Specifications

Chapter 1 Understanding Address Book Server 11
Open Standards
Address Book Server is based on open standards, and is built upon a strong foundation
of proven standards and familiar technologies, including:
HTTP (RFC 2616): HTTP serves as the method of communication between the Address
Book clients and the server.
WebDAV Class 3 (RFC 4918): WebDAV serves as Address Book Server’s method for
reading and writing vCard les on the server.
vCard (RFC 2426): A vCard is the data storage model for individual contacts.
CardDAV (draft-ietf-vcarddav-carddav-04): CardDAV is an extension of WebDAV that
provides features specic to address books (like searches of address book individuals
and groups).
For information about these and other related standards, see “Standards Documents”
on page 29.
Service Scalability
Because the technology is based on web standards, Address Book Server has all the
scalability of Mac OS X Server’s world-class web services.
As your organization grows, Address Book Server can take advantage of standard
scalability technologies such as network load distributors, storage networks, and
distributed directory servers. To maximize service scalability and minimize loss of
productivity from service outages, Address Book Server is optimized for use with
Xsan—Apple’s clustered le system. With Xsan, multiple address book servers can read
and write to the same volume, making it easy to increase performance and improve
service reliability by scaling for additional servers.
Directory and Client Integration
Address Book Server is integrated with Mac OS X Server’s foundation technologies.
Address Book users are authenticated from Open Directory and Kerberos. The vCard
les are at les that can integrate with any storage system, local or networked.
To use Address Book Server on a client, you need to bind the client to Address Book
Server. Before binding a client computer, make sure Address Book Server is running
(see “Starting or Stopping Address Book Server” on page 15 ).