Introducing the Exchange 2010 Beta SDKs
Last modified: December 07, 2012
Applies to: Exchange Server 2010
By Thom Randolph
The Exchange Developer Documentation team is pleased to introduce the new SDKs for Microsoft Exchange Server 2010. While the product team has been adding cool new features to use in your applications, we have been documenting those features and working to make the SDKs easier to use. In this article, I’ll describe the major developer-focused changes in Exchange 2010, as well as introduce the new SDK structure. We hope you find all the bright and shiny new features useful!
What’s New for Developers in Exchange 2010 Beta
Exchange Server 2010 Beta adds important new features that you can take advantage of in your custom applications. We’ve added substantially to the Exchange Web Services features and programmability, and added a new Delivery Agent to the transport agents repertoire, and a vCard text converter API. As Exchange administrators and developers embrace the Windows PowerShell environment, Exchange 2010 continues to add commands and features like Remote PowerShell. And last, but not least, Exchange 2010 simplifies and improves storage organization and replication technologies, which has downstream effects on backup and restore applications.
The Exchange Web Services Managed API 1.0 is a new way to use Exchange Web Services in your Microsoft .NET applications. The custom-designed proxy library can be redistributed with your application for simple installation and easy maintenance, and provides a programming environment that is easier to work with than raw XML or generated proxy class libraries. For more information, see the Exchange Web Services Managed API 1.0 SDK.
Exchange 2010 Web services include many new features, including important changes to user configuration, mail tips, message tracking, calendar and contact sharing, meeting room availability, time zones, service configuration, and Unified Messaging. A new SOAP-based Autodiscover service has been introduced and the Unified Messaging Web service is now available as a built-in part of Exchange Web Services. For more information, see the Exchange Server 2010 Web Services SDK.
Exchange Transport Agents have been expanded to include on-delivery agents. Delivery agents are called when the message is being delivered, and are controlled with the Transport.Delivery type. Exchange Server 2010 also includes a new VCard content converter namespace, ContentTypes.vCard. For more information, see the Exchange Server 2010 Transport Agents SDK.
Exchange 2010 makes significant changes to the mailbox database storage architecture. Exchange 2007 replication technologies are replaced by the new Database Mobility features, allowing for more flexible, available, and resilient Exchange storage. To accommodate current storage architectures, Exchange 2010 does not include storage groups. Because Exchange 2010 does not support streaming backups, you might need to make significant change to your backup and restore applications to achieve full compatibility with Exchange 2010. For more information, see the VSS backup and restore evaluation criteria.
Exchange 2010 includes an updated version of Windows PowerShell, and many new and updated PowerShell commands.
Introducing the New SDKs
While the product team has been improving the APIs, we have been working to make our content easier to use. For earlier product releases, all the developer-focused documentation was included in a single SDK. For Exchange 2010, we’re going with a modular approach to SDK documentation by publishing separate SDKs for each technology area.
The following documentation sets are available for Exchange 2010 Beta:
We hope that by publishing smaller SDKs, we make it easier for you to find and use the information that you need to develop your applications. Please feel free to provide feedback by using the documentation feedback mechanisms that are available.