JES2RSS, or JES2FTP with RSS, provides a widely supported mechanism to publish report
contents and enables notification of the new items through RSS clients.
What is RSS or 'Web Feed'?
RSS stands for 'Really Simple Syndication', and it has become one of the hottest
and most widely supported content publication technologies. RSS 2.0, is the current
standard that is most widely used and supported.
A Web Feed file is an XML file that contains a list of items and links to contents
that are in the feed. When a web publisher, like JES2RSS, has a new item to publish
it creates the report contents and stores it on a server and then it goes to the
RSS server and creates or updates the XML Web Feed file
When a user subscribes to a Web Feed using an RSS reader, the reader will check
the Web Feed file for new items. It might check every few minutes if the feed is
expected to be update frequently, or maybe only once a day for rarely updated feeds.
The key point is that the 'RSS Reader Client' keeps track of the Web Feeds the user
is subscribing to, not the host server. Within the bounds of the web site
security, users are free to subscribe or unsubscribe to Web Feeds/Reports.
This publication model is well suited for business report publication. As the mainframe
applications generate reports, JES2RSS stores them on servers, and then publishes
them for user to retrieve at their convenience. An individual report might be published
in multiple Web Feeds. For example, one report might be published to a Web Feed
specific to the report as well as to a Web Feed for all reports from the particular
business application.
How is RSS different from Email distribution?
With Email distribution, the entire report is distributed to each recipient for
their use. Email is certainly a very good method to distribute reports where the
recipient needs their own personal copy and needs to be notified of new published
reports.
There are some downsides to email distribution. First is that legitimate and unwanted
missives can clutter a recipients in-box. The endless stream of emails from coworkers,
friends, mailing lists, newsletters and of course SPAM can make it very difficult
to know what should be kept and what is trash. SPAM filters can easily be set to
silently filter out reports that you actually need, and you'll never know that you
missed a report. With RSS, new items are already filed into corresponding folders,
and only items/reports that you need are downloaded when you need them.
With email distribution, if a report is intended for multiple users, it is send
multiple times. Because the email sender controls the addressing each time a new
user needs a report, there is a maintenance issue on the mainframe. Someone has
to update a mailing list somewhere. With RSS, the user subscribes or un-subscribes
to reports on their own (within the security bounds of the web server).
With email delivery it is easy to add a new user to receive 'future' reports.
However, if there is a need for a new user to see, for example, the last ten reports
or even the last one report, this can be a problem. With RSS, when new users
subscribe to a Web Feed, they have access to all of the previous reports that are
stored on the server.
How is RSS different from FTP distribution?
With FTP distribution, the report is stored on an FTP server. This is a very good
solution for archiving reports and to make a report available to a large number
of users. But with standard FTP distribution it is up to the user to check back
on the server for new reports, and they may only have a file date to tell them what
is new. An email notice can be sent with a link to the new report, but as with email
distribution, this notice can get lost in the clutter.
JES2RSS uses the FTP protocol for publishing report contents as well as updating
the RSS Feed File. The RSS Feed files contain much more information that enables
the RSS Reader/client to keep track of what is new and what needs to be downloaded.
What is an RSS reader?
What an RSS reader does is retrieve the RSS Feed File using standard HTTP communications.
It then looks to see if there are any new items since the last time it checked.
The new items are then added to its new item list. In addition, and depending on
the client software, the main report contents might or might not be retrieved and
downloaded at that time.
You probably already have an least one RSS reader on your system. Most popular web
browsers support RSS feeds, or point you to 'plug ins' for Web Feed processing.
Microsoft's Outlook 2007 supports RSS feeds, and to the end user, they act like
mini in-boxes for the various feeds.
There is probably no new software that needs to be installed or 'rolled out' to
the users to start using RSS Web Feed publications.
What is an RSS Server?
You don't need a special RSS server. From the client side, the access is standard
HTTP. In short, the user's client is simply going to retrieve an XML file from
the server instead of an HTML (or other) file. Your HTTP server can and is an RSS
server without modification.
From the publication side, we need FTP access to the directories that overlap the
HTTP server. This is because JES2RSS uses FTP to store the report contents and then
create or update the RSS Web Feed file. Generally, this access is through a secure
port from behind your firewall.
You don't need any additional software. If you have an HTTP web server and can enable
FTP, you are ready to go.
What Next?
Check out out sample RSS feeds:
here.