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Microsoft Opening Outlook's PST Format
protosage writes to tell us that Microsoft Interoperability is working towards opening up Outlook's .pst format under their Open Specification Promise. This should "allow anyone to implement the .pst file format on any platform and in any tool, without concerns about patents, and without the need to contact Microsoft in any way." "In order to facilitate interoperability and enable customers and vendors to access the data in .pst files on a variety of platforms, we will be releasing documentation for the .pst file format. This will allow developers to read, create, and interoperate with the data in .pst files in server and client scenarios using the programming language and platform of their choice. The technical documentation will detail how the data is stored, along with guidance for accessing that data from other software applications. It also will highlight the structure of the .pst file, provide details like how to navigate the folder hierarchy, and explain how to access the individual data objects and properties."
(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
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
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.
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.
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.
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.