[pmmail-list] Share Address Book

[Lueko Willms]

On Mon, 10 Sep 2001 10:03:05 -0300, PMMail OS/2 Support wrote:

> 
> >So, again, a network version would be nice - or just as nice to me would be a SEMI-NETWORK version: allow us to tell where the TOOL directory is and SHARE it ONLY would be sufficient. Perhaps this would be easy enough to do to make it happen? What cha think Trevor?
> 
> I think it is unlikely that this will be implemented in the next few
> months. *I* am not a programmer but I suspect that network
> cooperation would not be a trivial undertaking.

  You are right. 

  And I have some ideas on what could be done _today_ with the
versions as they are: 

  1) Use LDAP. 
  
   I have a customer where I have installed VPOP3 as the LAN
eMail-server which has a central address book managed by an LDAP
server (http://www.pscs.co.uk). VPOP3 collects mail from various POP3
mailboxes on the outside net and offers it for the LAN clients to
retrieve via POP3, IMAP or Webmail. 
 
   PMMail has an LDAP client. This client is not too sophisticated,
so to speak, but can be used to search the central address book. 

   2) Synchronize with a central address book via logon script. 

   The logon script (I have recently implemented one in VBS using the
Windows Scripting Host) could call a procedure which sorts, compares,
and updates the local address book and maybe also the central address
book. 

   I would implement such a procedure in PERL as the easiest to use
(splitting up the address book line with an arbitrary delimiter is
one function in PERL while REXX can only separate WORDS based on
blanks as the delimiter). 

   The difficult decisions are the one on the update rules -- which
version is the most authoritative? how are deletes being handled? --
and variations in various fields of the address book -- differences
in the alias, home address, business address, remarks. 

   One solution could be to use the LDAP database as the
authoritative source and to update the clients address book with the
contents of the LDAP database. 

   One more technical problem is that the collection of the PMMAIL
address books is actually one big file with the individual entries
and pointers to the list of address books. So both private and public
or common address books are contained in one file. Such a script
based update process as I have described should update only those
addresses in the common address book, not the private entries. 

   3) Use VCARD. 

   Updates to the client address books might be distributed as VCARD
attachments; PMMail can transfer the VCARD contents into the address
book. 

Yours, 

   


Lüko Willms 
Frankfurt/Main 
/ Lueko.Willms@T-Online.de 

- pmmail-list - The PMMail Discussion List ---------------------------
To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message to mdaemon@bmtmicro.com with the first 
line of the message body being...
UNSUBSCRIBE pmmail-list@blueprintsoftwareworks.com