THROUGH CONSTANT UPDATING, IBM's "INTERNET MESSAGING FRAMEWORK"
ENABLES IBM AND LOTUS PRODUCTS TO KEEP UP WITH
RAPIDLY EVOLVING EMAIL STANDARDS
If you've ever wondered how it is that the multitudes of different
computers and email systems can communicate at all, let alone smoothly, you
should attend an Internet Connectivity Event. The two-day events are hosted
twice a year by an industry group called the Internet Mail Consortium.
If you had visited the one held last fall in San Jose, for instance, you
would have found representatives of IBM, Microsoft, Lotus, Eudora, AT&T
and a dozen other companies, sitting at tables -- their computers plugged
in and wired up, their mail systems sending and receiving -- looking for
bugs that can arise when different vendors' products talk to one another.
"Hardening the systems," in the words of Jürg von Känel, manager
of IBM's Internet Media Technology Group at the Thomas J. Watson Research
Center. The goal is a kind of Internet version of a peace talk: by the time
it is over, all the participants will know what must be fixed in order to
achieve that state of communications harmony known as "interoperability."
IBM goes through this trial by fire with its Internet Messaging Framework
software, designed to allow IBM and Lotus products to communicate over the
Internet. Once the framework has undergone the interoperability test on one
product, no other IBM or Lotus product based on it need do the same. The
work has been done for them.
Providing a common framework for many different products saves development
headaches in a world of constantly shifting standards. The Internet
Messaging Framework evolves along with the Internet. While the ultimate
goal both of Internet users and of the Internet community is to transmit
all sorts of information -- text, audio, video -- effortlessly, the path
has had its twists and turns. IBM's Multimedia Messaging Group, which
developed the framework, will no doubt transform the software many more
times before the goal is reached.
CLOSING THE FUNCTION GAP
As the Internet has emerged as a global network, the push toward email
standardization has gained momentum. Most such efforts have been aimed at
closing the gap between Internet email and proprietary email systems like
those used by America Online and Compuserve, as well as by Lotus
Notes®. The gap has been narrowing from both sides. Proprietary systems
now offer gateways that translate between their own formats and the
Internet, and will in the future be available in versions that connect
directly to the Internet. Conversely, developers of Internet mail systems
have attempted to catch up with proprietary systems. "The text-only email
format of the Internet was no match for some of the sophisticated functions
the proprietary systems offered," says von Känel, who led the
Multimedia Messaging Group until his recent move within Watson. (The group
is now led by Barry Leiba.)
Until a few years ago, there was no simple, standard way to send multimedia
messages over the Internet. An image had to be translated into a
transmittable form and cut and pasted into a document. The recipient would
then cut it out of the document and put it in its own file, which was then
decoded. Although some systems allowed images to be easily inserted, only
recipients on the same system could read them.
All that began to change in 1992, when an Internet standards group led by
Nathaniel Borenstein of Bell Laboratories generated the first prototype of
a message format known as MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions).
"MIME is a specification for telling how to transport multimedia objects
through the Internet," says von Känel. "It's just like a container. It
lets you send what amounts to a cover letter and attachments. The user
clicks on the files to be attached, and the mail system does all the
encoding, decoding and preparing, and then untangling when the message
arrives." In 1994, MIME was deployed as the Internet standard for
multimedia messages.
Now that the message format has been standardized, two client/server
protocols for accessing mail are also on their way to becoming standards.
POP 3 serves as the Internet equivalent of your home mailbox. As von
Känel describes it, "The mail guy comes and throws in your mail, and
your product has to get the mail out." As with a real mailbox, however,
capacity is limited: if your virtual mailbox overflows, messages are lost
forever. Another drawback is that you typically can't go back into your
mailbox to retrieve a message you've already read on a different computer.
This is where the newer scheme, IMAP 4, comes in. The system works like an
enormous file cabinet full of drawers and folders, together with sorting
and searching functions. "Your mail stays on the server," says von
Känel. "So if you're traveling, you could download part of your mail
to your laptop, work on the mail offline, resynchronize with your mailbox
and send some back. You don't have to carry all your mail -- wasting all
that disk space -- all the time." Von Känel says IMAP 4 is not yet
fully deployed, because it requires service providers to adopt new
administrative procedures that have yet to be worked out.
But even with enhancements like IMAP 4 on the way, the MIME standard is, in
Internet terms, archaic. Over the past four years, the needs and
expectations of users have changed dramatically. MIME does not currently
provide message encryption and authentication services, which are now
standard in proprietary mail systems and are crucial to the future of the
Web and digital commerce. Indeed, MIME doesn't even include a standard
format for combining text and images. "People want to see a 'Web page' kind
of presentation," says von Känel, "not just a cover letter with random
attachments."
Contrast these limitations with the services available on Lotus Notes.
"There you have document models," von Känel observes. "You can send
text and images together. You have authenticated senders and encryption and
return receipts. You have some security. If you send a piece of mail, you
know it will arrive, and you know who it is coming from -- no one can fake
it. These features are not quite there yet on the Internet."
EASY AS A PHONE CALL
The goal now for the Internet community, says von Känel, is to create
a set of standards that incorporates all these services. Indeed, he points
out, Internet groups are working on protocols for providing message
authentication and delivery notification, and for combining MIME with HTML,
the lingua franca of the Web. Along the way, IBM's Multimedia Messaging
Group will continue upgrading the Internet Messaging Framework so IBM
products will easily conform to the standards as they arrive.
Since 1995, when the idea for the framework was born, the Multimedia
Messaging Group has been working on two versions: one for existing systems,
using the C++ programming language, and a Java™-based version for
future systems. IBM recently began shipping the Java version with Lotus
eSuite®, a package that includes email, a calendar, a word processor, a
spreadsheet and presentation graphics. "Our Java mail framework sits below
this eSuite," says von Känel. "That's how their mailer and other
applications, which have to send and receive email, access all the mail
functions."
With the framework in place and developing alongside the Internet, IBM
clients will be able to use electronic mail not just to send personal
messages but to engage in digital transactions and to manage entire systems
of workers and computers. The eventual aim is to develop a system as easy
to use and as reliable as a telephone. "When you buy a telephone," says von
Känel, "you don't worry that if you buy AT&T, Sprint or MCI it
will only work for that one company and not with the others. You just buy a
telephone and it works for everybody. That's what we're trying to reach
with email."
Gary Taubes is a freelance writer based in Santa Monica,
California.
