The US Electronic Messaging Association says it has successfully tested the feasibility of a specification enabling files, including spreadsheets and word processing documents, to be sent as attachments to X400-based messages. But there is a downside: it will work only with the 1992 version of X400, which has yet to be widely implemented by vendors. The specification is based on the File Transfer Body Part 15, which was one of the revisions included in the 1992 update of X400. While the 1988 version allowed message attachments to be included, it did not specify how this should be done, resulting in incompatibility between different vendors’ implementations. File Transfer Body Part works by identifying the applications that created the attached files, and the Association’s testing system required the receiving system to identify the application correctly, and then access the data. More tests are to be carried out to analyse whether it is possible to read the data when the application cannot be identified, and to see whether message attachments can be sent via an intermediate message system from a third vendor. The group says that, further down the line, it wants to broaden its efforts to include Internet and proprietary messaging systems, with the ultimate goal of developing specifications that support seamless file transfer, regardless of the messaging system being employed. The test was carried out by the Association’s Message Attachment Work Group, which was set up early last year, and the group will now submit the specification to members for endorsement: if they approve it, the specification will be submitted to the relevant standards bodies for consideration. AT&T Corp, France Telecom Transpac, Hewlett-Packard Co, Infonet Software Solutions, Lotus Development Corp, MaXware AS, Microsoft Corp, Nexor Ltd, Novell Inc, and Worldtalk Corp – all of which were involved in the testing – have already announced their intention to develop products supporting the specification.
