J-Integra for Exchange vs Other Products
One thing to note about products offering an interface to Exchange is the mechanism by which they connect to and access data in Exchange. There are 3 known ways to do this:
- MAPI
- CDO
- WebDAV
MAPI offers the most comprehensive interface and is the native language of Exchange. However, MAPI involves mostly low-level C/C++ programming, therefore, not the easiest to use. CDO is a wrapper to MAPI and exposes MAPI data in object-oriented fashion, making it easier to use than pure MAPI. WebDAV is "web-based" and uses xml over http to connect to Exchange. CDO/MAPI connects directly to Exchange using TCP/IP, hence, faster than WebDAV's http-based connection. While Microsoft has confirmed support for CDO/MAPI, it is de-emphasizing support for WebDAV in future versions of Exchange. Refer to the following article for more information:
http://msexchangeteam.com/archive/2005/09/15/410941.aspx
J-Integra for Exchange is based on CDO/MAPI.