--On Saturday, September 15, 2001 9:48 AM +1000 Jeremy Howard
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> In an ideal world, ACAP, the successor protocol to IMSP, would be
>> available, and that would deal with these types of issues. However, the
>> ACAP effort is all but dead, leaving IMSP as the only viable remote
> address
>> book and preferences protocol in use.
>>
> Thanks for clarifying that, Cyrus. What about LDAP--is there any reason
> that LDAP cannot be used for address-book synchronization?
Its feasable. I think LDAP has the same problem as IMSP does of having to
download the entire address book to do the sync. operation. Plus mapping
between other address book formats and LDAP schema is the same problem as
mapping to IMSP fields.
The question is what you intend to do with the data in LDAP. If all you use
it for is a network repository for syncing with some other clients' address
books, then all you really need is a network database. In fact in that
case, ftp would be just as good.
However, if you want to actually allow use of the data in LDAP aware
clients, then you need to store the address information there in a format
that all clients will understand and can 'browse'. LDAP has typically been
used to provide a directory service, and this is different from a personal
address book, in that in general the directory is read-only. Managing
personal address books in LDAP, which requires users to have read-write
access to the LDAP server, is harder, and has generally not been done. IMSP
is specifically designed for that of course.
> The only other address synchronization client I'm aware of is Windows
> Address Book (wab.exe) which can sync with the HotMail address book.
> However I'm not aware of a published standard that this uses--it's
> probably proprietary.
A lot of HotMail is proprietary!
> If there are no real options for standards that support address book sync
> I guess we'll have to write our own for our webmail site :-(
This goes back to how you want to use the remote stored data. If you really
want to have a remote personal address book store, then I would argue that
IMSP is the way to go. Of course others may disagree...
--
Cyrus Daboo
