

Why server-side Java matters; Java object storage; servlet efficiency; the Polls servlet; the GroupCal servlet; GroupCal as a provider of a web API; GroupCal as a consumer of a web API; injecting a task monitor into GroupCal.

Chapter 11

Internet directory services; the LDAP consensus; a docbase notification system for subscribers; the hybrid push/pull technique; a simple directory; data prototyping; attribute-based subscription; NT-based directories; LDAP directories.

Chapter 12

HTTP basic authentication; Apache and IIS; protecting scripts; attribute-based access; scripted authentication; a pass-through Internet Server Application Program Interface (ISAPI) authentication filter; authenticating against Netscape Directory Server; an authorizing docbase viewer; using cookies to authorize access.

Chapter 13

A model deployment scenario; setting up InterNet News (INN) on Linux; setting up Microsoft NNTP service; securing MS NNTP with Secure Sockets Layer (SSL); indexing and searching MS NNTP newsgroups; setting up Netscape Collabra; securing Collabra; indexing and searching Collabra; setting up the MS Exchange 5.5 NNTP service; Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP) public folders and NNTP newsgroups.