Summary

In this chapter, two approaches for dealing with the Jakarta Commons libraries were presented. It's easy to envision much more sophisticated approaches, with complex clients performing specialized operations. For example, an FTP client could synchronize between a remote server and a local file system, or an NNTP client might generate automated status posts.

As you can see, resource management quickly becomes important when working with these protocols. A connection to a service is an important resource, as is the data that is transmitted. In the next chapter, a library that provides additional scalability and availability for database connectivity through the use of a database connection pool will be examined.

Project Ideas

Use Net components in conjunction with the FileUpload package (described in Chapter 2) to allow users to post files to an FTP server via a browser.

Build web browser interfaces to the various protocols. Some of these (such as Telnet) imply state to be presented to the user; others (such as Finger) do not. How does this affect building a web interface?

Try using TFTP and ZeroConf (also known as Rendezvous) to build a simple file local network sharing application.