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From: dboyes@brazos.rice.edu (David Boyes)
Newsgroups: comp.mail.misc
Subject: Re: Internet <-> PROFS
Message-ID: <1991Feb28.030746.12494@rice.edu>
Date: 28 Feb 91 03:07:46 GMT
References: <1991Feb27.111508.22892@watserv1.waterloo.edu> <1991Feb27.155304.28499@rice.edu> <1991Feb27.192807.16122@watserv1.waterloo.edu>
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In article <1991Feb27.192807.16122@watserv1.waterloo.edu> broehl@watserv1.waterloo.edu (Bernie Roehl) writes:
>Hmm.  I guess I misunderstood what PROFS is all about.  From what people
>have told me, there is no fully-interconnected set of sites running the
>PROFS software; it sounds as if PROFS is only used within a particular
>company, not to span company boundaries, and that you'd have to have a
>gateway for each PROFS island.  Is this correct?

Essentially. It's possible to span companies with PROFS if you
can arrange to coordinate system names and user information
between companies so that both machine names and user names
remain unique throughout the meshed systems. The trouble is, to
use PROFS you have to be *enrolled* by the system adminsitrator;
just having a userid on a machine that supports PROFS isn't enough.
Some BITNET sites use PROFS as a primary mail agent, but they're
rare and far between. Most people with VM systems and any sense
on BITNET use RiceMAIL. 

PROFS does have some nice features, though. It has a GREAT
calendar and meeting scheduling module; that's the only reason we
run it here. It also has nice document storage and retrieval
functions for DCA formatted documents. We beat people who try to
use it for mail soundly with large wooden badgers....8-).

>(Although I read something about the X.400 people interfacing to PROFS...?)

IBM announced it as part of their OSI gateway package. It still
isn't very pretty, and it's expensive. PUMP works better, from
all accounts. 

>	Bernie Roehl, University of Waterloo Electrical Engineering Dept
>	Mail: broehl@sunee.waterloo.edu OR broehl@sunee.UWaterloo.ca
-- 
David Boyes       |The three most dangerous things in the world:
dboyes@rice.edu   |  1) a programmer with a soldering iron,
                  |  2) a hardware type with a program patch, and
"Delays, delays!" |  3) a user with an idea.