Today is a rather unusual day. We will leave behind the comfort of the UNIX world; the thoughts of the comparatively well-engineered groovy; the joy of the comparative minimalism of Enterprise Java Beans. Today we take a trip to Redmond to gaze upon the monstrosity that is Microsoft Exchange, Microsoft’s PIM (email, calendar, and contacts) server.

Now, we’re not going to talk about actually setting up or running Exchange. This is something I have no experience with and certainly never will; there are many employment opportunities available that are less depressing and more fulfilling, such as decapitating rabbits with scissors or installing road signals for bicyclists.

Instead, we’re going to be talking about interfacing with third-party Exchange servers, including “Office 365”.