Looking to implement a shared calendar system w/ Linux backend. What do I need? LDAP?

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ZeroX

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I have pretty much zero experience in this realm of server software. I have no idea where to start, even. Will LDAP satisfy this requirement? If not, what do I need? And will any old calendar reader suffice (i.e. Outlook, Ximian, etc)?

Thanks for any info!
 
Well you can get some web based calanders for free. The only exchange-esq calander i know of for linux costs $$$.
 
Well, I have a client that would like to do a shared scheduling system a la Exchange/Outlook. This has to have alternatives, and I'm NOT going with Exchange.
 
Oracle also makes an excellent product called "Collaberation Suite" (what a mouthful). It ties together email, calendaring, voicemail and fax. Everything is stored in a Oracle DB which means you can do some pretty cool things with it. For the calendaring piece, rather than reinventing the wheel they bought out Steltor which made CorporateTime, one of the best stand alone calendaring systems. They've also developed an Outlook Connector so that your clients and management can use Outlook if thats what they know without you being forced to use Exchange on the backend. If your looking to do this on the cheap, there unfortunately aren't to many Open Source products that can compete feature for feature with Exchange. There are some potential projects popping up but that doesn't help you now. There are some great web interface only open source group calendars out there, some see that as a good thing, some despise that and want the win32 app on their desktop. My advice is to go with Oracle if you can afford it.

Also, just for reference, LDAP is a directory service, basically a database for your users, groups, etc. It lets you centralize your user/password and resource management.
 
jlee123 is right. Oracle Calendar (the calendaring portion of Oracle Collaboration Suite) is a pretty nice calendaring system. We're getting ready to roll out Calendar at work to replace our aging Steltor CorporateTime setup. That's my task next Tuesday.

The database doesn't have to be an Oracle database. We're running OCAL and OCAS (the web interface) in stand-alone mode, which uses a database internal to Calendar and not tied to Oracle databases. We're also using LDAP to handle authentication for Calendar. There's some minor annoyances with using LDAP in our system due to some poor forethought on our part (before my time) with LDAP, but it's not really a big deal.

What's nice about OCAL is it's basically identical to Steltor CorporateTime, but the installer was wrapped in Oracle's Universal Installer, which increased the bullshit level of the install by a factor of ten. However, Steltor CorporateTime was the only real available upgrade path from Netscape Calendar, which we were running before.

I'm surprised there aren't any open-source projects out there with really nice calendaring functionality. I'm guessing the closest thing will be Evolution, but eh...Seems like an interesting project if someone wanted to take it on.
 
Wow, I had always assumed there was an open standard that everybody followed to put something like this together. Thanks for all the info, guys.

Unfortunately, OCal is out of the question - we're talking about a 20-person office! It's just not worth it.

Do you have any links to those OSS projects that look "promising?"
Also, do you have links to the web-only projects?
 
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