Items in the
Exchange store can be accessed remotely by using the
WebDAV protocol, defined in RFC 2518.
This protocol extends the
HTTP 1.1 protocol,
defined by RFC 2616, to provide additional methods and capabilities. It provides a means to
access both the contents of an item and an extensible set of associated properties. Some of the methods defined by the protocol are
the
MOVE Method, the COPY Method, the DELETE Method, and the MKCOL Method. The
encoding format
used to transfer item properties across the network is
XML, defined in the
World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) Recommendation REC-xml-20001006.
When a URL in the
Exchange store is
entered in a Web browser,
an
XML formatted
WebDAV protocol request is created and sent to the Microsoft® Exchange Server computer. When the server
receives the request, it verifies the credentials of the client and automatically parses the
XML for
the requested data. The server then builds an
XML
WebDAV protocol response
containing the appropriate properties and their values and sends the response back to the client. If the Web browser is able to parse
XML, an XSL style sheet can be applied to the
XML
response and the
data will be displayed in the browser. If the Web browser cannot parse
XML, the information is
displayed in HTML.
See Authentication and Security Using WebDAV for more information.
The following illustration shows how a client browser interacts with the
Exchange store
using
WebDAV.
.gif)
Microsoft Internet Explorer 5 and later provide the Microsoft XML (MSXML) Component Object Model (COM)
component, a powerful
XML parser and set of related tools.
The XMLHTTPRequest COM class integrates with MSXML COM objects to simplify the management of client-side
HTTP protocol requests and responses that contain
XML
bodies. The transformational capabilities of the MSXML component can easily cast the
response
XML data into HTML, which can then be displayed by the browser.
This section consists of the following topics.
Using the WebDAV Protocol
Constructing WebDAV Requests with XMLDOM
WebDAV Batch Methods
WebDAV Notifications
WebDAV Transactions
Authentication and Security Using WebDAV