Making Sample Gateway to Process Custom Address Types

If we could somehow configure sample gateway to process different address types then perhaps our development effort would become easier. We could, for example, modify gateway code to do our specific things and leave configuration and a lot of other things that are there intact. I had shown previously how sample gateway code may be modified to do very simple custom things. Let us see whether this is a realistic approach. Let us assume that we want our sample gateway to process messages of type, say, "YYY".

Here is how you can do it:

Remove all installations of sample gateway (with Setup program).
Install sample gateway again.
Use Exchange Administrator to configure your Mail-Gateway object (double click on it in the SiteName/Configuration/Connections sub tree). On Address Space property page change EDK to YYY. Do the same on the Options property page.
Start your gateway and send messages of type EDK and YYY. Observe only YYY messages to go though.

Perhaps you are designing a set of gateways. In this case it would be nice to check whether it is possible to set up a few sample gateways, each processing its own address type. It turns out that it is quite easy to do - just install a few of them and configure each according to the algorithm above.

Note: When I was investigating this matter I have faced a few problems. I believe they are related to errors in my configuration (such as spelling error in password and illegal character in directory name - forward slash instead of back slash). Using illegal character in directory name definitely leads to failure in setup (Setup program posts a message saying "Please report File='INSTALL\DIR.C', Line='37' to Microsoft Product Support Services"). However, assuming you type in everything correctly, algorithm as described above appears to be clean. This means you do not have to set up a special address type object, write proxy generation DLL, or do anything else except as prescribed above. Perhaps the result achieved is only a small step on the way of implementing your own gateway, but is is definitely something. The only thing you need to do now to make your gateway functional is to write specific functionality. We are free from setup and configuration nuances. We can focus on our specific development, perhaps returning to other non-so-important issues some time later.

[ Contents | Home ]