SUMMARY
This article outlines the support policy for using various
Exchange application programming interfaces in a Microsoft .NET Framework
application. This article applies to all versions and service packs of both
Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5 and Microsoft Exchange 2000
Server.
Microsoft is committed to providing the ability to
programmatically access Exchange 2000 Server by using the latest available .NET
technologies. If you build a .NET Framework application, the supported options
for accessing Exchange data are:
- WWW Distributed Authoring and Versioning (WebDAV) through
HTTP requests and responses.
- Collaboration Data Objects (CDO) for Exchange 2000 Server
(CDOEX) and Exchange OLE DB provider (ExOLEDB) through an interop
assembly.
- Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI).
- Collaboration Data Objects for Exchange Management
(CDOEXM).
If the .NET application assemblies reside directly on the
Exchange server, Microsoft recommends building the application by using CDOEX
and ExOLEDB. If the .NET application assemblies do not reside directly on the
Exchange Server, Microsoft recommends using WebDAV.
For .NET Framework
applications that send mail without using Exchange Server as the transport,
Microsoft CDO for Windows 2000 (CDOSYS) can be used through an interop
assembly. However, Microsoft recommends using
System.Web.Mail.
System.Web.Mail is a managed wrapper to CDOSYS that enables you to construct and
send messages by using the CDOSYS message component. The mail message is
delivered either through the SMTP mail service that is built into Microsoft
Windows 2000 or through an arbitrary SMTP server.
CDO 1.2
x and MAPI are
not supported in a .NET Framework environment. For CDO
1.2
x and MAPI type functionality, use one of the
supported access methods mentioned in the "Summary" section.
For .NET Framework applications that must send mail
without using Exchange Server as the transport,
System.Web.Mail is a good option. However, Microsoft Collaboration CDOSYS can
also be used through an interop assembly.
CDO
1.2
x and MAPI are not supported in a .NET Framework
environment.