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  Netscape's Big Enterprise Push We used these various options to set up one virtual server, though we could have set up multiple servers in minutes. From there, we went to the Index Documents menu. As the name implies, this menu lets you automatically create an index for documents of your choice. We chose to index all documents on the server, and Enterprise Server started working hard, looking at various files on the server and creating an index for them. The admin Web page kept us informed of the progress, and a message was printed out for every 1,000 documents indexed. Because our document tree is in a perpetual "under construction" state, some files did not have any read permissions. Enterprise Server caught that while indexing the documents and didn't choke. In about 30 minutes, we had full text-search capabilities. Now we could open up/ns-search on the server and look for anything, using simple searches or advanced techniques (both available on a sample page). Network admini strators can create additional search pages, or interfaces, with any options they want. Enterprise Server also lets you specify software agents-- a capability we loved. Agents act as watchdogs for clients and perform a user-specified task when a specific event occurs. Both timer agents and events agents are available. Timer agents work during a certain instance, such as once every 10 hours. An event agent consists of an event description and an action to perform. You can request an agent to notify you when a specific URL has been updated. The agent can send e-mail, execute a JavaScript, post a news article to one or more newsgroups, or perform an HTTP operation to post to a URL or to obtain a URL. We wish we could have used the agents, but this part was missing from the beta version. Since there was no access control in this version, we could not create the users that are required to fire up the agents. All of the supporting mechanisms--Java scripts, server side configuration, Web Publisher and HTML forms- -are in there. There's no doubt that Netscape will have everything ready by the final release. Brewing Java The Web Publisher component is a Java applet that lets you publish Web pages. Since Java cannot yet write to a local hard drive, you'll need to install a Netscape plug-in for complete functionality. Web Publisher works with the revision-control system, the access-control list and file locking/unlocking to create and publish documents. You'll still need a browser that's capable of editing documents, such as Netscape Navigator Gold or Communicator. Enterprise Server also supports Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP). You can use the LDAP server, which is part of Netscape SuiteSpot, to create the groups and users once. After that, Enterprise Server--and any other SuiteSpot server that supports LDAP--simply reads that single list of groups and users to reduce maintenance headaches. Ahmad Abualsamid is the director of the Model Advanced Facility at University of Wisconsin at Ma dison. He can be reached at sami@maf.wisc.edu. |
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by Robert J. Kohlhepp Motorola TrueStream Brings Video Upstream by Allen Hutchison Updated May 12, 1997 |
