XAPIA, the X400 Application Program Interface Association has decided both to continue development of its Common Messaging Calls Application Programming Interface, and to develop common standards to enable different group diary systems to interoperate. It is actively seeking vendors and organisations with an interest in these projects to take part, and it is setting up a technical committee for each of the development areas. It adds that it will consult with other industry groups to get input on the scope and direction of the technical committees. To help this process, the group has introduced a new category of associate membership for companies wanting to focus participation on the technical committees’ activities. While the new class of membership can attend and contribute to technical committee meetings, and are sent the minutes of the executive committee meetings, they cannot attend or vote at the executive committee meetings. For membership for a 12-month period from October 1, the fees are to be $2,000; full membership is $5,000. Introduced in June, the Common Messaging Calls is designed to bring together the current differing APIs including Vendor Independent Messaging which was developed by Lotus Development Corp, and Microsoft Corp’s MAPI; the X400 group will now pursue standards for directory synchronisation and extensions to Common Messaging Calls.
