Web storage system – a short introduction

You may have heard a lot about the web storage system also known as the web store.

But what is it, and why should you care?

 Ok, here we go

The web storage system is a new place to store information.
It is a “smart data storage”. With smart I mean it can react to events, like saving to a folder.
There are three types of events, asynchronous, synchronous and system.
An asynchronous event fire after the item is saved, for example if you want to log something.
Synchronous events on the other hand, fires before the item is saved. This let you control if it should be saved.
System events let you know about events concerning the web storage system, like that the web storage has started.
It can hold any data file, so you can use it much like you use the file system. But you can also use it to make a collaboration application.
And that’s more likely what you’re going to do.
To do that the web storage system among other things supports workflow, security and an extensible schema.
Other good news is that your data could be accessed from almost anywhere. You can access it through web, file system or Outlook.
As a developer you may access the web store using ADO as you access your database, or using the new enhanced CDO.
(Or, if you want to, you can also use the old CDO)
But be aware that ADO and CDO is server side technology meaning that your code must run at the server.
To access the data from the web you could use any HTML 3.2 compatible browser, but if you use Internet Explorer 5 or newer,
you get more functionality. With IE you will get more “Outlook” feeling and the client will do more processing. This is
done with WebDAV, XML and XSL. You access items in the store with url’s like http://mail.domain.com/exchange/user/inbox/new mail.eml .
Another example is a public calendar in http://mail.domain.com/public/events. You can use this URL’s directly in your web pages.
The security is taken hand of at folder, item or the property level.
Access through the file system is achieved by Installable File System (IFS). On your Exchange Server you get a new drive, M.
You can choose to share the M: on your network, and thereby give your users access to the web store via the file system.
This can for example help giving older applications access to the web storage system. Or users may prefer Outlook 2000.
With Outlook 2000 the user don’t see much difference between Exchange 5.5 and Exchange 2000, but you should know that
Outlook 2000 doesn’t support multiple public top-level hierarchies. In Exchange 2000 you can have multiple public top-level hierarchies.
(In Exchange 5.5 you only had “All Public Folders” , with Exchange 2000 you can have additional trees.)
This can be used to shield applications from the public folders users’ access daily.