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Oh no... (Score:4, Funny)
Another sign of the Apocalypse - and it's a doozy. I always figured hell would freeze over before Microsoft opened up something like the .pst specs.
Re:Oh no... (Score:5, Interesting)
(1) They feel that Outlook is genuinely capable of withstanding competition from the likes of TBird and other competitors, and to be fair, the quality of Outlook has improved a lot. .pst specs.
(2) They feel that opening Outlook's specs will give them access to iPhone app-store like ingenuity from the "crowd" (throw in your favorite buzzword here). Basically, let the hackers go at it and come up with neat little means to improve Outlook usability. If more products carry a "Works with MS Outlook" sticker, that can only be good for outlook (in one line of reasoning).
(3) All the old, seasoned outlook engineers have retired or died, and they're hoping that someone can figure out the
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Re:Oh no... (Score:5, Interesting)
Expanding on point 2, Microsoft may want to open up the MAPI specs a little more for the benefit of iPhones and the like. At $DAYJOB, we have Exchange 2003 and a number of users with iPhones and we've seen some bizarre things happen on occasion with calendar entries (weirdness when one of a number of repeating appointments is changed or cancelled and not showing up as changed or removed on the iPhone, that kind of thing). While I'm prepared to believe that it's partially to do with Apple testing more thoroughly with and developing against Exchange 2K7, I can't help but feel that a better understanding of how Outlook communicates with Exchange and a better understanding of how Outlook represents the data internally would help other developers produce something that works better with Exchange.
And that could well be Microsoft's strategy...domination at mail-and-collaboration server end. If they open up the client specs a little more, and that makes Exchange 2010 and beyond more attractive, they've won.
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Re:Oh no... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's precisely because .pst doesn't matter that much, but the client-server protocol does, that MS is opening.... the .pst format, not the protocol.
You'll be able to manipulate the data locally, but as soon as you want to send it to or from the server, you'll need exchange/outlook.
nothing to see.
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Re:Oh no... (Score:4, Informative)
Grandpa AC is correct.. Microsoft is phasing out MAPI entirely and has already replaced it with an open implementation. ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb204042(EXCHG.140).aspx [microsoft.com] )
With the advent of Web Services in Exchange 2007 ( http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb408417.aspx [microsoft.com] ), clients including Outlook are moving to use standard protocols to access Exchange. Outlook 2007 made a huge step towards using HTTP, XML to access Exchange 2007.
Apple's Mail App requires Exchange 2007 because the Mail.app client is using Web Services to access. ( http://images.apple.com/macosx/exchange/docs/MacOSXSL_Exchange.pdf [apple.com] )
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
In other news, Microsoft disables the ability for all of it's software to import and/or export PST files...
Re:Oh no... (Score:5, Funny)
They're switching to OpenPST files (.pstx)
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Re:Oh no... (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Oh no... (Score:4, Funny)
With only a single binary 'blob' element...
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Re:Oh no... (Score:5, Funny)
Outlook not so good
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Re:Oh no... (Score:5, Insightful)
I think it is much more likely the reason is (4).
(4) As standards committees and governments adopt open formats, Outlook is at risk of being rejected for the closed format. Opening the format ensures the benefits of the Outlook/exchange server will remain the industry standard in software and support purchases. Like IE, expect some features to simply work better on an Exchange Server with Outlook on Windows while unsupported applications on a foreign OS may have random errors and glitches.
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Re:Oh no... (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me add another reason:
(5) They don't care about the outlook format because Sharepoint is the new closed format. They don't care if your outlook mailboxes (or .doc or anything else) is in an open format because you put it all in sharepoint. You still can read your mailbox with another program, but because the "metadata" of your IT infrastructure (which isn't a single file, but a lot of files with owners and relationships between all them) is stored in sharepoint you're tied to it for the eternity. This is a brilliant move - Microsoft can convice governments that their outlook and office and all their apps are using open formats, but no government will ask about the openness of sharepoint because it's not an application that reads some kind of document.
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Re:Oh no... (Score:5, Funny)
(6) It's a trap!
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Re:Oh no... (Score:5, Informative)
SharePoint was more open that the PST format was prior to this announcement. The (well documented) SharePoint API [microsoft.com] enables access to all content - it would be relatively trivial to write software that could walk your entire SharePoint content dbs and indeed farm to extract all data out in a way that could easily be implemented in alternative products. I'm sure its been done. Hell, there's software that does the reverse (and I know this being a SharePoint guy) - that use the very same API to insert data into a SharePoint environment from say a Lotus Notes environment. And trust me, you have as much access to write as you do to read data.
Repeat after me - SharePoint does not lock your data up. It implements a reasonably good document management, content management, workflow, "intranet in a box" site - it aint no drupal when looking specifically at CMS, but that's one of the many tools on this swiss army knife. Sure, corporations will be 'locked in' to SharePoint, but that is because the alternatives that come close to doing what it does are woeful (*cough* Lotus Notes). They're locked in to its functionality, which - correct me if I'm wrong - is ultimately what you choose one software product over another on.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
and to be fair, the quality of Outlook has improved a lot.
I love how Outlook uses almost 300MB of virtual memory at work. Seriously, wtf.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Oh no... (Score:5, Informative)
Reality check:
The PST format is rather useless. You can already access all the data on a Windows machine (which you have already to create it anyway) using Outlook plugins, either a COM Outlook Object Model plugin or a Exchange client plugin, depending on what you need.
So okay, now things like Thunderbird can import the mail from Outlook, which is good for people who use POP3 I guess, IMAP and Exchange store the mail on the server so theirs no real need.
Products won't carry a 'Works with Outlook' sticker because of this, the file is locked when Outlook is open, you you have to use an Outlook plugin if you want to do anything useful with it for normal people who use Outlook.
As someone who writes Outlook plugins for a job, this is rather useless for much other than exporting data from a backup without reinstalling Outlook after a crash of your system.
I.E. useful only in a limited set of circumstances that are really a corner case.
This doesn't do anything for communicating with Exchange, which is really what you want.
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Re:Oh no... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:SQL Server on the desktop considered harmful (Score:4, Informative)
Then either your app quality or your support skills were lacking. Developers routinely run local copies of SQL server on their development machines without having any issues whatsoever. I ran SQL server 2005 for years on my development machine without even noticing it was running. I currently run SQL Server Express 2008 on my development machine and it runs perfectly. I have also installed SQL Server Express 2008 on 1GHz compact pcs with 512mb ram and 4gb of disk space. The only issue with performing the installation on those was freeing up enough space for the installer to unpack itself and run. Installing SQL server is as simple as clicking next a bunch of times.
A desktop machine/os is so slightly different from a server machine/os that unless you are doing something horribly wrong, there should be no performance/functionality difference between running something like sql server on either of them.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I'm thinking more "The Ring" for software - thousands of software developers open the specifications file and all die horrible deaths within a week.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
PST format a dad design idea from the start (Score:5, Insightful)
But honestly, using the PST format in other applications sounds like a terrible idea to me: Those monolithic PST files, which Outlook uses to store mail data get corrupted easily (at least in my experience) and storing all your email data in one gigantic file always struck me as a really bad design choice anyway.
Re:PST format a dad design idea from the start (Score:5, Insightful)
Exactly that is why they are opening it. The next version of Outlook will use a new format.
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Re:PST format a dad design idea from the start (Score:4, Insightful)
Agreed that nobody else will want to use this awful, awful format. However, opening it is very important, as it now makes easy to get your mail *out* of that format. There's a lot people's mail locked up in a lot of PST files with no easy way to get them out.
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Who cares about PST files anymore? (Score:4, Interesting)
I'd wager that Microsoft is willing to do this because the .pst format is becoming irrelevant. Medium and large businesses already want nothing to do with them due to issues with performance and management. That leaves small businesses and a small number of home users. With hosted exchange options becoming more common among small businesses, the need for .pst files is going away very quickly.
Re:Who cares about PST files anymore? (Score:5, Informative)
.pst is an Outlook message database, not Exchange message database. It doesn't matter where your Exchange is hosted, if you use Outlook to connect to it, it caches local copies [wikipedia.org] of all data you worked with in a .pst file on your machine.
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Re:Who cares about PST files anymore? (Score:5, Insightful)
Our central IT dept gives us something like 100MB of quota on the Exchange server. Running out of quota? The official advice is 'save your stuff in a PST file'.
Of course you can't save your PST on the IT dept-supplied backed-up network drive because MS say "don't do that". So people end up with PST files on unbacked-up local storage on a particular machine...
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's more than MS saying 'don't do that'!
The PST format requires a lot of small direct I/O, and when you mount one over CIFS/SMB you run the serious chance of filling up the queues on the client or even the server. I've brought down a fully-loaded and patched Server 2003 box with a PST -> PST transfer over the wire, and by 'down' I mean really down, not responsive, not accepting new connections, and needing a reboot.
I've restored so many corrupt PST files from backup that I'm considering setting up a Dov
Re:Who cares about PST files anymore? (Score:4, Interesting)
Bingo! I believe MS has already banned PSTs in house. The writing is on the wall where I work. Too many times PST get corrupted which turns into support nightmares for the VIP customers. Once the VIPs (they sign the checks) are sold on getting rid of PSTs and expanding the mailbox sizes they will pay the bill.
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what happen to the obligatory tag? (Score:3, Insightful)
what happen to the obligatory tag that gets added on Slashdot to a post about Microsoft "opening up" something, the "itsatrap" tag.
here are some prime examples:
Microsoft Partially Opens Proprietary XML Format [slashdot.org]
(mainly because this happened: Microsoft Open Document Standard Not So Open [slashdot.org])
Microsoft Releases Linux Device Drivers As GPL [slashdot.org]
in fact, there are plenty of other examples in the " itsatrap [slashdot.org] " tag-egory
Who will benefit from this? (Score:3, Interesting)
People who program different migration utilities benefit from this, and of course users of such tools. Even wild ideas like Fuse filesystem that mounts it as Maildir.
So, converters, importers, exporters, indexing tools, repair/forensics, optimize/defragment/find duplicates tools, sort, grep.
Also, if its a standard than it needs to be STANDARDIZED, so no special treatment for own products.
Re:Who will benefit from this? (Score:5, Insightful)
Its not a standard. Its just documentation about an internally developped format that was never fully documented before so that the european union finally shuts the hell up. Nothing more. If people find it useful, so much the better.
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Named Socket interface (Score:3, Informative)
Make your named socket a .pst file and outlook can access your real email database through the defined interface.
Nice and spiffy and you don't end up tied to the Microsoft format.
I Don't Have a .PST (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I have an .ost file on my laptop you insensitive MS clods.
In Swedish, a .ost file would imply that you have a .cheese file. Maybe it's a really cheesy format?
Re:Never even heard of it (Score:5, Informative)
"Data portability has become an increasing need for our customers and partners as more information is stored and shared in digital formats. One scenario that has come up recently is how to further improve platform-independent access to email, calendar, contacts, and other data generated by Microsoft Outlook.
On desktops, this data is stored in Outlook Personal Folders, in a format called a .pst file"
Straight from the link in the summary.
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Re:Never even heard of it (Score:4, Insightful)
"Data portability has become an increasing need for our customers and partners as more information is stored and shared in digital formats. One scenario that has come up recently is how to further improve platform-independent access to email, calendar, contacts, and other data generated by Microsoft Outlook.
As a linux mail admin, I'm excited that there may soon be a possibility for Dovecot to deliver mail directly into a 2 GB .pst file sitting on my mail server because the PST format*snort* is so*choke* superior to maildHAHAHAHAHA! Sorry--I couldn't keep a straight face.
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It's MS's overly complicated version of a mail spool file.
Re:Never even heard of it (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
A documented binary format is better than an undocumented one
As long as
A) the documentation describes the stuff that exists in the real world, rather than what it would look like in some alternate universe (as is MS's usual tactic.)
and
B) the documentation isn't a bunch of "OOMXL"-like "implement this like Outlook 97 did"
Re:Never even heard of it (Score:4, Informative)
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Then explain this (Score:5, Informative)
Um, ok, then explain this
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Import_.pst_files [mozillazine.org]
and this
http://www.five-ten-sg.com/libpst/rn01re01.html [five-ten-sg.com]
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Re:Then explain this (Score:4, Insightful)
Well.. um.. the first one shows that we don't care, and the second one shows that we would figure it out if we wanted it.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I mean, seriously, why should TB re-invent the wheel? If theres' one thing i learned from my first library algorithms class, is that if you re-invent the wheel, you're going to take longer and end up with something that isn't likely to be round. The NIH syndrome is very wasteful
Re:I don't believe anyone cares (Score:5, Interesting)
Count me as one who cares. I've had .pst file of old outlook mail sitting around for at least seven years waiting for this kind of news. Being able to import it directly into gmail would be very useful.
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Re:I can't help but wonder what their motives are. (Score:5, Insightful)
Opening PST means being able to more freely move Outlook data between mail programs such as Evolution. The more interoperable the mail client is, the less it matters if all your engineers are on Linux and all your marketers are on Windows, as this is likely just a step towards being able to have say, Evolution, fully support being able to talk with an Exchange server. If you can get all of the features of Exchange across platforms at the expense of opening specs of a mail client that they don't really make that much money off of anyway, then they'll likely be able to make some more sales of Exchange server.
From a purely technical point of view, that may or may not be optimal, but if every part of the business could tie in with the Exchange server regardless of what operating system they need to run for the rest of their tasks, then it makes it all the more attractive from a business standpoint.
I could just be off base though, but it seems like that is a possible eventuality. This just has to do with data storage I think, but even being able to import contact lists, mail boxes, etc, more smoothly is a good start, I'd say.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Sorry, but I don't see any evidence of Microsoft's attitude changing.
I hear lots of talk and activities such as the Codeplex Foundation, but scratch a little under the surface and it all looks like more of the same old microsoft: crush competitors, destroy alternatives to Microsoft dominance on the desktop, make tactical partnerships and strategically ruin the partner.
Basically when Microsoft holds out the hand of friendship, first check if there's a knife in the other hand.
Re:Link to the RFC (Score:4, Informative)
Note that the title of TFS is "Microsoft Opening Outlook's PST Format", not "Microsoft Opened Outlook's PST Format".
The primary source [msdn.com] says that " documentation is still in its early stages and work is ongoing".
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
To update to Thunderbird, or Pronto [muhri.net] like I use. It's particularly useful for business users wanting to migrate off Outlook and have access to a decent code monkey.
Re:Simple: three words (Score:4, Insightful)
I thought that, until I joined an organisation that used Lotus Notes.
PST oh how I miss thee.
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