New Tools for Internet Apps

LDAP directory services, secure IP communications, and IMAP-based e-mail will underpin tomorrow's Internet-based applications.

Edmund X. DeJesus

Building Internet applications isn't much different from building stand-alone applications. Yeah, right. The Internet is a unique platform with its own advantages and challenges for applications developers.

One measure of its uniqueness is an infrastructure that is pretty much of a black box to developers. Your applications send data packets in to that box, and the box in turn sends the packets around the world.

The basic infrastructure model won't change dramatically anytime soon. So what will be different for developers of tomorrow's Internet applications? A handful of technol ogies will provide for faster access to network resources, more secure transactions, and better communications. These emerging technologies all depend in one way or another on manipulating in clever ways the packets you send over the Internet.

For example, you'll soon be able to extend the usefulness of directories -- repositories of data, applications, and other resources. Today, directories work best at helping you find resources locally or on a LAN. Our story "LDAP Unites the Internet" explains how new kinds of directory services can help you find and manage resources strewn across the Internet as easily as if they were stored locally.

To keep your data and messages away from thieves and eavesdroppers, a new secure IP standard defines ways of encrypting parts of the packets as they travel around the Internet. This standard will be mandated in IP 6, but "Internet Armor" shows how applications developers and end users can use it now to defend their secrets against all foes.

A new e-mail protocol, Internet Message Access Protocol (IMAP), is far more adroit than the current standard, Post Office Protocol (POP), at helping you manage your inbox and for creating simple groupware applications. "E-Mail Grows Up" details how you can use IMAP to selectively retrieve messages and message parts, as well as create new kinds of Internet applications.

These three approaches for handling message packets mean that the best advice for Internet developers will be to continue to ignore the infrastructure entirely. Don't rip up the tracks; instead, customize the trains that run on them.