News
Toolkit Turns Exchange Data, Features into Web Services
- By Scott Bekker
- 04/10/2002
NEW ORLEANS -- Developers at Microsoft's 10th annual TechEd conference received a toolkit to help them turn the features and data in Exchange Server into XML Web services.
"Messaging, calendaring, contacts, those are the big key areas that people are using and storing and wanting to get access to," says Microsoft Exchange product manager Earnie Glazener. Most of the attention in the kit is devoted to turning that data into a service that then becomes available to other applications in the enterprise, Glazener said.
The CD-based kit, called the Microsoft Exchange 2000 Server XML Web Services Toolkit for Microsoft .NET, includes an Exchange SDK, a white paper for developing XML Web services that leverage Exchange, sample code, videos of developer presentations and a self-paced training course.
One kit component not related to Web services is the Exchange Workflow Designer. Previously, developers had to pay for Office XP Developer edition to get access to that tool. Now the workflow tool is free with the kit, which can be ordered for the price of shipping the CD.
Microsoft has a Web page for ordering the toolkit at microsoft.order-2.com/exenable/.
The entire kit is the second Web services toolkit for Exchange developers, but this one is much more polished and comprehensive than one delivered around the Microsoft Exchange Conference in October, Glazener said.
"[The first toolkit] only had a calendaring sample in it, and the code wasn't quite as clear as we wanted," Glazener said. The first developer enablement kit was about 30 percent to 40 percent Web services-focused, he estimated. "This one is like 90 or 95 percent Web services. The other bits are workflow."
About the Author
Scott Bekker is editor in chief of Redmond Channel Partner magazine.