Managing Exchange 2003 with WMI, Part 1

Like most Windows products released in 2003, Exchange Server 2003 offers more manageability through Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI). As Web Table 1 (http://www.winnetmag.com/microsoftexchangeoutlook, InstantDoc ID 40755) shows, Exchange 2000 Server was the first release in which Microsoft implemented WMI interfaces for Exchange. The original release offered three WMI providers: ExchangeRoutingTableProvider, ExchangeQueueProvider, and ExchangeClusterProvider. These providers are available from the Root\CIMV2\Applications\Exchange namespace. Later, Microsoft released Exchange 2000 Service Pack 2 (SP2), which introduced two new WMI providers in the Root\MicrosoftExchangeV2 namespace: ExchangeDsAccessProvider and ExchangeMessageTrackingProvider.

Little difference exists between the five providers in Exchange 2000 SP2 and those same five providers in Exchange 2003. The only noticeable change is that Microsoft updated the ExchangeMessageTrackingProvider's Exchange_MessageTrackingEntry class by adding values to the class's EntryType property. To view the documentation on the EntryType property's possible values, go to the Microsoft Developer Network (MSDN) Web site at http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/en-us/e2k3/e2k3/_wmiref_pr_exchange_messagetrackingentryentrytype.asp. . . .