Practical Internet Groupware - Softcover

Udell, Jon

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1565925378 ISBN 13: 9781565925373

Publisher: O'Reilly Media, 1999

Synopsis

Collaboration. From its academic roots to the bustling commerce sites of today, the Internet has always been about collaboration: providing a means for people to communicate and work together effectively. But how do you build effective tools for collaboration? How do you build tools that are simple enough for people to really use, yet powerful enough to really facilitate collaboration?In 1995 Jon Udell became executive editor for new media at BYTE magazine, taking on the challenge of building an online presence for a traditional print publication. In meeting this challenge, he discovered that he was managing an online community, not just an online publication. He discovered that he was building not just a set of documents, but a suite of Internet-based groupware applications in which editors, writers, and readers all participated.Practical Internet Groupware details the lessons learned from that experience. Drawn from the author's real world experience, Practical Internet Groupware describes the tools and technologies for building and rapidly deploying groupware applications, and also discusses the design philosophy and usability issues that determine the success or failure of any groupware endeavor.The key to success lies in using simple tools, often open source, that effectively blend in established Internet technologies that have always had a collaborative aspect (SMTP, NNTP) with new technologies that enhance our ability to manage collaborative documents (HTTP, XML). The result is an approach that codifies the idea that many web content providers have long suspected: yesterday's online content is fast becoming tomorrow's network-based applications.In this book you'll learn how to:

• Base groupware on standard Internet technologies (mail servers, news servers, and web servers)
• Use simple server- and client-side scripts to automate creation, presentation, transmission, and search of electronic documents
• Create a base of documents that contain semi-structured data representing much of the intellectual capital of an enterprise
• Deploy these solutions in a way that scales from groups of a few collaborators to communities of thousands of users

If you've ever been disappointed watching a commercial groupware system used as little more than an expensive email client, or if you've ever wondered how to transform simple email, news, or web clients from document viewers into collaboration tools, then Practical Internet Groupware is for you.

About this title

Review

Drawing on the wealth of experience he accumulated developing internal and external collaboration solutions for BYTE magazine, author Jon Udell provides a thorough guide to building networked tools for collaboration. Unlike many books that are tied to a given language or protocol, Practical Internet Groupware delivers useful code examples in several languages, including Perl (primary language), server-side Java, and XML. Protocols discussed include NNTP, IMAP, HTTP, POP3, and SMTP.

The first section covers general use and policies as they relate to groupware. Administrators and end users will benefit from the references to NNTP messages in Collabra and Outlook, scoped discussion groups, and packaging messages and discussion threads. Udell also includes many tips and usability pointers. When discussing how to build, index, and navigate a document database, he delineates ways to create rich navigation that incorporate topic-sensitive and sequential navigation using modular Perl examples.

Many of the solutions that are presented address custom software that implements open standards. One of the most powerful solutions discusses a lightweight, Perl-based local HTTP server, called dhttp. Creating, using, extending, and integrating this server are capably covered by the author, and it is convincingly presented as a flexible means of distributing information.

As a mark of distinction, the book approaches problems from multiple angles. With security as an example, the author discusses the implementation of encryption for dhttp and notes the legal issues surrounding the use of SSLeay. In essence, his example becomes an alternative way to implement a secure channel using the Blowfish encryption algorithm.

The book contains quite a bit of useful code, but like most (perhaps all) O'Reilly books, it does not include a companion CD-ROM. Appendix A discusses where to get the code and modules (primarily on the author's Web site), but receiving this high-quality source code on a well-organized CD-ROM would increase the value of the book.

For those interested in creating a document database and integrating it with HTTP and NNTP, this book provides the background, code, integration, and deployment information you will need. --John Keogh

Topics covered: Using groupware, policy, culture, and implementation; creating a collection of documents that can be used as a database (docbase); integrating docbases with a variety of servers, including NNTP and HTTP; security, authentication, and encryption; integration; creating a lightweight HTTP server; deploying INN, Microsoft NNTP service, and Netscape Collabra Server; indexing, navigating, and searching; IMAP, POP3, and SMTP. The source code is primarily in Perl, with some server-side Java and C++. XML and HTML are used for many examples, and using XML and XSL is also discussed. Appendices include information on where to get the code and modules that are presented in the book and Internet RFCs.

About the Author

Odell was BYTE Magazine's executive editor for new media, the architect of the original www.byte.com.

Edition details

• Publisher: O'Reilly Media
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1565925378
• ISBN 13: 9781565925373
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 521