Exchange API - a brief history of what's around and what won't be....

  • Article

So in all my years at Microsoft, as email has become more and more important in peoples live, the Messaging product groups over the years have also tried to keep on top of things by developing programming interfaces to help application developers give more functionality within their processes and applications. Did you know that in the last 20 years, Microsoft have come out with about 42 different sets of API to service the developer community!!

 

Lets take a step back and remember what's been around, what's gonna get shelved as well as whats coming!

   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
   
   
   
 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
 
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

* Replaced by New Management API
These will be Exchange management tasks written as Exchange 12 Monad cmdlets

** Replaced by E12 Agent/Transport API
This will be a new Managed Code SMTP stack which will allow for clear disctinction between SMTP protocol events and mail routing events.
SMTP events (onHeloCommand, OnEndOfHeaders, OnDisconnect)
Mail routing events (OnSubmittedMessage, onRoutedMessage)

*** Replaced by Web Services for Exchange/ASP.NET
Good Visual Studio.Net integration, replaces many commands fropm webdav, cdo and OWA
 

Exchange will use the same apis that are exposed to development and all api's will be unified into:
- mail transport
- pim data storage
- exchange managent - monad

The Developer impact on this means that everything is rewritten in managed code with great VS.NEt integration. The next generation will be drastic and we'll be cutting a lot of those 42 apis in future versions so there may be breaking changes possible within the next 5 years, older apis may/will not be supported.