A new messaging application programming interface was announced by the XAPIA at the Electronic Messaging Association annual meeting last month, in an attempt to draw together the various existing messaging interfaces such as VIM and MAPI. The CMC Common Messaging Call interface has won support from Lotus Development Corp – the driving force behind the Vendor Independent Messaging System – and Microsoft Corp, author of the Messaging Applications Programming Interface, MAPI, among others. Tom Cavanaugh, a software engineer with Macintosh electronic mail provider CE Software Inc, described Common Messaging Call as an end to the messaging API wars. He said developers will be able to integrate Common Messaging Call into their existing APIs by adding an extra layer of functionality, and promised support for it sometime soon. At the same meeting, the Asynchronous Protocol Specification Alliance announced that it had completed its draft specification providing a standard for electronic messaging and directory services using dial telephone networks. The specification enables multimedia traffic such as Electronic Data Interchange, electronic mail, speech, images, facsimile, and binary files to be transferred via the existing public switched telephone network. In the future, the group plans versions of Asynchronous Protocol Specification for mobile radio and satellite communications for notebooks and personal digital assistants.
