The Outlook Y-JBI: An E-Mail Based Approach to Prototyping the Joint Battlespace Infosphere

Abstract : One approach for rapidly implementing a prototype Joint Battlespace Infosphere (YJBI) publish and subscribe (P&S) system is to leverage the existing e-mail transport infrastructure. E-mail has the advantage of being standardized, pervasive, robust, and scalable. This Y-JBI is implemented though the peer-to-peer interaction of publisher and subscriber agents. These agent pass subscription requests, acknowledgements, and information objects to each other using Extensible Markup Language (XML) e-mail messages. Under this approach, Microsoft Exchange(Registered) is employed as the enterprise mail server with Microsoft Outlook(Registered) as the primary e-mail application servicing the JBI user. This system enables a direct flow of information from the publisher to subscriber-side fuselets that interface to Microsoft Office(Registered) planning tools.