GREETING!
GREETING!
Message from the President
From the Managing Director
The Consortium extends its reach.
Last issue I promised we would keep up our efforts to get the word out. Here's what we have
done.
Fujitsu, IBM, Axis Communications and the Consortium teamed up to demonstrate the use of
Salutation Architecture for document scanning. This teamwork culminated at the annual AIIM
(Association for Information and Image Management) Show and Conference, May 11-14 in
Anaheim, California. Fujitsu supplied space at their booth on the show floor to demonstrate the
advantages of using their ScanPartner(R) 600C, Workgroup Color Document Scanner in
conjunction with IBM's Salutation-enabled NuOffice. Axis provided the connectivity. Thanks to
these companies for bringing Salutation Solutions to the public.
The demonstration focused on the scanning aspect of the three-pronged multi-function support
provided by IBM's NuOffice. Using Salutation, NuOffice provides a mechanism to scan directly
to Lotus Notes data bases or e-mail. With Note's capability to build vertical applications on top
of data bases, NuOffice creates the ability to scan into applications. For example, you can scan
directly to an OCR, workflow or archive process. In addition to scanning, NuOffice supports
faxing and printing.
Besides meeting new people through the exposure at the Fujitsu booth, we were also able to
rekindle old acquaintances with Eastman-Kodak, Xerox, Sharp and others. It was good to see you
all there.
Bob Pecora has a more complete description of the AIIM event in his column in this Newsletter.
Consortium Briefs FAX ITU about Salutation.
The Salutation Consortium presented the Salutation Fax story to the TR29 FAX ITU meeting
held in Atlanta on May 5th. The presentation emphasized the inbound routing, receipt notification
and read confirmation provided by the Salutation solution, and emphasized the ability for the
solution to work with existing G3 devices as well as Salutation enabled products.
The presentation was well received as the ITU is currently struggling with discovery issues for
both POTS and Internet fax. Action items for Salutation is to look at the current definition of
binary file transfer (BFT) to assure the Salutation Architecture is synergistic with new fax
technology.
Salutation showcased at the AIIM '98 Show and Conference
Salutation was showcased along with IBM NuOffice at the annual AIIM (Association for
Information and Image Management) Show and Conference, May 11-14 in Anaheim, California.
Thanks to some excellent planning and teamwork from Fujitsu, IBM and Axis Communications,
show attendees had the opportunity to see how easy it is to implement network scanning. Fujitsu
provided the exhibition booth space and their ScanPartner(R) 600C, Workgroup Color Document
Scanner, network connected via the Axis Communications Network Scan Server. This
combination was demonstrated as the first part of a presentation on network scanning that
concluded with explaining the benefits of Salutation and IBM NuOffice.
The annual AIIM Show and Conference serves as a forum for vendors and attendees looking to gain insight on the latest document and information management systems and solutions. The primary themes of AIIM '98 included Web-enabled document technology, vertical solutions for users, and interoperability (standards). With these themes providing a revitalized show floor, traffic at AIIM '98 was more than 37,000 attendees, plus 200 members of the media attended the show. AIIM '98 showcased over 300 vendors from around the world to discuss industry trends, unveil new products obtain quality leads, and network with
potential customers.
Most of the attendees came to this show looking for solutions for their information and image
management business problems. During the three days the exhibition halls were open, a
significant portion of the AIIM '98 attendees were attracted to the Fujitsu booth by the full array
of scanners and business partner software that was being demonstrated. This brought hundreds of
interested visitors to our pedestal to see and hear about network scanning with Salutation and
NuOffice. When we explained how NuOffice implemented the Salutation architecture and
provided improved access and easy of use for networked devices and information management,
our audiences quickly saw the benefits of this solution. They were acutely aware that the efficient
flow and access of information is critical to the success of their businesses. What they saw in
Salutation enabled solutions was the ability to remove the complexity of accessing and moving
information in today's networking environments.
The teamwork that brought about our participation at this show is a prime example of what makes the Salutation Consortium such an effective organization. Multiple vendors working together to deliver a vision and achieve a common set of goals. Look for the Salutation Consortium to participate in future events of this type by partnering with member companies to communicate our messages. My thanks to Pamela Doyle of Fujitsu Computer Products of America, McKinley Hackett and Anders Borg of Axis Communications, Steve Berry, Kenji Oyamada, and Jim Hueser of IBM for their help and support in getting Salutation valuable exposure at the AIIM '98 Show.
In each issue, this section of the Salutation Newsletter highlights potential uses for the Salutation
Architecture. We aim to prod your thinking as you visualize how Salutation might benefit your
business. First, we'll describe how someone might use Salutation-enabled products and services
to solve a problem: then we'll take the covers off and show you how Salutation technology made
the scenario possible.
On-line Salutation Enabled Copier
Ms. Chang works in the mailroom of the Company. She has the responsibility of receiving
incoming mail and distributing it to workers in the building. She also has to gather out-going
mail from the workers and distribute it to the addressees. Ms. Chang has a Salutation Enabled
Copier in the mail room to assist her in her work. She is glad, because she is afraid of computers,
and if she were required to use one at work, she doesn't know how she would handle it.
When she arrives at work each morning, she turns on the Salutation Enabled Copier. Through the touch panel on he copier, she reviews the incoming mail list. She notes that there are two items marked urgent, several items for the Division Directors and a normal amount of information for the rest of the staff. She selects the urgent and Director's items, requesting that they be printed on her Salutation Enabled Copier. Once she has assembled this paper output, she requests that the rest of the items be printed. While these are printing, she makes her rounds, delivering the Urgent and Director mail, and gathering the mail to be sent out.
When she returns to the mail room, she finds that her last print request has been completed. She
assembles these items for delivery later. Then she begins to mail out the items that she gathered
on her rounds. She sends out each item individually. First she accesses her electronic address
book through the touch panel of the Salutation Enabled Copier. She selects the name, names or
distribution list which are associated with the mail item she is working on. The address book
contains the 'preferred' method of delivery. For example, it may indicate to deliver the mail
electronically, via FAX, or overland. She places the document in the input hopper of the
Salutation Enabled Copier and presses "GO". For electronic distribution means, the document is
scanned and routed accordingly. For overland, the document is copied (for Ms. Chang's files)
and an envelop is printed on the Salutation Enabled Copier.
The panel on the copier is being used as a client interface to the Mail Service. Salutation Protocol
has been invoked to determine the capabilities of the panel so that the 'right' client application
can be invoked at the Salutation Enabled Copier. In this case, a small client is down-loaded to the
copier to support the user interactions with the mail in-basket.
The Mail Service determines the capabilities of the printing device on the Salutation Enabled
Copier. It is determined that it is a color device and that it supports both HPCL and PostScript
print description languages. The Mail Service formats the requested documents, as needed, to
meet this capability and forwards them to the device.
Again, a small client application is down-loaded to the copier to support the selection of address
book entries.
The address book application controls the Salutation Enabled Copier, depending on the address book preference entries. It can, through the Salutation Protocol, cause items to be scanned or copied, or it can cause the envelop to be printed.
Salutation and SLP
by Pete St. Pierre,Sun Microsystems and Tohru Mori, IBM Jpan
The Technical Committee of the Salutation Consortium is now working to enhance the
Salutation Architecture to support directory-based service discovery by utilizing Service Location
Protocol (SLP). This work will achieve better scaleability of the architecture in large workgroup
or enterprise environments.
The current proposal has the Salutation Manager (SLM) searching for a SLP directory agent
through multicast, broadcast, or manual configuration. If it finds one, the SLM will use SLP
protocol instead of Salutation protocol to register and un-register Functional Units it supports
with the SLP directory. Furthermore, the SLM will use SLP Protocol to search for services
requested by Salutation client applications.
For a small workgroup, where a directory service is not available or not necessary, the SLM may
not find a SLP directory agent. In this case, SLM will use Salutation protocol broadcasts to find
other SLMs and advertise the capabilities of the Functional Units it supports. Salutation Protocol
is also used to locate the services requested by Salutation client applications.
The Salutation API is designed to make Salutation applications unaware of the underlying
transport and discovery protocols. Therefore the application programmer does not need to know
if a directory exists or not. Furthermore, since the SLP directory agent can be a gateway to a
LDAP-based directory, the Salutation API and SLM provide a single application interface to all
three of these protocols. Salutation, SLP, and LDAP are all complementary with Salutation
providing a single API into each.
SLP Components: There are three discreet components to SLP. These are Service Agents (SA),
User Agents (UA) and Directory Agents (DA). A Service Agent is a process working on the
behalf of one or more services to advertise the services. A User Agent is a process working on
the user's behalf to establish contact with a useful service. The UA may retrieve service
information from a Directory Agent. A Directory Agent collects and caches service
advertisements from SAs.
SLP Message Types: SLP supports a number of message types. In discussing the basic
operation of SLP entities in a Salutation environment, we will describe the use of SLP messages
for registering and de-registering services, requesting services, and replying to service requests.
- SrvReg: A Service Agent issues one SrvReg message for each instance of a service that it
provides. These messages contain a URL for the service, a set of attribute/value pairs that
describe the service, and a lifetime for the service.
- SrvAck: A Directory Agent returns a SrvAck message when a SrvReg message has been processed. SrvAck messages are unicast to the Service Agent that sent the registration.
- SrvDeReg: A Service Agent issues a SrvDeReg when an instance of a service becomes
unavailable.
- SrvRqst: A User Agent issues a SrvRqst message to locate a service. The request may
include a set of attribute/value pairs for selecting services that meet certain criteria.
- SrvRply: A Directory Agent responds with SrvRply when a service provided matches the
criteria specified in a SrvRqst. A SrvRply that contains no URLs may be generated in response
to a SrvRqst message.
SLP also supports messages for requesting the attributes of a specific service, requesting a list of
all available services, and for Directory Agents to advertise themselves. Complete explanation of
these messages can be found in the Service Location Protocol specification.
How Salutation Utilizes SLP in Enterprise Networks
As part of the FU registration process, a Service Agent sends a SrvReg message to a Directory
Agent. This registration contains the service URL for the specific instance of the service, as well
as attribute/value pairs that describe the service. Directory Agents that have been configured in
the network cache these registrations. Once a registration has been cached, a DA responds with a
SrvAck message. Service registrations also contain a lifetime. If the service has become
unavailable but was unable to de-register itself, lifetime values allow a DA to expire cached
registrations. This situation should only occur if an SA is unable to issue an SrvDeReg message.
During normal operation SAs will periodically refresh their registrations with subsequent SrvReg
messages. These "refresh" messages are not required to contain a full set of attributes, though
may contain updated information if the values have changed.
User Agents make requests from DAs when a service is required. There are different ways a UA may discover a DA. In addition to statically configuring the UA with the address of the DA, a UA may request the address of a DA using the Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP). While these two options exist, it is important that SLP be able to operate without manual configuration. For this reason, a UA may use the SrvRqst to find a DA. The SrvRqst is multicast to the IANA assigned multicast address for Service Location Protocol. The "service" requested in this message is called "directory-agent". Because this is a multicast request, it may receive more than one unicast reply. The resulting list of directory agents can then be used for other service requests.
Once a UA has the address of a DA, subsequent service requests can be made directly to that
entity. Let us look at printers as an example. If a UA is trying to locate a printer service, a
SrvRqst is constructed. This message contains the service type "printer", with an optional list of
attributes and values. The attribute/value pair describes the type of printer desired. This message
is unicast to a directory agent either pre-configured, or discovered through the multicast. The DA
receiving the SrvRqst performs a lookup on the cached registrations, attempting to match the
attributes and values requested. A SrvRply is then unicast to the requesting UA. This reply
contains zero or more service URLs, depending on the match results. The client may then use
the service URL to locate the printer.
Summary: SLP brings the scalability of directory based service discovery to Salutation to create
a robust platform for service discovery. Using SLP and Salutation together, network appliances
of the future can be designed to discover and communicate with each other in environments that
range from the corporate office to the kitchen counter.
Where Will We Go On "The Road Ahead"?
Bill Gates has given us glimpses of his vision for the future in his book "The Road Ahead".
Mixing a historic view of the development of information technology and the Internet with dialog
on where technology will take us, he provides insight on its effect on business, education, and the
home.
One concept Bill Gates features is the wallet PC. This device -- or various incarnations of it --
would replace credit cards, money, identification, time piece, check book, address book,
appointment book, and notepad. The wallet PC would serve as camera, voice recorder, phone,
pager, map, compass, calculator, keys, and photo keeper. This device could keep you connected
to your e-mail, voice-mail and faxes. It could keep you in touch with stock quotes, weather and
traffic reports.
"Some wallet PCs will be simple and elegant," says Gates, "and offer only the essentials, such as
a small screen, a microphone, a secure way to transact business with digital money, and the
capability to read or otherwise use basic information." The more sophisticated models might
include scanners for reading printed text or hand writing, cameras to capture a landscape or a
friend's image, and global-positioning receivers. "Some models will include thermometers,
barometers, altimeters, and heart-rate sensors".
This concept is not so far fetched. All of the functions mentioned exist in today's laptops,
palmtops, digital phones and other speciality devices; although these functions are not all
integrated into a single, small package. The wallet PC would be like a Palm Pilot (TM) on steroids.
In order for this concept to become ubiquitous, two key issues must be resolved: discovery and
interoperability.
Discovery: In order to effectively communicate with a wallet PC -- especially if a range of these
'appliances' are available as Bill Gates predicts, an information application needs to know what
functionality exists in the wallet, then tailor the communication accordingly.
Interoperability: Knowing the capabilities of the target device is one thing; gaining access to
these capabilities is another. A common interoperation language is required to enable application
and services from varying manufactures to access and use the services of the wallet PC.
Salutation Architecture provides the needed technology to support discovery and interoperability.
And, as a bonus, the richness of the Salutation Fax protocol provides auto routing, receipt
notification, and read confirmation.
1. Salutation Technical Committee Meeting; Tentatively set for Week of July 27 1998, West
Cost US Location. Check the Salutation Web Page for exact date and
location".
2. Salutation Annual Meeting; July 14,1998, Fuji-Xerox, Tokyo, Japan
3. Salutation Board of Directors; Meeting, July 15, Fuji-Xerox, Tokyo, Japan