Chapter 12: The Exchange Event Service

Chapter 12: The Exchange Event Service

Introduction

From its inception, Exchange was designed to be a platform for more than just electronic mail. Groupware always featured in the design goals for Exchange. Alas, reality and good intentions have not been a 100% match in this area, and Exchange V4.0 and V5.0 never quite delivered an extendible base for application development. Exchange V5.5 unveils the Scripting Agent, a process to allow server-side application code to be executed when events occur in folders, code that can be used to automate business processes and build real groupware and applications. Microsoft hopes that the Scripting Agent will close a gap between Exchange and Lotus Notes, which commentators have always regarded as having a lead in terms of groupware and document routing capabilities.

Server-side execution is not an unknown quantity for Exchange installations. Outlook Web Access uses exactly the same approach to execute the code in active pages to generate content for web browsers. And like Outlook Web Access, the Scripting Agent is built around CDO (Collaborative Data Objects), a reusable set of messaging and calendaring objects that allow code written in VBscript or JScript to access components within Exchange.

Events and Folders

The combination of public folders and purpose-built electronic forms was usually positioned as the cornerstone of Exchange V4.0 and V5.0 groupware applications. However, several difficulties became apparent with this approach once Exchange deployments began. Public folders are excellent repositories for static information but are less capable when you want those repositories to...

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Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5: Planning, Design, and Implementation

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Chapter 12: The Exchange Event Service

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