With Windows Server 2008, Microsoft is also embracing PHP hosting on Windows via the FastCGI module for IIS 7.0. PHP is a popular open-source scripting language used to build dynamic web applications. This allows IT Professionals to host PHP and ASP.net applications side by side. As a result, the PHP community will be able to take advantage of the increased reliability of PHP on Windows and simplified administration available on the Windows platform.

Customers: On Your Mark…

To help IT professionals evaluate the migration-readiness of their existing networks, Microsoft has created four automated assessment tools, or “Solution Accelerators:”

Enterprise customers planning to upgrade can follow a few basic steps to help prepare and plan for the move to Windows Server 2008:

Upgrade Options

Windows Server 2008 uses image-based deployment to make the installation process as efficient as possible. Installation images are the fastest way to deploy an operating system. Image-based setup also is less error-prone than a scripted installation process.

Customers upgrading from Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2008 will follow one of two methods, depending upon their current environment. Servers that are running only software applications that came with Windows Server 2003, such as Active Directory, Domain Name System (DNS) and Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP), are the best candidates for a simple upgrade.

Microsoft recommends other customers running a wider variety of applications follow IT community best practices and perform a “clean install” of Windows Server 2008. A clean install involves loading Windows Server 2008 on a partition that is not running an existing operating system. Microsoft advises those customers who want to pursue an upgrade to first contact the software manufacturer for prescriptive guidance. Customers running applications whose manufacturers do not provide support during the upgrade process, which did not ship with Windows Server 2003 or that weren’t delivered to Windows Server via Windows Update should remove those applications first, perform the upgrade to Windows Server 2008, verify the applications are supported on Windows Server 2008 and then reinstall the applications.

Windows Server 2008 also offers a barebones installation option called Server Core, in which only the services required to perform the Active Directory Domain Services, Active Directory Lightweight Directory Services (AD LDS), DHCP, DNS Server, File Services, Print Server, Streaming Media Services, Web Server (IIS), or Hyper-V (Virtualization), roles are installed. A Server Core installation offers base-level server functionality without any extra overhead, so it will typically require less maintenance and fewer updates than a full installation.

Ensuring Compatibility

To help original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), independent hardware vendors (IHVs), independent software vendors (ISVs) and other developers build solutions that IT professionals can deploy immediately with confidence, Microsoft created the Windows Server 2008 Logo Program.

“We’ve been working with more than 1,000 software and hardware partners to help ensure that their products take full advantage of the capabilities and features of Windows Server 2008,” said Visse.

Windows Server 2008 software certification comprises approximately 100 test cases that independently confirm an application’s compliance with best practices for compatibility, security, reliability and availability on the server operating system. The certification identifies top-performing technologies that are ready to deploy in mission-critical environments.

The program features two designations – the “Works with Windows Server 2008” designation ensures that an application is in compliance with best practices for the most common Windows Server 2008 functions, while the “Certified for Windows Server 2008” logo supports rigorous standards for stability, security, reliability and overall performance.

Microsoft expects there to be at least 80 software applications certified for Windows Server 2008 by the end of February, and roughly 300 more that are considered ready for the new platform. A complete list of compatible hardware and software products is available at http://www.windowsservercatalog.com.

In addition to encouraging customers to look for the certification logo when they make purchasing decisions, Microsoft has done something new for Windows Server 2008. The company has made the same tools that ISVs used to test their products for compatibility available to IT professionals so that they can test both commercial applications and custom applications they’ve developed in-house. The tools are downloadable at http://www.windowsservercatalog.com/ready.

There is also a Windows Server 2008 Developer Center site that is a portal for both ISV developers and enterprise developers working on custom applications. The site provides how-to videos, interviews with Microsoft engineers and related documents. It also links to a moderated technical forum for application readiness and certification discussions and questions http://msdn2.microsoft.com/en-us/windowsserver/default.aspx

What’s interesting about this software is its use as a tool for image resizing that is capable of adapting elements of an overall image without changing the size of areas around the resized area.

In order to achieve this is uses a technology called ‘Seam Carving’, an operation which can be conducted within Photoshop.

With this technique image resizing of the whole image can be made while keeping the size of the most important elements of the picture. The features of the image remain untouched.XFile removes or adds areas to an image that would be least noticed.

The same very sophisticated technique lets you by simply brushing roughly a mask over an area of an image, remove an area and automatically rebuild the pixels missing

Here’s a video showing how this works.

Overview

The JavaMail API is divided into two parts:

• The main part of the API is focused on sending and receiving messages (independent of the protocol).
• The second part implements protocol-specific languages, such as SMTP, POP, IMAP, and NNTP. With the JavaMail API, in order to communicate with a server, you need a provider for a protocol. (The creation of protocol-specific providers is not covered in this article, but Sun provides a sufficient set of providers for free—at least SMTP, POP, and IMAP, which is more than enough for sending and receiving standard e-mail messages over standard Internet infrastructure.)

All versions of the JavaMail API require the JavaBeans Activation Framework, which adds support for typing arbitrary blocks of data and handling it accordingly. JavaMail uses Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) implementation from that framework. The MIME implementation defines the content of what is transferred in an e-mail: the format of messages, attachments, and so on. In order to use JavaMail, an application must include classpathmail.jar and activation.jar to operate properly. If you use J2EE, there is nothing special you have to do to use the basic JavaMail API—it comes with J2EE classes.

In 2006, JavaMail became open source, and the source code for the JavaMail API Reference Implementation is now available under the open source license as part of the project called GlassFish.

Classes

Here is an overview of some of the most important classes used in JavaMail applications:

• javax.mail.Session: This class is used to control access to the implementations of the other mail classes that represent the services offered by the mail system, for instance javax.mail.Store. (Be careful not to confuse this class with javax.servlet.http.HttpSession.)
• javax.mail.Transport: This class is used for sending mail messages via a specific protocol such as SMTP, as implemented by the service provider.
• javax.mail.Store: This class is implemented by the service provider. It aims to allow access to read, write, monitor, and search activities for a particular mail protocol such as POP3 or IMAP4. A reference to the javax.mail.Folder class is obtained via this class.
• javax.mail.Folder: This class gives a hierarchical view of javax.mail.Message objects and provides access to specific messages for read, delete, and reply actions.
• javax.mail.internet.MimeMessage: This class models the actual mail message. It holds very little information and data about the message when it is first instantiated; as successive methods retrieve more data about the message, this class is used to store that data.
• javax.mail.internet.InternetAddress: This class models a RFC822 (Internet standard) e-mail address, i.e., an address of the form peter@mikhalenko.ru. If an incorrect address format is encountered, an error occurs and an AddressException is thrown within the Java method processing the e-mail address.

Usage example

Listing A contains sample code that sends a test message. In this example, you should replace the placeholder e-mail addresses with real addresses and replace smtp.address.com with the address of a real SMTP server that is used by your Internet provider or company.

A Session object is created representing our e-mail session. The Session object’s constructor requires a java.util.Properties object representing the session’s key information. For this example, you only need to set the “mail.smtp.host” property to an appropriate SMTP host. After that, you create the actual MimeMessage object and customize it for the e-mail. Two InternetAddress objects are needed representing the “from” and “to” addresses respectively. In your code, these should be valid e-mail addresses that you can access. Once the addresses are set for the e-mail, a subject and a simple message is set.

Finally, the message is ready to be sent. In JavaMail, the Transport object handles sending messages. Since we only have one, the static send method is used. This method uses the SMTP server specified as the “mail.smtp.host” address.

Going beyond the basics

The JavaMail API has many advanced capabilities. As an example, you can add any mail headers to the message, set up multiple recipients, create blind copies of a message (what BCC is intended for), recode the message text into different charset encodings, and so on. For example, Listing B shows how to add multiple recipients.

If you send a message with a non-ASCII character (an accentuated character), the recipient may have problems reading it. To make the message easier to read, try adding the following lines to give a hint about the encoding:

MimeMessagemimeMsg = new MimeMessage(session);
mimeMsg.setHeader("Content-Transfert-Encoding", "8Bit");
mimeMsg.setText(frenchMsg, "iso-8859-1");
Transport.send((Message)frenchMsg);

This is fine for the body, but in order to correctly display accentuated characters in a title, you need to encode it using the ‘quoted-printable’ or ‘base64′ encodings. Hopefully, you can also use the javax.mail.internet.MimeUtility class. The encodeText() method will make sure that a passed string is “mail safe.” Listing C shows how you will send an e-mail with an attachment.

Conclusion

The ways in which you can use the JavaMail API are beyond the scope of this article. For a full description, refer to JSR 919, which is the latest JavaMail 1.4 specification. The Sun JavaMail API is the full reference implementation of this specification, so just install it and then take the rich features out for a test drive.

Peter V. Mikhalenko is a Sun certified professional who works for Deutsche Bank as a business consultant.

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