AltaVista Directory 98 is an upgrade to AltaVista Directory 97, providing significant new features, including:

• Shared Contacts Directory
• Ability to Link Multiple Directory Servers
• Additional Customization Options
• Choice of Web interfaces
• Wider Range of Client Access

Shared Contacts Directory

AltaVista Directory has been deployed by many organizations to store their own corporate directory data. AltaVista Directory 98 extends its capabilities by easily allowing the storage of data about business partners. Business partners may be customers or suppliers, business channels or providers of services to an organization. AltaVista Directory 98 can store information about these business partner organizations, and details of contact people within these organizations.

This contact data is accessible via the web, LDAP, MAPI, ph and finger clients. An extended Web access is provided which allows the contact data to be browsed and searched by organization, department, and business category as well as by people's names and details, providing a ‘yellow pages’ capability. In addition, this Web access allows easy creation and modification of contact entries.

Today users frequently store contact information in their local address books and personal information managers. By making it easy to store this information in a shared directory, users no longer need to keep their local address books up-to-date and critical contact information can quickly be shared across the whole organization.

AltaVista Directory 98 allows multiple cooperating directory servers to be deployed across an organization and across geographies. Muliple servers can be installed and linked together so that they each hold a fully replicated copy of the directory data.

Different sections of the data can be mastered on different servers and changes to entries are automatically replicated to the other cooperating directories, either immediately they are changed or as soon as possible after broken network connections are restored.

This allows a distributed service to be established, where directory enquiries can be satisfied by a local server, giving increased performance. In addition, the enquiry load can be distributed across several servers, improving the scaleability of the overall directory service. Entries can be stored and administered on a local server, avoiding cross-timezone management problems.

AltaVista Directory 98 extends the customizability of the directory without increasing the complexity of the user interface, making these features accessible to a wide audience.

Additional user defined attributes are now available and the names of these attributes can be changed to describe their usage. In addition, a new web service allows for full configuration of the content and style of each page, allowing for restriction of function or data displayed to suit corporate requirements.

AltaVista Directory 97 provides a simple, zero-configuration web server for the information stored in the directory. AltaVista Directory 98 adds an exciting new web service capability in addition to the existing one.

This new web service is implemented using simple scripts which are provided in source form and contain detailed configuration instructions and it provides the new interface to the Shared Contacts Directory data. These scripts are written in the popular TCL scripting language and can easily be modified to change the style of interface or restrict functionality or data displayed to suit specific corporate requirements.

The AltaVista Directory 97 Web Server is still provided and works out-of-the-box with no additional web server or configuration required. The new web service requires the installation of any standard web server, including the Microsoft Internet Information Service web server available free with Windows NT.

AltaVista Directory 98 now supports a wider range of clients. As well as web browsers AltaVista Directory now provides support (or improved support) for a number of mail clients, including:

• Microsoft Windows Messaging Client (the inbox client in Windows 95 or Windows NT)
• Microsoft Exchange Client
• Microsoft Schedule +
• Microsoft Outlook Client (Office 97)
• Microsoft Internet Mail and News client (Internet Explorer)
• Netscape Messenger Client (Netscape Communicator)
• Lotus cc:Mail V7
• Qualcomm Eudora Light V3.0
• Qualcomm Eudora Pro V3.0