The Sun Java System Calendar Server was

Sun The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared rad ...

's calendar (

scheduling A schedule or a timetable, as a basic time-management tool, consists of a list of times at which possible tasks, events, or actions are intended to take place, or of a sequence of events in the chronological order in which such things are i ...

) server. The currently available version is 6.3 which is now part of the

Sun Java System Communications Suite Sun Java System Communications Suite is a collection of "Industrial-Strength" software services from Sun Microsystems. The supported platforms are: Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Solaris and Windows Server. Since Oracle acquired Sun in 2010, collecti ...

. Users can access their calendar and task list items using a variety of clients. Web browsers will be able to access Calendar data using

Sun Java System Communications Express The Sun Java System Communications Express provides an integrated web-based communication and collaboration client to the Sun Java System Communications Suite. It consists of three client modules: Calendar, Address Book, and Mail. The Calendar and A ...

as an HTML-based client.

Microsoft Outlook Microsoft Outlook is a personal information manager software system from Microsoft, available as a part of the Microsoft Office and Microsoft 365 software suites. Though primarily an email client, Outlook also includes such functions as c ...

users can access their calendar data using the

Sun Java System Connector for Microsoft Outlook The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared rad ...

, which is not yet compatible with Outlook 2010.

Mozilla Thunderbird Mozilla Thunderbird is a free and open-source cross-platform email client, personal information manager, news client, RSS and chat client developed by the Mozilla Foundation and operated by subsidiary MZLA Technologies Corporation. The projec ...

users can add fully functional calendar access to the Sun Calendar Server to the email software by adding the

Mozilla Lightning The Lightning project, announced on December 22, 2004, and developed by the Mozilla Foundation, produces an extension that adds calendar and scheduling functionality to the Mozilla Thunderbird mail and newsgroup client and SeaMonkey internet ...

extension for WCAP (

Web Calendar Access Protocol Web Calendar Access Protocol (WCAP) is a protocol for remote client-server calendar access and scheduling based on the XML, HTTP, iCalendar, and vCard Internet standards. WCAP was created for use with the product that eventually became Sun Java Sys ...

). Finally, starting in 2008, the

6 will include an AJAX-based Web client which will provide better "thick client-like" user interactions. A useful feature of Calendar Server is the notification service. This service will send an e-mail or an SMS to the calendar owner. These messages are sent to the calendar owner if he/she has been invited to an appointment or as a reminder of an upcoming appointment. These reminders are directed to a person's cell phone by using their phone carrier's email address assigned to their phone. The notification services are also useful for developers to implement their own software applications. Calendar reminders and change events are published to a

Java Message Service The Jakarta Messaging API (formerly Java Message Service or JMS API) is a Java application programming interface (API) for message-oriented middleware. It provides generic messaging models, able to handle the producer–consumer problem, that can ...

using Sun Java System Message Queue. Developers may use the WCAP interface to write their own applications which access calendars, tasks, and look up "free busy" information on users. This interface returns calendar data in a number of formats including

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. ...

and

iCalendar The Internet Calendaring and Scheduling Core Object Specification (iCalendar) is a media type which allows users to store and exchange calendaring and scheduling information such as events, to-dos, journal entries, and free/busy information, a ...

JSON JSON (JavaScript Object Notation, pronounced ; also ) is an open standard file format and data interchange format that uses human-readable text to store and transmit data objects consisting of attribute–value pairs and arrays (or other s ...

(JavaScript Object Notation) format was added to support AJAX development in the latest patch of Calendar Server 6.3.

History and use

Sun's Java System Calendar Server has a long history, drawing technology from Sun Internet Calendar Server (SICS) and

Netscape Calendar Server Netscape Communications Corporation (originally Mosaic Communications Corporation) was an American independent computer services company with headquarters in Mountain View, California and then Dulles, Virginia. Its Netscape (web browser), Netsc ...

(NCS). The software has undergone several name changes; in addition to the above, it has also been marketed as ''iPlanet Calendar Server'' and ''Sun ONE Calendar Server''. The code base has been carried on throughout these name changes with only feature/packaging enhancements and bug fixes. Since 2003, the Calendar Server has been included as part of Sun's

Java Enterprise System Sun Java System was a brand used by Sun Microsystems to market computer software. The Sun Java System brand superseded the Sun ONE brand in September 2003. There are two major suites under this brand, the Sun Java Enterprise System suite of infrast ...

, a collection of infrastructure software applications and tools. It is also available as part of the

, a smaller collection of messaging and collaboration services that includes

Sun Java System Messaging Server Oracle Communications Messaging Server is Oracle's messaging (email) server software. The software was obtained by Oracle as part of the company's acquisition of Sun in 2010. Oracle's Messaging Server could potentially be the most widely deployed ...

Sun Java System Instant Messaging Server The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared rad ...

, and

. Supporting server software for the Calendar Server includes

Sun Java System Directory Server The Sun Java System Directory Server is a discontinued LDAP directory server and DSML server written in C and originally developed by Sun Microsystems. The Java System Directory Server is a component of the Java Enterprise System. Earlier iterat ...

Sun Java System Access Manager Sun Java System Access Manager is Sun Microsystems' web access management product and a component of Sun Java Enterprise System. Sun Java System Access Manager provides single sign-on, federation A federation (also known as a federal s ...

, and

Sun Java System Web Server Oracle iPlanet Web Server (OiWS) is a web server designed for medium and large business applications. Previous versions were marketed as Netscape Enterprise Server, iPlanet Web Server, Sun ONE Web Server, and Sun Java System Web Server. Oracl ...

. The supporting software is included in the Communications Suite bundle with limited-use license rights. Calendar Express was the original web-based client interface for the Calendar Server. This

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaScri ...

client allowed Calendar owners to create appointments, invite others to meetings, and to subscribe to other calendars. The Calendar Express web-client was dropped from support starting with Sun Java System Calendar Server 6.3. This client functionality has been replaced by

. The Calendar Server version 6.3 is supported on multiple

operating systems An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ef ...

including Sun's Solaris and

Red Hat Enterprise Linux Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) is a Commercial software, commercial Open-source software, open-source Linux distribution developed by Red Hat for the commerce, commercial market. Red Hat Enterprise Linux is released in server versions for x86-6 ...

HP-UX HP-UX (from "Hewlett Packard Unix") is Hewlett Packard Enterprise's proprietary implementation of the Unix operating system, based on Unix System V (initially System III) and first released in 1984. Current versions support HPE Integrit ...

and Microsoft Windows have since been dropped from support starting with version 6.3.

External links

Sun Java System Calendar Server

Sun Java System Communications Suite

Mozilla's Lightning extension for Thunderbird
{{Calendaring software Calendaring software

Sun Java System Calendar Server The Sun Java System Calendar Server was Sun's calendar (scheduling) server. The currently available version is 6.3 which is now part of the Sun Java System Communications Suite. Users can access their calendar and task list items using a variety ...