Re: [Evolution] Evolution / Exchange 2007

[Paul Smith <psmith gnu org>]

On Wed, 2008-01-09 at 13:00 +0000, Wood, Barbara (ITIO-ISSO) wrote:
>     What do you mean by e-b?

Hi Barbara; I'm sure Jules will give you more info, but I thought I'd provide some background just to get your feet on solid ground.

Exchange supports two models of access: MAPI, which is a proprietary Microsoft protocol.  This is what Outlook etc. use to connect to Exchange.  And, OWA or the HTTP interface: this is what the Microsoft web access uses.

Because the latter is HTTP, an open protocol, initial versions of Exchange connectors for Evolution used this method; to the Exchange server, Evolution looks like a web access client.  The problem here is that Microsoft often changes the web interface from version to version, which is a support hassle for Evo.  Also problematic is that the web access can be clunky for some situations.

The "e-b" that Jules mentions is Evolution Brutus.  Brutus is a project to provide a CORBA (which is a standard protocol) interface to the proprietary MAPI protocol, so that any tool that can do CORBA can interact with MAPI servers like Exchange.  Evolution Brutus is a plugin for Evolution that lets it talk to Brutus (note this is not distributed with Evo, but is available separately).

As of today, E-B works BUT the trick is this: you need to install the Brutus part on a Windows machine.  The Brutus project is not trying to reverse-engineer the MAPI protocol; instead they run their translation software on a Windows machine and use Microsoft's MAPI DLL's directly.  Then the E-B plugin contacts the Brutus software running on the Windows machine.  So, if you're happy to set up Brutus on one of your Windows machines (it does NOT have to be the Exchange server) then your Evolution users can use the E-B plugin with Evolution.  You can find out more here: http://www.42tools.com/

The Evolution MAPI connector that Srini mentions is an Evolution plugin that can actually talk directly to MAPI: there's a project Openchange ( http://www.openchange.org/ ) that is reverse-engineering the MAPI protocol and the Evolution team is working on a plugin that uses this to talk to Exchange servers directly.  This is the project Srini was referring to.  It's still in early days right now.

So, your choices are to use E-B right now, installing the Brutus software on a Windows system, or wait until the Evo MAPI connector is finished (or at least further along).

HTH!

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