I have to make an app that wants to be able to modify some mail content items from an email server that is implemented with Microsoft Exchange Server. On the PST files approach I'm ok as I know how to deal with this.
The problem is I don't know how does Microsoft Exchange Server dealing with mail content and PST files. As far as I know PST files are only a way to backing up mail content and structure, something like an sql dump file. I heard that Microsoft Exchange Server would internally actually use a SQL database for storing these content items. As I need to make permanent modifications to email content from client perspective I need to know the following: - How does Microsoft Exchange Server stores it's mailbox content items? By database or PST or both? If both, how does he do the syncing ? (in here I am partially referring to the concept called "CachedExchangeMode") - How is the data flow on the server perspective in the content of Microsoft Exchange Server ? - How can I communicate with the Microsoft Exchange Server as a client for content manipulation ?
Any info about this topics are welcome, as I'm stuck in finding any documentations on these.
Thanks in advance guys !
Thanks Dmitry ! I need to develop a solution that makes sure permanently deleted mailbox items can't be restored by dedicated server or client tools (like scanpst for the client host, which works on PST files). On the client perspective I managed to get a close solution on modifying the PST files so that by wiping the free memory blocks the files won't get corrupted and those informations would be really lost. But on the server side, mainly on the Exchange Server side (because Exchange is somehow more special than otehr servers) I don't have any data on how to make this data really lost. I must mention I'm starting with the hypothesis that I have access on the server host from the server host and from client too. From my hunch Exchange could store it's mailbox items on the database but they would permanently delete those items only by logical flags in the respective records. Or they can make use of a PST server file that has the ability to store the permanently deleted items just like Windows's recycle bin, providing the means to recover some of the deleted items (in this case the database could really delete those records as the recovery method should lie in the PST file construct). Maybe Exchange uses both methods. In all cases, I need to make a solution that provides 100% confirmation that those items are really lost. This is why I need specific documentation or confirmed "hunches". Did I described more clearly the context of my question Dmitry? Thanks !
I now had read some info related to the way Exchange manages it's mailbox items deletion. It moves the soft-deleted items to the Dumpster platform on each deletion stage (firstly into the "Deletions" folder, and then intro the "Purges" folder, and on litigation hold activated, it additionally preserves original mailbox messages to the "Versions" folder). I then found a way to use the Exchange Power Shell to delete those items, and even read about the Remote Power Shell way to programatically acess the Exchange Power Shell to do this programatically. THis is as far as I gone. Would this be a solution for what I have to do ? Would this assure those items aren't recoverable by any means ? Do you know another solution for this or is there something I am missing ?
