jwma Overview
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General Notes

This document aims at giving the reader an overview (read: more understanding) about what jwma actually is and what it can do.

What jwma actually is

With the delivered basic view, which is based on standard HTML 4.0 and does not require any Java functionality on the client side, jwma is primarily a webmail package, enabling the user to access, manage and compose email using a standard web browser.
However, due to it's flexible architecture, that allows to replace elements with other implementations (like for example a WAP view), jwma can be seen as multi-session server side email client software based on Java technologies.

Furthermore jwma is open source, and it can be used commercially, as well as modified for commercial use, without it's license requiring to disclose such modifications (see license for more details). If you are interested in the reason for this decision, please see the FAQ.

What jwma is not

• a replacement for a full featured, nth generation and locally installed email client
• shrink-wrapped software
• supporting POP3 (reason can be found in the FAQ)
• supporting HTML Email (reason can be found here ->Link to perl pop thingy)

jwma's Mail Client Features (showcased by the Basic View)

• allows complete control over a single store (creating, deleting, moving folders and messages)
• fully supports the IMAP subscription mechanism (subscribe, unsubscribe folders)
• fully supports for mime messages (e.g. mail with attachments)
• support for message processing (e.g. like tagging plaintext URL's as HTML link)
• support for automated sent & read mail archiving
• trash folder for deleted messages (allowing recovery)
• support for draft messages
• contact management
• support for simple and advanced configuration of the various features
• supports simple modification of the Look & Feel to coporate/site identity

Dependencies

jwma is a web application that has to be deployed on server side within a J2EE container (see deployment documentation for more information). It depends also on an IMAP (v4) server and a Mail Transport Agent (e.g. SMTP server) as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: jwma Application Dependencies

The web application itself is build on top of existing functionality implemented by different open source libraries. Figure 2 gives an overview on these dependencies.

Figure 2: jwma Library Dependencies

Information about these libraries can be obtained from well known sites; the following list are links for those libraries which are distributed with jwma (under the terms of their respective licenses as pointed out in the legal notices):

• Java Mail, http://java.sun.com/products/javamail and the Activation Framework (JAF) http://java.sun.com/products/javabeans/glasgow/jaf.html.
• log4j, http://jakarta.apache.org/log4j
• i18n Tag Library, (jakarta)
• jtextproc, http://jtextproc.sourceforge.net and Jakarta-ORO, http://jakarta.apache.org/oro.

The standard implementations for the Preference Persistence and the Contact Management plugins introduce dependencies on

• Castor, http://castor.exolab.org
• Xerces-J, http://xml.apache.org/xerces-j/index.html
• jta and jdbc 2.0 standard ext
• and in case of the SQL plugins a JDBC database driver

© 2000-2003 jwma team