Release 3.0 Product Description

ISODE Consortium Product Releases

The ISODE Consortium has based its developments on the openly available ISODE and PP packages, which have been worked on since 1985 and 1984 respectively. The first ISODE Consortium Release (IC R1) was built on the publicly available ISODE 8.0 and was made available in March 1993. The second ISODE Consortium Release (IC R2) was made available in June 1994. The third ISODE Consortium Release (IC R3), for which this document was produced, will be made available in June 1995.

The ISODE Consortium release has evolved since its inception as a public domain release. The ISODE Consortium applies increasing resources dedicated to the development and support of this technology.

IC R3.0 Components and Functionality

ISODE Consortium Release 3.0 builds on the ten year history of the ISODE technology to provide the major applications as shown in Figure 1:

Multi-protocol Message Transfer Agent, designed for high performance and operational robustness in a multi-protocol environment. Supports X.400 (1984, 1988, 1992) and the Internet SMTP/MIME, and configuration by X.500 according to the IETF MHS-DS specifications.
Multi-protocol Message Store. Supports X.400 and Internet/MIME messages, using X.400 P7 and P3 protocols and LMAP (Lightweight Message Access Protocol).
Integration APIs. Provision of X/Open OSI integration APIs, and APIs for integration using lightweight access protocols (LMAP, LDAP, CLDAP).
Management technology. Includes support for the SNMP MADMAN MIBs, and other management tools.

Figure 1: IC R3.0 Applications

These are described in greater detail in "Directory Services", "Message Handling System", and "General Services".

Supporting services and infrastructure are also provided and include:

X.500 (1993) Security Components, which include libraries to support a range of cryptographic algorithms and tools to form the basis of a Certification Authority.
OSI Stack implementation above transport layer and the supporting ASN.1 Compiler technology.

These are shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: IC R3.0 Supporting Services

IC R3.0 Additions and Improvements

IC R3.0 has made the following additions and improvements to those available in IC R2:

Directory Services

The X.500 1993 DSA is being introduced providing support for the X.500 1993 standards and features including replication, access control, and authentication.
As well as the 1993 DSA, the DUAs have been extended to support the 1993 features and a World Wide Web to X.500 Gateway has been provided.

Security Services

The ISODE Consortium has added software into the core of the release to provide for the security of Internet/X.400 electronic mail and X.500 directory services, using the X.509 certificate-based model for authentication and data integrity. This includes Certification Authority tools and database interface, X.509 and cryptographic libraries.

Messaging

P3 submission and delivery has been added to the X.400 MTA and Message Store thus allowing for distributed deployment of these components.
Support for priority scheduling and X.400 distribution list expansion has been added to the MTA. Numerous performance and other enhancements have also been made.
Additional Message Store functionality has been incorporated providing members with the features needed to meet commercial market requirements.

Management

A Tcl/Tk-based configuration GUI is available for the configuration of MTAs and Message Stores. The configuration data is held in the X.500 Directory in accordance with the MHS-DS specifications.

X/Open APIs

Libraries implementing X/Open Messaging and Directory APIs (XMT, XDS, and XOM) are provided.

Table 1 summarizes the major evolutionary progress of the ISODE Release from the public domain to IC R3.0.


TABLE 1. Evolution of ISODE Software Functionality 

--------------------------------------------------------------

Functionality                           Public   IC   IC   IC   

                                        Domain   R1   R2   R3   

--------------------------------------------------------------

Message Transfer Agent                                          

X.400 (84) MTA                          X        X    X    X    

X.400 (88) MTA                          Poor     X    X    X    

X.400 (92) MTA                                        X    X    

X.400 (84) Conformance Testing                   X              

X.400 (88) Conformance Testing                             X    

SMTP                                    X        X    X    X    

MHS-DS                                           V1   V1   V3   

SNMP Monitoring                                  X    X    X    

MIME/X.400 Mapping                                    X    X    

Class 2 FAX Access Unit                          X    X    X    

P3 Submission and Delivery                                 X    

XMT Library                                                X    

Message Store                                                   

P7                                                    X    X    

LMAP server                                           X    X    

P3 Submission and Delivery                                 X    

LMAP DLL                                                   X    

Directory                                                       

X.500 (88) DSA                          X        X    X    X    

Delegate Disk Database                                X    X    

Performance and Stability Enhancements           X    X    X    

MADMAN Support                                        X    X    

LDAP Library                                          X    X    

X.500 (93) DSA                                             X    

WWW-X.500 Gateway                                          X    

Security                                                        

Certification Authority Tools                              X    

X.509 and Cryptographic Libraries                          X    

Strong Authentication                                      X    

Signed Directory Operations                                X    

Quality Improvements                                            

ANSI C                                                X    X    

SVR4 Reference                                        X    X    

Ported to a Range of Platforms          X        X    X    X    

Cleaner Build Procedures                         X    X    X    

                                                                

--------------------------------------------------------------

Table of Contents Next Chapter