Jonathan Hawkins Sun's Unified Communications Architect

Joy to the World: a Web server, a web cam and House Christmas Lights

Technorati Tags: christmas, websites

Unified Messaging and Sun Java System Messaging Server

In general.. Sun offers an open platform for Unified Messaging services. The trend in the industry is to use open interfaces into "internet-based" email messaging platforms. As we at Sun are not actually providing voice features, we can however allow companies who have expertise leverage the successes Sun has had in providing massive scalability and manageability. We believe the the customer chooses the messaging platform, and then they choose a Unified Messaging platform to layer on top of it.

Some voice vendors still favor a "locked in" strategy which tie the customer to a proprietary storage mechanism. Today's realities make this less desirable because of the rapid development of voice features based on Web 2.0 cause these vendors to move less rapidly due to the overhead of development on these aging proprietary stores.

Sun enables features on these Voice platforms that come directly from our experience in email. Notification is a clear example of this. Many vendor solutions consist of one of three approaches to sending a notification of a new message:

* "scan" all the mailboxes for new voicemail (IMAP polls)

* forward a copy of the message to a notification server

* maintain two mailboxes for each user

The worse method is the "scan". In this mechanism, a notification server will scan every mailbox of every user to identify new voice messages. The tragic consequences of this method is "timely notifications" versus "loss of performance" of your email platform.

The "copy on delivery" mechanism has a value in that it is supported on nearly every major email platform. The issue with this mechanism is that the forwarded message does not necessarily indicate the true state of the mailbox. A user who is logged into IMAP will still get a new message notification. The technical complexity of clearing a notification also makes this an unreliable mechanism.

The "notification mailbox" mechanism may have some merits. A voice mail message arrives in both the regular email inbox and the voice mail inbox. The two downsides of this approach are that first the email administrator needs to maintain two mailboxes and second that IMAP access does not take into account a message notification reset.

The example below indicates how Sun Java Messaging Server provides a "Universal Notification Service" for Mailbox changes. The notification mechanism is closely tied to the actual Message Store itself. This gives the benefit of matching the notification to the actual state of the mailbox. The new message notification is cleared no matter how the voice mail is actually retrieved; either by IMAP or by Phone.

Read more about how to configure Java Message Queue notifications in the

"Configuring a JMQ Notification Service" in the Sun Java System Messaging Server 6.3 Administration Guide

{/Email, /Communications Technologies}
[composed and posted with ecto]

Technorati Tags: messaging server, unified communication, unified messaging, voicemail

Test Post

Setting up NetBeans 5.5 for Dojo AJAX Development

Inserting the Dojo Toolkit into NetBeans 5.5

1. Download the latest version of Dojo Toolkit

At the time I'm writing this, the toolkit is currently on version 1.0.1
www.dojotoolkit.org

2. Unpack the Packaging.
This will create a directory called “dojo-release-1.0.1”. Save this directory in a location which you will
use it later.

In my case, I'm copying this directory into my Development folder.

3. Start up NetBeans 5.5

4. Create a new Project.

File->New Project->Web->Web Application

and press the Next button.

5. Define the New Project.

Project Name: HelloDojo

You can leave the rest unless you need to save the project in another location.

Click the Finish Button.

6. Examining the Web Project's Directory Structure

NetBeans should display the following..

The Directory Structure Represents the two important directories: (we will ignore the rest for now)

a. Web Pages - The HTML, JSP, CSS and Image files. Also this contains XML files used by the Server.
b. Source Packages - Server-side Java Implementations (Servlets and Enterprise Beans)

7. Copy Dojo Toolkit into the Web Pages Directory

NetBeans will reflect this change. (highlighted below)

Congrads.. You are now ready to start your Dojo Development!

Writing your first Dojo Application

1. Setting up Dojo in your Page

This example has been taken directly from the “The Book of Dojo” section entitled Hello World - Dojo for the Attention-Impaired. Full credit should be given to “lance” who is the author. I'm adding to this example the NetBeans work we did in the previous section.

The first thing we will do is:

a. Load a Cascading Style-Sheet (CSS). We will be using “Tundra” from the Dijit theme library.
b. Insert a script element into the head element. This loads the Dojo JavaScript to enable Dojo.
c. Place the “tundra” CSS class into the body tag
d. I changed the default “JSP Page” title to “HelloDojo Page”

2. Load the Required Widget/Modules

In this step, we will load the Button widget. (see “SECTION 2”)

3. Add the Widget to the HTML

Inside the BODY tag, place a new instance of the Button widget on the page.

At this time, you can actually try something out. Press the “Run Main Project” button to construct a WAR file to be installed on TomCat.

We now have a button. It doesn't do anything, but we have a button!

4. Add an Event to the Button

We are adding a specialized script tag in the above button to handle a mouse click event.

This mouse click will cause an Alert to Popup. If you run it, and click on the button, you should see the following..

This is it.. you have a very basic AJAX application working on NetBeans 5.5. Next week, I will show out the Server-side Java will provide more useful information than just a PopUp.

Final Thoughts..

I hope you found this information useful. I will be continuing this series further to include our new AJAX-based Web Client (code named Kendo). Please stay tuned..

Technorati Tags: ajax, dojo, netbeans