Re: [Evolution-hackers] Exchange 5.5 - network reverse engineering underway (MAPI, Nspi)

[Luke Kenneth Casson Leighton <lkcl lkcl net>]

On Tue, Feb 01, 2005 at 07:58:18PM +0100, Jules Colding wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Why dont you use MAPI directly in Evolution? 

 with due respect - not a chance.  i'm interested only in
 taking EVERY customer of microsoft's away, not just the ones
 that will be able to convince management to run a third party
 non-microsoft-sanctioned plugin into their mission-critical
 known-to-be-bloody-unreliable company's exchange server
 infrastructure.

> Well not MAPI itself, but
> the CORBA wrapper for MAPI (www.omesc.com).
 
 ooooooo :)

 let's find OUT!

 what i am looking for is a similarity between the functions i'm
 implementing and something in brutus...

 hmm.... NT_Service/servant_impl/IMsgStureS_impl.cpp looks hopeful...

 ah ha! this looks familiar:

	SPropTagArray *tags = NULL;
	hr = msg_store_->GetProps(tags, flags, &count, &props);

 SPropTagArray is present in that Nspi IDL file i sent.
 
 hmmm... okay.... okay.

 brutus is basically a proxy server.

 it therefore has a server front-end (in a documented format)
 and a client back-end (fronting into MAPI).

 therefore, whilst it is useful to aid understanding of what is going
 on, it is not entirely suitable for what i am looking for.

 if brutus also claimed to have alternative back-ends, implemented
 at the MAPI interface layer, _then_ it would be suitable, because i
 could take that code and place it behind the Nspi and the EMSMDB
 interfaces , and run
 Outlook 2000 - unmodified - and have it talk to a complete free
 software exchange 5.5 compatible server.

 that's my goal.

 instead, i have found something called otlkcon which implements on the
 _client_ side a "replacement" for the MAPI api - sort-of.

 outlook clients still talk "mapi" via this MAPI store plugin,
 so it implements a MAPI store, and off it goes.

 i'm hoping to understand enough of this stuff at some point
 in order to be able to have a hope of blatting a few pieces
 from some of the plethora of projects around...

 l.