Server-Side Mail Processing? Leave it to JAMES

by David Wall

July 2, 2002 —

Graphical user interfaces are absolutely standard. Everyone's familiar
with how the interface elements work, and you pretty much know what to
expect whenever you explore new GUI software. That's the beauty of GUIs,
particularly in standardized environments like Mac OS or Microsoft
Windows. GUI's are easy to learn, but they're not necessarily the
easiest way to do something.

The easiest way to carry out a computing task is one that doesn't
require you to load up an interface with the machine you want to use.
Opening a client application is easy; loading Web pages is easier still;
what's even easier than either is sending an e-mail message -- something
most of us do dozens of times a day.

Plenty of people spend more time in their mail programs than in any
other software environment, so why don't more programs accept input by
way of electronic mail messages? The rest of us, after all, do. About
the only automated mail-parsing application of any consequence that I
can think of is the administration interface for domain names. If you
want to adjust the billing or ownership data associated with your domain
name, you can do it by requesting, receiving, and responding to a series
of e-mail messages from the registrar.

A little-known API, called the Java Apache Mail Enterprise Server
(JAMES), allows you to set up your server to take input from e-mail
messages. In a broad sense, you can think of the JAMES capabilities as
Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) without as many strict formatting
rules, and with a human being on one end. The JAMES routines are
particularly good at tracking topical threads with identifiers, and at
keeping track of message senders and recipients. It's a great way to
give your users a convenient interface for your software.

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