Corporate.Net Groupware Worlds Collide: Giants T ackle The Net By David Willis   The Internet and its protocols are critical components of any collaborative computing system. Serving as both an information delivery medium and an inexpensive transport mechanism, the Internet affects organizations of every size. Its openness--both in human and technologic terms--enables connections between people and organizations that previously were too difficult to maintain. This openness runs counter to the traditional groupware architecture, which often requires specific software for both desktop and back end. Gradually groupware systems opened up, first through mail applications programming interfaces (APIs) and gateway s to the Internet and other networks. In the current wave of products, groupware systems are servicing multiple client interfaces simultaneously. It's no longer enough to provide tons of features in a fat client; information must be available to the users of Post Office Protocol (POP), Network News Transfer Protocol (NNTP), or USENET News, and Web browsers. To view the Report card. When we last looked at groupware for the browser (see "Intranet-Based Groupware," at techweb.cmp.com/nc/714/714f1.html), we discovered that at least two products--Radnet WebShare and Digital Equipment Corp. AltaVista Forum--provided a solid means to support ad hoc workgroups quickly, using only a Web browser as a client. Those products fit well when you didn't have any common collaborative computing platform among a majority of team members. This time around, we set out to examine how traditional groupware products have adapted to the Web-based groupware threat, and we invited the major vendors to participate. Lotus Development Corp., Microsoft Corp. and Novell provided current versions of their products; other vendors we re not ready for the challenge. Attachmate Corp., Hewlett-Packard Co., Oracle Corp. and SoftArc each said they were all retooling their products for Web access, and did not have stable software available for us to test. Web-based groupware products are moving fast. At the time this article was written, Lotus announced a completely rearchitected Notes that relies heavily on Java, offers new clients and APIs, and has native HTML support in the Notes object store. Novell was readying GroupWise 5.1 with support for key Internet protocols. A beta version was not available in time for us to get an in-depth look, so we tested GroupWise 5.0. Microsoft had Release Candidate 1 of Exchange 5.0 ready, which we examine here. We also used a beta version o f InterNotes News 2.0 to get NNTP support for Domino. Why use Internet protocols with traditional groupware? In short, to make client access easier. Distributing software is a difficult and time-consuming task, and if you can offer support for more protocols, you can support a larger user base. Consultants, business partners and temporary staff can participate as full team members quickly and easily using inexpensive POP or NNTP clients. Users on the go can grab a Web browser anywhere. There are limitations to the Web browser approach, however--the greatest being security. While you can use Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) authentication and encryption services for the client/server dialog, you can't easily cover your tracks. In our tests, we found none of these products cleared the browser cache when a session was complete, revealing message content even if SSL was used. Browser history was not cleared. Novell and Microsoft both provide a logout button in their Web interfaces, but they don't address the se issues. The other major limitation is in the interface that HTML can present. Most implementations we've seen are weak and would be rejected by any discerning user. However, there are alternatives that don't resort to proprietary methods. First, JavaScript should be used to provide per-field validity checking at the client without requiring everything to be done at the server. Second, frames and browser windows should be used to avoid the constant full-screen refresh you would otherwise need.

Internet Rx by Chris Lewis and Joel Conover The Soup's On With Web-Based APIs by Barry Nace Updated March 7, 1997