From Lan Times Jan 19,1998 issue
lantimes.com
Netscape's NetWare port
delivers
Novonyx package fills the gap between NetWare and
the Web with NLM-based groupware
By Mario Apicella
here is an air
of tense
anticipation
surrounding
Novonyx Inc.,
which was
formed by Novell
Inc. and
Netscape
Communications
Corp. last June
with the mission
of bringing the
best of Netscape
World Wide
Web software to
the NetWare
platform.
With an installed base of an estimated 5 million servers,
NetWare is still the most popular NOS. And Netscape's
Internet software is by all measures a market leader in that
segment. Both companies, however, are rapidly losing share
in key markets to common rival Microsoft Corp., and both
need as many technological edges as possible to keep their
customers happy.
Our evaluation of a late beta version of the Novonyx
software, due this month, revealed that it could open a new
market for Netscape's software, make Novell's servers
more competitive, and give users more groupware choices.
This first release includes the Netscape Enterprise,
FastTrack, and Messaging Servers running as NLMs. The
company plans to add the Collabra and Calendar Servers,
but no date has been set for the release of the NLM
versions of those groupware products.
Our tests show that the Novonyx suite of products should
be considered by NetWare administrators because it brings
together the best features of the two families of products
without sacrificing one for the other.
To port the Netscape software--strictly based on open
Internet standards--to the proprietary NetWare
environment was no trivial task, but Novonyx managed to
wrap NetWare in a layer of Internet standards without
changing its basic architecture. After we installed the
Enterprise Server and the Messaging Server, our NetWare
4.11 server became a good Web citizen, able to manage
HTTP (HyperText Transport Protocol) commands and
Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) and security certificates. It
could accept Common Gateway Interface (CGI) or Sun
Microsystems Inc. Java script and provide Post Office
Protocol 3 (POP3) or Internet Message Access Protocol
(IMAP) mail services. It could even provide search
directory services using Lightweight Directory Access
Protocol (LDAP).
We installed Enterprise Server 3.5 for NetWare on a
Compaq Computer Corp. ProLiant 1500 equipped with an
Intel Corp. Pentium 133MHz CPU with 2GB of disk space
and 90MB of RAM. Novonyx suggests a machine with
64MB of RAM and 200MB of disk space. NetWare 4.11
and TCP/IP protocol were also installed, both obvious
prerequisites for the Novonyx suite. Our test intranet was
on a dedicated LAN with several PCs loaded with
Microsoft Windows 95 or Windows NT 4.0 and a
collection of Netscape and Microsoft Web browsers.
We installed the software from a workstation logged in with
Administrator rights for the target server. The installation
process verified that the server had the latest version of
NetWare and updated the TCP/IP modules and the CLIB
automatically.
After the software is loaded you may forget that you're on a
NetWare server because the server administration GUI has
the familiar Netscape look and feel, giving you full control
over your Web server. For example, you can start or stop
the server, create additional servers, activate encryption, set
rules to limit access to documents, activate agents to notify
when page content changes, let users publish their own
documents, or perform document search and indexing.
The features of the product are easy to implement, even for
administrators with limited Web experience because
Novonyx has surrounded its uncompromising Web server
with comprehensive online help. You can get a clear
explanation of the concepts and step-by-step instructions to
guide your implementation from any page.
One of the best Enterprise Server features is document
indexing. You can select user directories and prepare them
for the search engine included with the software. Working
from the Server Administration GUI, we defined a new
"collection," which is a directory you select to manage;
chose to include all the files in the search; and then assigned
a nickname. We then accessed the Enterprise Server search
engine from our browser and could search for any file
containing a specific word. The search engine supports a
variety of file formats, including the major word processors,
HTML (HyperText Markup Language) files, and
spreadsheet documents in Microsoft Excel format. In our
opinion, this feature alone could justify installing Enterprise
Server: If your users access their files through the OS or the
application interface, they will love a search engine that can
be tailored to their set of documents.
The Messaging Server is another Novonyx software
product that can simplify the network administrator's life.
Off the shelf, it supports IMAP, POP3, and SMTP (Simple
Mail Transfer Protocol) and will work with most E-mail
clients. It integrates well with NDS (Novell Directory
Services), to the point that you don't need to define E-mail
users because the Messaging Server will accept and deliver
E-mail for any user contained in the NDS definitions. This
feature saves the administrator from keeping a separate
directory for E-mail, a considerable simplification of his or
her job.
Furthermore, if your E-mail client is LDAP-capable, such
as Netscape Messenger or Microsoft Outlook, it is possible
to search the NDS database to find the E-mail addresses of
your correspondents. For LDAP searches of the NDS
database you will need an additional product, LDAP
Services for NetWare, which you can download for free
from Novell's Web site. Again, it's simple and efficient
because you catalog your users only once, in NDS, and that
definition applies to all the servers in your NDS tree. Thus,
from the NetWare Administrator you can manage the
configuration of the E-mail server.
Conflicting directory services?
What we found confusing is that the Enterprise Server does
not seem to integrate as well with NDS as does the
Messaging Server. In fact, the only choice when installing
the Enterprise Server is to use a "local" directory, and we
did not find any instructions on how to make the Enterprise
Server use the NDS database. The online help makes
reference to another product that could be used instead of
the local database, Netscape Directory Server, but to our
knowledge, this product is not available for the NetWare
platform.
Eventually, with the help of Novonyx, we made the
Enterprise Server use NDS, but we would like to see better
integration in future releases. The fact that the Enterprise
Server does not use NDS straight from the installation is, in
our opinion, a big flaw in a product designed for NetWare,
and it will make many users as confused as we were.
Installing the Enterprise Server and the Messaging Server
from Novonyx will transform your NetWare file and print
server into a full-fledged Web and E-mail server. If you
plan to use Microsoft ActiveX controls in your Web pages,
you should look elsewhere. But companies that have
invested in the NetWare platform and want to move to
Web-based document management should take a good
look at the new suite from Novonyx.
Novonyx Inc.
764 E. Timpanogos Parkway
Orem, UT 84097
(801) 802-6600
Fax (801) 802-6609
novonyx.com
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