[Evolution-hackers] Extended MAPI accessible in Evolution add-on

[Jules Colding <colding omesc com>]

Hi,

This is a short status report on the evolution-brutus (e-b for short)
add-on for Evolution 2.4. It is now in a state where I believe a wider
development audience could benefit from knowing about it.


What is e-b?
------------

e-b is an add-on to Evolution 2.4 which provides access to Extended MAPI
and therefore to Exchange 5.5, 2000 and 2003 on an equal basis. The
access is provided by a Brutus server, which is a proxy translating MAPI
request to/from corresponding CORBA requests. Brutus is distributed
under GPLv2 or later.

The core technology of Brutus is therefore a large set of appropriately
defined IDL constants, types and interfaces. The Brutus server
dynamically instantiates MAPI-wrapping CORBA objects on behalf of
clients.


And the difference to evolution-exchange is?
--------------------------------------------

e-b is totally different from the well-known evolution-exchange
component by not using WebDAV but CORBA and a mediating proxy server.
Both approaches has advantages and drawbacks and I will definitely *not*
venture into some flame war as to which is "best". 

That being said, I think it would be beneficial for the average
developer to have a rough, but hopefully balanced, idea of the main
functional differences:

1) WebDAV can be used to connect to Exchange 2000 and above. Exchange
5.5 is very poorly supported and not supported at all in
evolution-exchange.

2) evolution-exchange does not require any software installations on the
Windows side to be functional as long as IIS is running and support is
enabled in Exchange.

3) e-b requires the Brutus server to be installed on some Windows server
with the correct version of MAPI. e-b should not be installed on the
Exchange server itself, but you can if you will.

4) e-b does not require you to enable IIS/WebDAV. e-b can connect Brutus
clients to Exchange without any changes to most Exchange configurations.
As a rule of thumb - if Outlook works, so will e-b.

5) All MAPI properties are supported by Brutus, including PT_OBJECT ones
as well as MAPI notifications.


Status
------

The functional state of e-b is that it is capable of getting a reference
to a remote IMAPISession object and using it. e-b is haunted by ORBit2
segfaults (I can expand on that if anyone is interested) but those will
hopefully be addressed in the not so distant future.

You can get the latest Brutus release (0.9.14) here:

<http://www.omesc.com/content/downloads/index.php>

e-b build documentation is in "brutus/idl/products/evolution/2.4/docs"
and generic sample applications are in "brutus/idl/samples".

Feedback, comments and questions are welcome.


Best regards,
  jules