The Jakarta Project James - Java Apache Mail Enterprise Server

James

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What is it?

The Java Apache Mail Enterprise Server (a.k.a. Apache James) is a 100% pure Java SMTP and POP3 Mail server and NNTP News server designed to be a complete and portable enterprise mail engine solution based on currently available open protocols.

James is also a mail application platform.
The James project hosts the Apache Mailet API, and James provides an implementation of this mail application platform API.

James is based upon the Apache Avalon application framework. (For more information about Avalon, please go to http://jakarta.apache.org/avalon)

James requires Java 2 (either JRE 1.3 or 1.4 as of 2.0a3).

news

Find out how to use James with sendmail
We've added a HOW TO document explaining how to configure sendmail to route all mail through James, read it Here.

releases

Latest and Stable: james-2.1
James v2.1 is the current release. Both binary and source distributions are available.

This release has many enhancements and bug fixes over the previous release. See the Change Log for a detailed list of changes. Some of the earlier defects could turn a James mail server into an Open Relay. All users of James 2.0a3 and earlier are urged to upgrade to James v2.1 as soon as possible.

For details see the Official Announcement.

Any bugs found in James are dealt with promptly. Please provide feedback on the james-user and james-dev mailing lists.

Get your hands on the latest versions..
We put significant milestones, and potential release candidates in the download area.
Whilst the quality of these versions cannot be guaranteed they may contain important bug fixes and cool new features.

Design Objectives

These are some of the currently implemented features:

Complete portability Apache James is be a 100% pure Java application based on the Java 2 platform and the JavaMail 1.2 API.

Protocol abstraction Unlike other mail engines, protocols are seen only like "communication languages" ruling comunications between clients and the server. Apache James is not be tied to any particular protocol but follow an abstracted server design (like JavaMail did on the client side)

Complete solution the mail system is able to handle both mail transport and storage in a single server application. Apache James works alone without the need for any other server or solution.

Mailet support Apache James supports the Apache Mailet API. A Mailet is a discrete piece of mail-processing logic which is incorporated into a Mailet-compliant mail-server's processing. This easy-to-write, easy-to-use pattern allows developers to build powerful customized mail systems. Examples of the services a Mailet might provide include: a mail-to-fax or mail-to-phone transformer, a filter, a language translator, a mailing list manager, etc. Several Mailets are included in the JAMES distribution (see Configuration).

Resource abstraction Like protocols, resources are abstracted and, accessed through defined interfaces (JavaMail for transport, JDBC for spool storage or user accounts in RDBMS's, Apache Mailet API). The server is highly modular and reuse solutions from other projects.

Secure and multi-threaded design Based on the technology developed for the Apache JServ servlet engine, Apache James has a careful, security-oriented, full multi-threaded design, to allow performance, scalability and mission-critical use.

Anything else you may want if you help us write it :-)

Feature Status
Item Status (v2.0a3) Since First released
SMTP server Stable 1.0 0.95
Mailet Engine Stable 1.2 0.95
FileSystem mailboxes/spool Stable 1.2 1.0
RDBMS mailboxes/spool Stable 1.2 1.2
POP3 server Stable 1.1 1.0
RDBMS - Users Stable 1.2.1 1.2.1
LDAP Support - Users Experimental 1.2 1.2
TLS Support - POP3 Experimental 1.2 1.2
Remote Manager Stable 1.0 1.0
TLS Support - Remote Manager Stable 1.2 1.2
NNTP server Experimental 1.2 1.2
FetchPOP Experimental 2.1 2.1

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