Oracle calendar-server-wp-1449649

An Oracle White Paper
October 2013
Oracle Communications Calendar Server

Oracle White Paper—Oracle Communications Calendar Server
Introduction........................................................................................1
Oracle Communications Calendar Server Overview ..........................3
What is the Oracle Communications Calendar Server?..................3
Key Functionality............................................................................3
Calendar Server Interactions..........................................................4
Calendar Server Architectural Overview.........................................7
Calendar Server Components........................................................7
Protocol Subsystem .......................................................................7
Core Subsystem ............................................................................8
Database Subsystem.....................................................................8
Distributed Horizontally Scalable Architecture................................8
Calendar Server APIs ....................................................................9
Java Message Service APIs...........................................................9
Proxy Authentication ......................................................................9
Web Calendar Access Protocol (WCAP)........................................9
Advantages for Enterprises and Service Providers ..........................10
Multiclient Access ........................................................................11
Convergence................................................................................11
Outlook Connector .......................................................................15
Other Clients................................................................................15
Security at Multiple Levels............................................................16
High Performance, High Availability .............................................17
Database Availability....................................................................18
Java Messaging Service (JMS)....................................................18
Hosted Domains ..........................................................................19
Calendar Server Administration....................................................20
The Command Line Interface.......................................................20
Administrative Functions ..............................................................20
Delegated Administrator Functions ..............................................21
Migration......................................................................................21
Conclusion.......................................................................................21
High-Performance Server.............................................................21
Based on Standards and Proven Technology ..............................22
Flexibility and Extensibility............................................................22
Feature-rich Server and Client .....................................................22
Appendix A ......................................................................................23
Abbreviation/Acronym List ...............................................................23

1
Introduction
Organizations today require a dependable, scalable, cost-effective calendaring solution that integrates
with other popular calendaring solutions as well as other communication components, such as messaging
and address book. These organizations need a secure solution that is adaptable to their individual
environments and highly available to ensure that they always have access to information about important
appointments.
The Oracle Communications Calendar Server satisfies these requirements. It is a high-performance,
Internet standards-based calendar server designed with the scalability to meet the needs of customers
ranging from medium- and large-sized enterprises to even the largest Internet, telecommunications, and
enterprise service provider. Through a rich integrated AJAX Web interface, standards-based clients, and
connectors to other calendar clients (including Microsoft Outlook), the Oracle Communications Calendar
Server provides group scheduling and personal calendaring to consumers at home or at work while also
enabling them to share calendar information with others over the Internet. The user interface (UI) can be
customized to include Web links for e-commerce, banner ads, logo or brand of the calendar server
customer, and more. This paper explores the product’s architecture, design, deployment features, and
benefits.
The Oracle Communications Calendar Server provides one of the industry’s most open, interoperable,
and high-performance time and resource management solutions. Through its scalability, performance,
and reliability, it can provide customers with the features they require at a lower total cost of ownership
than alternative solutions. Native support for iCalendar standards allow users to schedule events in a
format that is easily shared across the Internet, and support for CalDAV enables the use of multiple
standards-based clients including Apple iCal, Apple iPhone, Mozilla Thunderbird/Lightning, and others.
Oracle continues to lead in defining and implementing industry standards across its entire
communications product line. The Oracle Communications Calendar Server employs standards and
protocols such as:
• Calendaring Extensions to WebDAV (CalDAV)
• Scheduling Extensions to CalDAV
• Collection Synchronization for WebDAV
• Internet Calendaring (iCalendar)
• iCalendar Transport-Independent Interoperability Protocol (iTIP)
• Calendar Message-based Interoperability Protocol (iMIP)
• Internet Calendar Scheduling Protocol (iSchedule)
• Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP)
• HyperText Transport Protocol (HTTP)

2
The Oracle Communications Calendar Server is a component of the Oracle Communications Unified
Communications Suite, an open and integrated infrastructure software system that delivers industry-
leading e-mail, calendaring, and real-time collaboration functionality for service providers and large
organizations worldwide. The Oracle Communications Calendar Server architecture is flexible, extensible,
and scalable both vertically (by increasing the number of CPUs per system) and horizontally (by
introducing additional servers into the network). The Oracle Communications Calendar Server
architecture is built upon robust, highly scalable components such as the Oracle Glassfish Server and the
MySQL or OracleDB database servers, and thus is able to leverage the HA capabilities of the Application
Server and the availability of standard tools for database backup, restore, and high availability. Simply
put, the Oracle Communications Calendar Server provides a robust, scalable, and highly available
platform that provides vast interoperability with a multitude of calendar clients

Oracle Communications Calendar Server Overview
What is the Oracle Communications Calendar Server?
The Oracle Communications Calendar Server is a high-performance, standards-based solution for time
and resource management. It is designed with the scalability to meet the needs of Communication
service providers (CSPs), telecommunications providers, and enterprise service providers as well as large
enterprises. It provides group scheduling and personal calendaring to consumers at home or at work, and
lets them share calendar information with others over the Internet. The Oracle Communications Calendar
Server can provide customers with lower total cost of ownership because of its scalability, performance,
and reliability.
Key Functionality
The Oracle Communications Calendar Server provides the following high-level functionality:
• A modular, pluggable architecture where components and services can be run on a single system
or spread over multiple systems. The architecture is scalable vertically by CPU and horizontally
by system, and provides client protocols for third-party client integration.
• Group scheduling as well as personal calendaring. Group scheduling includes free-busy lookup to
find the next available free slot; individual and group attendees, invitations, and responses; and
conflict handling in cases where an attendee’s time may be double-booked. The Calendar Server
supports implicit scheduling which processes incoming invitations and delivers them to the
recipients' default calendars, for internal recipients with no extra client interaction. The Oracle
Communications Calendar Server can also be used to schedule resources such as conference
rooms and audio-visual equipment.
• Interoperability with a multitude of calendar clients including Thunderbird/Lightning, Apple iCal,
Apple iPhone, and Microsoft Outlook, thereby enabling users of these products to perform
calendaring and group scheduling with Oracle Communications Calendar Server. Interoperability
with Outlook occurs via a connector. This is extremely useful for Outlook enterprise users in
search of a lower cost calendaring solution that integrates into their existing environments.
• A rich and flexible calendar access control mechanism, and delegated calendar ownership. Each
calendar has a primary owner, and can delegate to others who can act on behalf of the primary
owner. These delegatees can invite others to meetings or reply to invitations on behalf of the
primary owner. A user can create different calendars, much like mail users can create different
folders. Calendars can be made publicly accessible to individuals, groups, or everyone, or kept
private solely for the owners. Privacy can also be designated at the event level. Individual events
can be assigned public, private, or confidential access.
• Multiple calendars per user, allowing end users to better organize their events and tasks.
• Includes Convergence, a highly configurable, extensible front-end UI based on Asynchronous
JavaScript™ and XML (AJAX) technology. This AJAX Web client combines e-mail, calendaring,
address book and instant messaging into a rich integrated Web experience. Single sign-on and
tight integration enable users to utilize calendaring functionality from within mail and address

book applications. Customization enables customers to specify UI Themes, to incorporate
special branding, or to integrate third-party functionality (mashups).
• An integrated corporate address book that is used to search for potential attendees. The user can
enter any part of an attendee’s name and the address book searches through LDAP for
appropriate matches. The user can then select the correct name and invite the user or group to
the meeting.
• Flexible event notification and subscription service that enables processes to register and
subscribe to events of interest and perform appropriate actions. An API enables developers to
customize this notification capability to any type of notification, including Short Message Service
(SMS) or pager notifications. There is also a server preference to enable or disable this feature.
• Easily extensible to be an event management system. Event feeds can be imported and offered
as a service to consumers. These event feeds can be produced by individuals or content
providers. Consumers may subscribe to event feeds of interest, such as horoscopes or symphony
calendars, and even add hookups to purchase tickets.
• Supports the use of hosted domains. In a hosted-domain installation, each domain shares the
same instance of the Oracle Communications Calendar Server, allowing a number of domains to
exist on a single server.
• Command line administration enables administrators to create simple scripts to perform routine
tasks such as calendar or entire database backups; creating, modifying, and deleting calendars;
creating, modifying, and deleting users; and more.
• Standards-based design to enable interoperability with other standards-based calendar systems.
This design provides iMIP interoperability with external calendaring systems.
• Employs an LDAP directory for user provisioning and storing user preferences. The Oracle
Communications Calendar Server also supports the use of LDAP groups for both event
invitations and calendar access control settings. This enables users to invite groups to events and
to specify which groups can access a user's calendars. . Administrators may choose to use the
Delegated Administrator graphical user interface to provision calendar users and resources.
• Natively supports SSL for secure communications between the client and server. The Calendar
Server can also be configured to communicate with the Directory Server and all the back-end
servers over SSL.
• Supports high availability through an architecture built upon the highly available Oracle Glassfish
Server and the MySQL or OracleDB database.
• A set of migration tools are available for migrating the previous version of the Sun Calendar
Server to Oracle Communications Calendar Server 7.
Calendar Server Interactions
In order for online calendar information to be useful, it must be readily available. Though users may have
access to a Web browser much of the time, there will be times when the information must be available on
other devices such as a cell phone, pager, personal digital assistant (PDA), desktop client, and so on.
Figure 1 shows the various devices and applications with which the Oracle Communications Calendar

Server may interact.
Figure 1. Oracle Communications Calendar Server Interactions
A calendar server must provide high performance and be highly scalable. It must be highly available so
that customers’ data is available when they need it. Ideally, it should integrate easily into an infrastructure
of other services such as mail and directory.
A CSP or enterprise may wish to add value to services they already offer by adding calendaring features.
A calendar server should facilitate development of custom calendar-based applications. The data supplied
by the calendar server should be in a standard format.
Figure 2 shows an example of how the Oracle Communications Calendar Server can be incorporated
with other servers that make up both CSP and enterprise infrastructures.

Figure 2. Oracle Communications Calendar Server relationship with other servers
The Oracle Communications Calendar Server requires external services for authentication and user
preference storage. By default, these services are provided by LDAP.
The Oracle Communications Calendar Server is built from the ground up on standards. Its stored data
format is iCalendar. Native support for iCalendar standard enables users to schedule events in a format
that is easily shared across the Internet.
The Oracle Communications Calendar Server supports the use of a rich integrated AJAX Web client —
Convergence — that combines calendaring, address book, e-mail, presence, and instant messaging into
an integrated Web experience. Because Convergence is AJAX technology-based, it can be customized
for a particular enterprise or CSP. The Oracle Communications Calendar Server also supports a number
of CalDAV-compliant clients, including Apple iCal, Apple iPhone, Mozilla Lightning, and Notifylink.
Additionally, the Oracle Communications Calendar Server provides a connector to Microsoft Outlook,
thereby enabling Outlook to communicate with the Oracle Communications Calendar Server.
The Oracle Communications Calendar Server supports CalDAV for data access but also supports a non-
standard, more lightweight Web Calendar Access Protocol (WCAP). This protocol is especially useful for
lightweight clients and devices that do not support CalDAV and prefer response in the JSON format.

Calendar Server Architectural Overview
Figure 3 illustrates the Oracle Communications Calendar Server internal architecture.
Figure 3. Oracle Communications Calendar Server Architecture
Calendar Server Components
The Oracle Communications Calendar Server design is highly modular. It is implemented by way of a
collection of servlets deployed within a Web Container. It essentially consists of two components: a
stateless Java EE-based front end, and a database backend. Both components can be located on the
same host or the components may be separated onto multiple hosts. The Java EE-based front end is
responsible for all the primary functionality of the Calendar Server. The functions of the front end fall into
three main categories or subsystems: protocol(s) support, core calculations, and database access.
Protocol Subsystem
The protocol subsystem consists of the servlets that handle communication to a variety of clients over
various HTTP-based protocols. The DAV servlet is responsible for communicating and processing
commands from CalDAV clients. The protocol subsystem also provides the capability to communicate
with WCAP-based clients through the WCAP servlet. The WCAP component is responsible for
processing WCAP commands from the Convergence server and the Outlook Connector. Lightweight
clients that need calendar information in JSON format or need most computation to be done on the server
can be developed to use it. The protocol subsystem also exposes a Freebusy service and an
administrative browse interface.

Core Subsystem
The core subsystem performs a variety of functions such as data validation, scheduling, JMS event
generation, and access control enforcement.
Database Subsystem
The database subsystem is responsible for storing data to and retrieving data from the database. The
architecture supports horizontal scalability since there can be as many Java EE front-ends and database
back-ends as required to support the deployment. The database storage is completely separated from the
Core server. The architecture uses a standard MySQL or Oracle database backend and as a result, no
additional tools are required to do database administration. The administrator may use the standard
feature set available for each database, to administer the server. However, Calendar Server provides a
specialized utility for database backup and restore that acts as a wrapper to the DB utilities.
Distributed Horizontally Scalable Architecture
The Calendar Server may be configured as a single system with connections to a directory server, the
database, and the Internet as depicted in Figure 4.
Figure 4. Minimal Oracle Communications Calendar Server system
The directory server provides a user repository but it is also used for authentication. It is not necessary to
do both on the same directory server. Although this diagram depicts the calendar server as a single
system, portions of the server can be distributed over several systems.

For example, Web server processes can be run on one machine (the front-end server) and the database
can be run on a separate machine (the back-end server). Furthermore, there can be multiple front- and
back-end servers, creating the effect of distributing calendars over multiple calendar servers. For
example, an administrator may wish to distribute all the calendar users over four machines. Machine 1
may serve all calendars in the U.S., the second machine may serve all calendars in Europe, and so forth.
This effectively distributes the Calendar Server DAV repository across multiple DAV server instances by
installing multiple instances of the database. There does not need to be a one-to-one correspondence
between front and back-ends. One can just as easily deploy four CalDAV front-ends and three database
back-ends. All front-ends will communicate with all back-ends.
Calendar Server APIs
In addition to providing a modular, highly scalable architecture, the Oracle Communications Calendar
Server provides the following application programming interfaces (APIs) to extend the functionality of the
product.
Java Message Service APIs
The JMS API enables developers to handle event notifications. The Calendar Server utilizes JMS to emit
notifications for events that are of interest to event subscribers. These events could be the creation of an
appointment, an alarm when a given appointment is about to occur, or just start and end of an event that
affects your presence status. JMS provides a standard, flexible, and reliable approach to event
notification, and developers can use the JMS API to create their own subscribers, to trigger an action on
events published by the Calendar Server.
Proxy Authentication
Proxy authentication enables a calendar administrator to log onto the Oracle Communications Calendar
Server on behalf of a calendar user, which is useful for integrating additional servers or services with the
Calendar Server. For example, a portal system may authenticate the user, and proxy authentication
allows the user access to the Oracle Communications Calendar Server without re-authentication. The
Calendar Server provides the ability to perform proxy authentication through both CalDAV and WCAP
protocols.
Web Calendar Access Protocol (WCAP)
The WCAP mechanism enables a variety of clients to retrieve calendar data from the server. WCAP 7.0
(WCAPbis) may be used to query the Oracle Communications Calendar Server for data or to modify data
on it. WCAP returns data in one of two data formats: iCalendar or JSON. This is extremely useful, and
enables a wide range of devices to communicate with the Oracle Communications Calendar Server.

Advantages for Enterprises and Service Providers
In order for a calendaring solution to meet the needs of today’s enterprises and service providers, it must
use open protocols, enabling accessibility to real-time calendar data from the Web and popular desktop
clients. It must support online and offline modes, and provide access to mobile devices. The interface
should be customizable to enable unique branding. Furthermore, the calendaring solution must provide
secure access and a means to ensure the privacy of the data. It must be scalable and adaptable to
individual customer environments and highly available to ensure that the customer always has access to
information about important appointments.
The Oracle Communications Calendar Server along with the Convergence client provide a wealth of
features and benefits, including:
• Group scheduling, free-busy lookup, and corporate directory lookup
• Integrated personal address book and e-mail functionality through Convergence
• Resource scheduling for conference rooms, projectors, and other resources
• Global and domain-level UI customization (color, login, user interface, logo, branding, and so on)
• Interoperability with additional communications clients including Microsoft Outlook, Mozilla
Thunderbird and Apple iCal, enabling these clients to perform scheduling on the Oracle
Communications Calendar Server
• Support for multiple calendars, such as work, family, friends, and more
• Support for public and private calendars as well as public, private, and confidential individual
events
• Support for layered calendar views, enabling users to combine two or more calendars into a
single view for improved communication and productivity in the Convergence client
• Convergence UI supports drag and drop of calendar events, context sensitive menus, event
creation using natural grammar, and interactive hover pop-ups
• Flexible JMS-based event notification system. Automatic e-mail notification of appointments,
invitations, and reminders sent to selected recipients
• Flexible access control mechanism that provides support for multiple owners of each calendar to
facilitate communication and productivity with project teams and community groups. Provides the
ability to delegate calendar ownership to others who may act on behalf of the primary owner
• Different views in the Convergence UI
• Support for hundreds of thousands of users through a scalable, networked, server-to-server,
client-server architecture
• Support for Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption, LDAP authentication, pluggable
authentication and authorization service
• Event and task categories for identifying the type of event or task
• Text search for locating events based on key words or type of event
• Support for hosted domains including command line and GUI tools to manage these domains
• Simplified system management, simplified database management including backup and restore

tools
• Support for attachments in events and tasks
• Support for LDAP groups within invitations and calendar access permissions
Multiclient Access
Service providers and enterprises today require accessibility to calendar data from a variety of clients,
devices, and applications. The more accessible this data becomes, the easier it is for users to collaborate
effectively. The Oracle Communications Calendar Server supports the use of a wide assortment of clients,
including a rich AJAX technology-based Web user interface, a variety of CalDAV compliant clients like
Apple iCal and Mozilla Thunderbird/Lightning, a connector to Microsoft Outlook, as well as mobile access.
Convergence
Convergence is a full-featured AJAX client that supports Oracle Communications Calendar Server. This
client is a component of the Oracle Communications Unified Communications Suite and integrates
personal address book, e-mail, and instant messaging functionality with advanced calendar functionality.
It is a single client that presents a unified user interface (UI) to the back-end calendar, messaging, and
instant messaging servers. It also provides access to a common address book that is shared by the mail,
calendar, and instant messaging functions.
Convergence uses Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) for its mail, calendar, address book, instant
messaging and global options interfaces. It is deployed as a Web application using the Oracle Glassfish
Server. Consequently, it can be deployed on a machine that is physically separate from the machine
running the Oracle Communications Calendar Server Java EE front-end services, or it may be deployed

on the same machine running the Calendar Server, and in fact within the same Web container.
Convergence supports calendar events, tasks, and reminders; displays calendars in standard views such
as day, week, and month; and also supports object oriented views such as the Agenda, Invitations, and
Tasks views that enable the user to view a specific type of calendar data.
The Convergence interface enables users to create and manage multiple calendars. For example, a user
can have one calendar for work, a second calendar for a group of coworkers, a third calendar for
company holidays, and a fourth calendar for personal activities. One of the most compelling features of
Convergence is its support for combining several calendars and displaying them in a single composite
view. A user can define any number of calendars within a single view. For example, a user may display a
view consisting of a Work calendar, Child’s School calendar, Sports calendar, and Family Event calendar.
The user may also display a virtual team calendar, in which the user combines a personal calendar along
with those coworkers with whom he or she works most closely. This allows the user to quickly see what
everyone else is doing as well as when they can all meet.
In fact, one of the primary features of Convergence is its support for group scheduling. This encompasses
a wide range of activities, from inviting members to a meeting and replying to invitations to tracking
attendee acknowledgments and providing a free-busy lookup (which enables the user to quickly see
when invitees are available for a meeting). One can invite external users and respond to their invitations
too with the support of the iMIP protocol in the server. Convergence and Messaging Server
enhancements allow end users to handle such external communication seamlessly. Even directly from the
mail panel.
Convergence also provides an integrated address book for inviting individuals to meetings. One can invite
users from a personal address book or a corporate directory. Generally, an attendee is invited to a
meeting by entering a user's name (it is actually the email address that is invited, but Convergence maps
the user name to the email address). However, through the address book integration, the user needs to
enter only a portion of the attendee’s name and auto completion is performed. Convergence presents a
list of all name matches. The user can select the appropriate names from the list and invite them to the
meeting. The corporate directory can also be used to schedule resources such as conference rooms.
Convergence supports configurable access control, enabling users to create public calendars that are
readable and writable by others as well as private calendars that are accessible only to their owners.
Permissions are categorized into two types: access permissions and scheduling permissions. Access
permissions define how calendars are to be shared and hence define the access allowed on a given
user's calendar, such as read permission and write permission. Scheduling permissions impact a user's
privacy and hence define the access a user can grant to another user irrespective of the actual calendar,
such as invite permission or check availability permission. Users can define a separate set of access
permissions for each calendar that they own. The owners can also specify a list of users including LDAP

groups and define a set of access permissions or scheduling permissions for each. Allowable access
permissions include:
• Read access, which enables a user to subscribe to the calendar and view events in it
• Read + Write access, which enables a user to view and modify events in the calendar
• Owner access, which enables a user to view, modify, or delete events in the calendar
Allowable scheduling permissions include:
• Availability access, which enables a user to view the free/busy availability of the user
• Invite access, which enables a user to schedule events with another user
The type of access granted can be different across individuals. For example, a user may wish to grant
certain users read-only access while others receive availability and invite-only access. Availability and
invite-only access allow a user to schedule an event with another user, but the user cannot read
appointments in the user's calendar. As a result, User1 knows when User2 is available for a meeting (and
can schedule a new meeting into User2’s calendar), but cannot see individual items on User2’s calendar.
In contrast, when a calendar is configured for public read, no access check is made for read requests.
This means that a URL to a public calendar can be put into a static Web page, an e-mail message, or a
newsgroup message; when the user clicks it, the calendar is displayed without requiring the user to log
into the server.
Convergence also provides access control at the individual event level through the use of public, private,
and confidential events. Individual event access control enables users to create private events within an
otherwise public calendar. This is especially useful for users who would like to keep their default calendar
public, but want to control the privacy of certain events within that calendar. Events can be designated
public, private, or time and date only.
Designed with worldwide calendar sharing in mind, Convergence supports multiple time zones. The time
scale for calendar views can be in any time zone. In fact, multiple time zones can be shown, and a
specific time zone can be applied to a calendar.
Recurring events and tasks are supported with a full range of recurrence options, including repeat for a
specific number of instances and repeat until a specific date. Events and tasks can also have reminders
that may be e-mailed to one or more addresses. Printer-friendly views are also supported. Convergence
can import and export calendar information in iCalendar format.
Convergence not only provides superior calendar functionality, but it also provides an integrated solution
that is more functionally rich than the individual calendar or messenger user interfaces. Consequently, the
Convergence user interface is ideal for those individuals who want a fully integrated rich Web client — not
just a standalone calendar client. However, it is not necessary to install the Messaging Server or Instant
Messaging to take advantage of Convergence. Convergence can still be used as an alternative interface

to traditional interfaces even if only the Oracle Communications Calendar Server is installed. The
Personal Address Book integration would be present with or without the Messaging Server or Instant
Messaging. Convergence introduces calendar-specific, value-added features such as color-coded
calendars and the ability to use natural grammar to schedule events. Convergence enables users to:
• Invite a contact to an event, or e-mail a contact from within a personal address book
• View an invitee’s instant messaging presence while creating a calendar event
• Change a calendar event’s date or time using Drag and Drop
• Search for users in a personal address book or remote address book such as the corporate
address book from within calendar
• Quickly create an event or a contact using instant event and contact shortcuts from within the
calendar or address book
• Generate a list of all outstanding events, invitations, or tasks
• View the email sender or recipient’s calendar availability from within the messaging application
• Easily traverse between the calendar view, the mail view, and the address book view as
seamlessly as clicking links on a Web page
The Convergence UI is highly customizable. Because it is based on AJAX, the calendar client can be
customized to suit the needs of the deployment or the domain. Customization examples include
customizing the skin or theme, the login screen, the icons used in the calendar component, the text within
Convergence, the application banner and application bar, the branding, the toolbars, the calendar views,
the calendar pop-ups, and so on. Customization also includes the integration of 3rd party applications into
the user interface not only to enable a new service but to integrate with the existing services as well. To
the end user, the application appears in the UI as another component, just like mail or calendar.
Figure 5. Convergence interface

Outlook Connector
In addition to providing a native Web client, the Oracle Communications Calendar Server supports the
use of a connector to Microsoft Outlook. The Connector for Microsoft Outlook enables direct connection
from Outlook to the Oracle Communications Calendar Server, Oracle Communications Messaging Server,
and Oracle Directory Server Enterprise Edition. Therefore, it eliminates the need for a Microsoft Exchange
Server for messaging and calendaring. The Connector for Microsoft Outlook for Oracle Communications
Unified Communications Suite is a Messaging API (MAPI) provider that is installed on the Outlook
desktop machine. It uses Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) and Internet Message Access Protocol 4
(IMAP4) protocols to communicate with the Messaging Server, LDAP to communicate with the Directory
Server, WABP (Web Address Book Protocol) to communicate with the personal address book, and WCAP
to communicate with the Oracle Communications Calendar Server.
The Connector for Microsoft Outlook maintains a persistent connection with the Oracle Communications
Calendar Server, thereby enabling real-time access to calendar data from Outlook. Because Outlook
provides a database or Personal Folder Storage (PST) file for use in offline mode, users of the Connector
for Microsoft Outlook can update their schedules while on the road and later synchronize their offline store
with their calendar server. Additionally, the Oracle Communications Calendar Server supports a mixed
environment of clients such that Convergence users can easily schedule appointments with Outlook
users and vice versa.
Key features of the Connector for Microsoft Outlook for Oracle Communications Unified Communications
Suite include:
• Access to mail, calendar, contacts, and tasks
• Support for Outlook corporate/workgroup mode
• Send and receive meeting requests and responses via e-mail
• View free/busy times of invitees
• Calendar sharing and delegation
• Shared folders (mail, calendar, contacts, and tasks)
• Outlook to Convergence interoperability
• Offline access
• Automated install and configuration
• Seamless upgrade from a previous version
• Desktop data migration and conversion
• Supported platforms: Outlook 2003 and Outlook 2007
• Localized in seven languages
Other Clients

Because the Oracle Communications Calendar Server supports CalDAV, it interoperates with virtually any
CalDAV-compliant client. This includes the popular iCal desktop client from Apple as well as the iPhone
mobile client. Another popular desktop client is the Lightning calendar extension to the Mozilla
Thunderbird messaging client. Lightning is essentially an open source calendar component for the
Thunderbird client that provides an integrated messaging and calendaring solution. The Oracle
Communications Calendar Server has a simple, open protocol, the Web Calendar Access Protocol
(WCAP), which sits on top of HTTP that can be used by new and custom applications. With WCAP 7.0,
any application that can open a socket and speak HTTP can be a calendar-enabled application.
Finally, Oracle Communications Calendar Server integrates with several third party solutions that extend
calendaring functionality to other clients such as SyncML devices, Blackberry devices, Windows Mobile
devices, Palm devices, and other clients.
Security at Multiple Levels
Security plays a key role in the day-to-day operations of today’s enterprise. Breaches in security cannot
only compromise trade secrets, but may also result in downtime, data corruption, and increased operation
costs. The Oracle Communications Calendar Server provides a number of security levels to protect users
against eavesdropping, unsanctioned usage, or external attack. The basic level of security is through
authentication. The Oracle Communications Calendar Server uses LDAP authentication by default, but
the authentication and authorization service is pluggable.
Security involves not only ensuring the integrity of users; it also means ensuring the confidentiality of
data. To this end, the Oracle Communications Calendar Server supports the use of SSL for all data
transfer.
Even though a user is authenticated, that does not mean that the user should have access to other
calendar users’ data. Within a calendar domain, there exist other layers of security to prevent
authenticated users from unauthorized access to other authenticated users’ calendar data. One security
measure is through the Oracle Communications Calendar Server access control entries. Access control
enables calendar users to specify who can see their calendars, who can schedule events into their
calendars, who can modify their calendars, and who can delete events from their calendars. Access
control also enables a user to select who can act on his or her behalf to respond to invitations, schedule
or modify events, and delete events. Finally, access control can be used to span domains of users, thus
preventing (or enabling) users in one domain from scheduling events with users of another domain.
The Calendar server offers the ability to scan all data for viruses. The virus scan can be done online as
data comes in, or offline to selected data in the database.
Another security related feature is the ability to block off certain rogue clients to prevent them from
inundating the server with bogus requests and resulting in a denial of service attack.

High Performance, High Availability
The Oracle Communications Calendar Server utilizes several features and techniques to create a high-
performance calendaring solution. The very nature of its distributed architecture enables the Oracle
Communications Calendar Server to be deployed with several front-end calendar Web servers
communicating to one or more database back-ends. The AJAX Web client utilizes proxy servers to send
requests to the Calendar Server. As client requirements increase, scalability can be enhanced by
increasing the number of intermediate proxy and/or front-end calendar Web servers.
Oracle Communications Calendar Server provides an LDAP-based solution to locate calendars in a multi-
database environment. An LDAP attribute identifies the location of a given user's calendars. The Oracle
Communications Calendar Server also provides a number of tunable parameters that enable the
administrator to improve performance. Some of these parameters involve LDAP indexing for certain
Oracle Communications Calendar Server attributes, specifying the size of the LDAP cache, and more.
To ensure reliability, the Oracle Communications Calendar Server can be configured to be highly available
by using Application Server clustering technology. A cluster is a loosely coupled collection of Application
Server instances that work together as one logical entity. A cluster provides a runtime environment for one
or more Java EE applications. A highly available cluster integrates a state replication service with
clusters and a load balancer. The Oracle Glassfish Server provides homogeneous clusters and enables
an administrator to manage and modify each cluster as though it were a single entity. Usually that means
that the server instances reference the same server configuration, can access the same physical
resources, and have the same applications deployed to them. Homogeneity assures that before and after
failures, the load balancer always distributes load evenly across the active instances in the cluster. It
should be noted that the cluster not only provides high availability; it also enhances the scalability since
increasing the number of instances naturally increases the capacity of the system. The Oracle Glassfish
Server also supports two means of maintaining session-state information. One can use the High
Availability Database (HADB) technology, or one can use the lighter weight memory replication
alternative. Memory replication relies on instances within the cluster to store HTTP session and stateful
session information for one another in memory, not in a database. In the Oracle GlassFish Server, cluster
instances are organized in a ring topology. Each member in the ring sends memory state data to the next
member in the ring, its replica partner, and receives state data from the previous member. As state data is
updated in any member, it is replicated around the ring. Normally, an administrator would place replica
partner instances on different physical machines in order to maximize availability. In a typical cluster
topology, multiple application server instances may run on a single node or host machine, and there may
be several nodes in a cluster. If a machine suffers a catastrophic failure, all the data is preserved on the
other machine, either in its original form or as replicants of the instances on the failed machine. If a single
instance of the cluster fails, a working instance may already have the stored replication data from the
session and can take immediate ownership of the session, or this instance can broadcast a request for
the replication data and that instance would then obtain the stored session information it needs from
another instance. In either case, this capability provides automatic failover when a system shutdown or

failure occurs. When an instance within the cluster fails, the surviving instances upstream and
downstream of the failed replica partner reconfigure themselves to select each other as new replica
partners. In this way, the cluster topology dynamically adjusts as instances are brought offline or online.
In-memory replication should be considered when 99.999% or five nines availability is not required. It is
very easy to set up and administer, and requires less overhead than does HADB.
If 99.999% availability is required, the Oracle Glassfish Server provides the High Availability Database for
storing HTTP session and stateful session bean data. Generally, HADB must be configured and
managed independently of the Application Server, but this also means that it can be independently scaled
for optimum performance. It requires additional hardware resources and is more complex to administer
but provides higher availability for applications that require it. For further information regarding application
server high availability, please consult the Sun Java System Application Server High Availability
Administration Guide.
Database Availability
Database availability is a key component of high availability. The Oracle Communications Calendar
Server database is either MySQL or OracleDB and hence leverages a wealth of tools and technology
already present in the DBs themselves or through third party solutions to provide a highly available
database. This includes replication and clustering solutions as well as mechanisms to ensure database
consistency and rapid database recovery should there be a database corruption. In terms of database
backup and recovery, the Oracle Communications Calendar Server supports a number of techniques to
satisfy a variety of environments. One technique is the use of file system snapshots or ZFS Snapshots to
produce periodic snapshots of the file system including the database. These snapshots can then be
backed up using ZFS or third party software.
MySQL also provides mechanisms to replicate the database or back it up. With database replication,
data from one MySQL server is replicated onto one or more slave servers in an asynchronous fashion.
This means that slaves do not require a permanent connection to the network and that updates from the
master to the slave can occur over long distances or intermittent connections. In addition to database
replication, MySQL provides tools such as mysqldump to backup a database or collection of databases.
In addition to the MySQL tools, the Oracle Communications Calendar Server provides a native backup
and restore utility for specifically backing up the calendar database. Finally, administrators can use
commercial backup products from third parties such as Innobase.
Java Messaging Service (JMS)
The Oracle Communications Calendar Server uses the built-in Java Messaging Service (JMS) in the
Oracle Glassfish Server as its default notification mechanism to provide alarm notifications and server
notifications. An alarm notification could be a reminder that a calendar appointment is about to happen or
a task is due. A server notification could be that a calendar has been created or an event has started or

ended, or has been modified. There are two parts to the format of a notification: The event reference,
which is the URL identifying the event, and the payload, which is the iCalendar data describing the event.
The Message Queue service implements the Java Messaging Service (JMS) specification, providing a
message broker, interfaces to create clients that produce or consume messages, and administrative
services and control. JMS provides a standard, flexible, and reliable approach to event notification.
Other benefits of Glassfish Message Queue include:
• Anyone subscribing to the topic will receive the message. If no one subscribes to the topic, the
message is discarded. Multiple consumers can subscribe and make use of the Topic notifications.
• Glassfish Message Queue offers enhanced load balancing during message distribution,
especially when messages are produced to a queue.
• Glassfish Message Queue provides a reliable notification delivery mechanism.
Calendar Server Notification Services use a publish/subscribe model. The Notification module consists of
two major components, the Notification Service and Notification Consumer. The Notification Service
component is part of the Calendar server, and is the publisher that posts messages to a pre-configured
JMS topic managed by the JMS provider. The Notification Consumer component is the subscriber or the
message consumer of that JMS topic. The default consumer bundled with the Calendar Server listens for
important events and sends a notice via email when the event occurs. Developers can choose to write
their own customized Notification Consumer programs. The advantage of such an approach to event
notification is that developers can extend the notification capabilities of the Calendar Server beyond what
is provided out of the box.
Hosted Domains
Some businesses may choose to outsource their messaging and calendaring needs to large service
providers capable of supplying many enterprises with these services. For the service provider utilizing this
business model, the ability to host many user domains is critical to the success of the business. The
Oracle Communications Calendar Server provides support for hosted domains, with each domain sharing
the same instance of the software. This means that many domains can exist on a single server.
The Oracle Communications Calendar Server supports both LDAP Schema v.1 and LDAP Schema v.2. In
LDAP Schema v.1, the LDAP directory organization for a hosted-domain installation includes two trees for
domain management: A DC tree and an Organization (OSI) tree. LDAP Schema v.1 can only be used in
LDAP-based calendar deployments where the Sun Access Manager is not managing the LDAP directory
server. In contrast, LDAP Schema v.2 can be used in both identity-based deployments and LDAP-based
deployments, but is required for identity-based deployments. Because the Oracle Communications
Calendar Server supports both versions of LDAP Schema, hosted-domain support is available for both
LDAP- and identity-based calendar deployments.
The nature of hosted domains is that the end user does not know about users on another domain. The

information contained within the domain is not shared with anyone outside the domain unless there is an
agreement in place to do so. By default, users may search only within their own domains to invite other
users and groups to meetings.
Calendar Server Administration
The Oracle Communications Calendar Server provides a flexible administration mechanism for
provisioning and/or managing users, resources, calendars, the database and more. The primary tool for
managing the calendar server is a command line utility that performs a variety of functions such as
creating calendars, creating events, and backing up the calendar database. This tool runs over JMX and
an administrator can also use any of the supported JMX consoles such as JConsole to manage the
deployment. The Oracle Communications Calendar Server may be provisioned through the Delegated
Administrator graphical user interface or the Delegated Administrator command line interface.
The Command Line Interface
The command line interface for performing calendar-specific administrative tasks enables an
administrator to develop simple scripts to automatically perform administrative functions. The primary
function of this interface is to configure the calendar server, manage calendars, and manage the
database. There are a number of command line utilities available, all running under the umbrella
command of davadmin. One or more users can be assigned as calendar server administrators who
typically perform the following functions:
• List, delete, or modify accounts
• Perform, list, or set configuration options
• Create, modify, and delete calendars (also known as calendar collections)
• List, delete, or import calendar components (also known as calendar resources)
• Back up and restore the calendar database, or list the contents of a backup file
• Migrate users and data from Calendar Server 6.3 to Oracle Communications Calendar Server 7
Administrative Functions
The following are examples of administrative functions that can be performed through the command line
interface:
• List all configuration parameters
• Set a particular log level for logging error messages
• Back up a user’s calendars, or the entire calendar database
• Perform an incremental backup or full backup for a particular domain
• Restore calendars or database from a backup file
• Manage calendars and their properties
• Manage events and tasks in a calendar
• Manage calendar databases
• Manage calendar users (includes modifying user accounts, changing a user's email address,
deleting users, or listing the properties of an account)

Delegated Administrator Functions
The Delegated Administrator for Oracle Communications Unified Communications Suite provides an
intuitive graphical user interface for provisioning domains, calendar users and resources. An administrator
can perform the following functions using this tool:
• Create, modify, and delete organizations
• Create, modify, and delete users
• Create, modify, and delete calendar resources such as conference rooms
• Create, modify, and delete user groups
• Manage service packages that define the type of service applied to a user
• Assign organization administrator roles to users and distribute administrative capabilities to these
organization administrators
In addition, the Delegated Administrator provides a command line utility for performing most of the
functions performed by the graphical user interface.
Migration
Migration from one calendar system to another can be an expensive ordeal and, unless the organization
has the right tools and procedures to perform a smooth migration, the cost of migration could seriously
impact business and offset any previously perceived benefits. Some service providers and enterprises
may not have a calendaring solution deployed and may choose to deploy the Oracle Communications
Calendar Server. Other businesses may already have an earlier version of the Sun Calendar Server
deployed, but would like to migrate data to the new version.
To support these scenarios, the Oracle Communications Calendar Server provides a migration tool for
migrating users and data from the Calendar Server 6.3 version to Calendar Server 7. Users who are on
earlier versions of the Calendar Server can use a variety of tools shipped with Calendar Server 6.3 to get
them to that particular version. After migrating to version 6.3, one may use the Calendar Server 7
migration utility to perform the final migration.
Conclusion
The Oracle Communications Calendar Server is a compelling solution for any business seeking to
provide calendar access to its employees, partners, or customers. It offers several key features that make
it an exciting component of the Oracle Communications Unified Communications Suite.
High-Performance Server
The Oracle Communications Calendar Server is built on an extensible, distributed, and scalable
architecture. The server scales both horizontally across machines and vertically across CPUs, and can be
enhanced to support an ever-growing number of end users. The distributed nature of the architecture
enhances the overall scalability of the calendaring solution, since various calendar server components

and services can be distributed throughout the network and run on dedicated hardware if necessary. It is
built on scalable and highly available components like the Oracle Glassfish Server and the MySQL or
OracleDB database.
Based on Standards and Proven Technology
The Oracle Communications Calendar Server is built on standards such as iCalendar, CalDAV, HTTP,
iMIP, iTIP, LDAP, and SMTP. As a result, services and applications that speak these protocols can be
easily integrated into the Oracle Communications Calendar Server environment. Furthermore, support for
open standards like CalDAV enables the calendar server to interoperate with a growing number of
CalDAV-compliant clients.
The Oracle Communications Calendar Server integrates seamlessly with the proven, highly scalable
Oracle Directory Server Enterprise Edition, Oracle Communications Messaging Server, Oracle
Communications Instant Messaging Server, and Convergence. The integration with other products
produces an overall communications solution that is greater than the sum of its parts. Integration with the
Messaging Server and Convergence produces a tightly integrated communications solution that includes
calendar, messaging, address book, chat, and presence.
Flexibility and Extensibility
The Oracle Communications Calendar Server supports multiple devices and clients through native
CalDAV support as well as a connector for Microsoft Outlook. Oracle Communications Calendar Server
enables organizations to consolidate to a single calendar server and still use a wide variety of clients such
as Thunderbird, Outlook, Apple iCal, Convergence, and a wide assortment of devices including
Blackberry and iPhone devices. The more flexible the calendar solution, the more likely that solution will
be able to adapt to individual customer environments and changing requirements.
Feature-rich Server and Client
The Oracle Communications Calendar Server provides a solution that is feature-rich on the server and on
the client. It addresses the needs of today’s organizations that require online and offline support, mobility,
client customization, secure access, and high availability. Finally, the Oracle Communications Calendar
Server provides all of this with a lower total cost of ownership than similar solutions available today.

Appendix A
Standards and References
This section provides a list of relevant standards (under the technology/function categories as indicated)
that are supported by the Oracle Communications Calendar Server.
Calendaring
• CalDAV (RFC 4791) — Calendaring Extensions to WebDAV
• iCalendar (RFC 5545) — Describes a standard schema for calendar objects on the Internet
• iTIP (RFC 5546) — iCalendar Transport-Independent Interoperability Protocol
• iMIP (RFC 6047) — iCalendar Message-based Interoperability Protocol
• Scheduling Extensions to CalDAV)RFC 6638) — Defines how CalDAV scheduling occurs
• Collection Synchronization for WebDAV — Defines synchronization of calendar collections
• WCAP 7.0 — Web Calendar Access Protocol 7.0
Messaging
• IMAP (RFC 2060) — Internet Message Access Protocol
• SMTP (RFC 821) — Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
Directory Services
• LDAP (RFC 2251) — Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (RFC 2251)
HyperText Transfer Protocol (HTTP)
• HTTP 1.1 — HyperText Transfer Protocol 1.1 (RFC 2068 and RFC 2616)
Abbreviation/Acronym List
AJAX Asynchronous JavaScript and XML
API Application Programming Interface
authSDK Proxy Authentication SDK
CUA Calendar User Agent
CSP Communication Service Provider
DB Database
GUI Graphical User Interface
HTML HyperText Markup Language
HTTP HyperText Transport Protocol
ICAL Internet Calendaring (also iCalendar)
IETF Internet Engineering Task Force
JMS Java Messaging Service
JSON JavaScript Object Notation
IMAP Internet Messaging Access Protocol
iMIP iCalendar Message-Based Interoperability Protocol
IP Internet Protocol
ISP Internet Service Provider
iTIP iCalendar Transport-Independent Interoperability Protocol
LDAP Lightweight Directory Access Protocol
MAPI Messaging Application Programming Interface
PAB Personal Address Book
PIM Personal Information Manager
PST Personal Folder Storage
SDK Software Development Kit
SMS Short Message Service

SMTP Simple Mail Transfer Protocol
SSL Secure Sockets Layer
TCP Transmission Control Protocol
UI User Interface
URL Uniform Resource Locator
WCAP Web Calendar Access Protocol
XML eXtensible Markup Language
XHTML eXtensible HyperText Markup Language

Oracle Communications Calendar Server
2013
Oracle Corporation
World Headquarters
500 Oracle Parkway
Redwood Shores, CA 94065
U.S.A.
Worldwide Inquiries:
Phone: +1.650.506.7000
Fax: +1.650.506.7200
oracle.com
Copyright © 2013, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. This document is provided for information purposes only and the
contents hereof are subject to change without notice. This document is not warranted to be error-free, nor subject to any other
warranties or conditions, whether expressed orally or implied in law, including implied warranties and conditions of merchantability or
fitness for a particular purpose. We specifically disclaim any liability with respect to this document and no contractual obligations are
formed either directly or indirectly by this document. This document may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, for any purpose, without our prior written permission.
Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective
owners.
AMD, Opteron, the AMD logo, and the AMD Opteron logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices. Intel
and Intel Xeon are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intel Corporation. All SPARC trademarks are used under license and are
trademarks or registered trademarks of SPARC International, Inc. UNIX is a registered trademark licensed through X/Open
Company, Ltd. 0510

Oracle calendar-server-wp-1449649

Recommended

More Related Content

What's hot (20)

Viewers also liked (10)

Similar to Oracle calendar-server-wp-1449649 (20)

More from FITSFSd (12)

Oracle calendar-server-wp-1449649