Chapter 16: Exchange Server and XML

Overview

Extensible Markup Language (XML) has been one of the biggest buzzwords in the industry. XML provides an easy way to describe data and share it among applications. XML is finding its way into many applications such as Microsoft Office. If you have not learned about XML yet, you need to. Technologies such as XML Web services, Microsoft Biztalk Server, Microsoft Exchange Server, and Microsoft SQL Server all have XML support. Exchange Server 2000 directly supports XML, and Exchange Server 2003 continues this tradition. Regardless which version you use, you can use XML to get and set data in Exchange information stores directly.

I won't try to cover all aspects of XML in this chapter ”Microsoft Press publishes many good books on the topic. Instead, I'll discuss how to get, set, search, and format using Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) and XML data in Exchange Server. Because XML-based messaging solutions are typically used to access existing data, I will focus on querying for data and won't cover how to create complex XML documents from scratch.