Start using web services in Exchange 2013
Published: December 18, 2012
Learn about the fundamental concepts that are important for creating EWS applications for Exchange 2013.
Applies to: Exchange Online | Exchange Server 2013
In this article
Fundamental EWS concepts
In this section
Additional resources
Exchange Web Services (EWS) provides access to the information stored on your Exchanger server, and enables you to create custom client applications that you can use to manage that information according to the requirements of your organization. While the range of EWS applications that you can create is practically infinite, certain fundamental concepts apply for any type of application.
You can use a couple of different methods to access information from an Exchange server. The fundamental concepts apply regardless of the method that you choose; however, they are implemented differently based on how you make your calls to Exchange. The following are the methods that you can use:
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The EWS Managed API. This API provides an object model that puts a layer of abstraction over EWS to make it easier to use from your managed client application.
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Direct calls to EWS using standard web programming technologies to make SOAP XML requests and process SOAP XML responses.
For information about selecting the appropriate development technology for your application, see Current development technologies for Exchange.
You need to be familiar with the fundamental concepts listed in the following table as you design your EWS client applications.
|
Concept |
Description |
|---|---|
|
EWS client access |
Exchange administrators can limit access to EWS globally for the entire organization, for individual users, and to individual client applications. You must configure access for EWS; otherwise, the web service will respond with HTTP 403: Forbidden. For information about how to configure you Exchange server to service EWS requests, see Client application access to EWS in Exchange 2013. |
|
Autodiscover |
You can use the Autodiscover service to automatically configure your client application to access the correct Client Access server for an email account. For more information about using Autodiscover, see Autodiscover for Exchange 2013. |
|
Certificate validation |
Unless an administrator has assigned a valid X509 security certificate that traces a root certificate to an Exchange server, the server will use a self-signed X509 certificate to authenticate EWS requests. Depending on the development technology that you are using, you may need to create a certificate validation callback method that will validate the server certificate. The EWS Managed API, for example, requires the use of a validation callback method. For an example that shows you how to create a certificate callback method, see How to: Validate a server certificate for the EWS Managed API. |
