HTTP: The Definitive Guide

FrontPage Server Extensions for Publishing Support

FrontPage (commonly referred to as FP) is a versatile web authoring and publishing toolkit provided by Microsoft Corp. The original idea for FrontPage (FrontPage 1.0) was conceived in 1994, at Vermeer Technologies, Inc., and was dubbed the first product to combine web site management and creation into a single, unified tool. Microsoft purchased Vermeer and shipped FrontPage 1.1 in 1996. The latest version, FrontPage Version 2002, is the sixth version in the line and a core part of the Microsoft Office suite.

FrontPage Server Extensions

As part of the “publish anywhere” strategy, Microsoft released a set of server-side software called FrontPage Server Extensions (FPSE). These server-side components integrate with the web server and provide the necessary translation between the web site and the client running FrontPage (and other clients that support these extensions).

Our primary interest lies in the publishing protocol between the FP clients and FPSE. This protocol provides an example of designing extensions to the core services available in HTTP without changing HTTP semantics.

The FrontPage publishing protocol implements an RPC layer on top of the HTTP POST request. This allows the FrontPage client to send commands to the server to update documents on the web site, perform searches, collaborate amongst the web authors, etc. Figure 19-1 gives an overview of the communication.

Figure 19-1. FrontPage publishing architecture

The web ...