When you develop workgroup, or mail-enabled, applications you will be using several different features of your system. These features help you accomplish the information sharing that is needed. First, they often use communications between systems. These communications range from real-time (DDE) communications between workstations to "Real Enough Time" (Email backbone) communications.
The theory is that you should use the existing infrastructure as much as possible to get your application up and running. As an example, if you have already implemented Microsoft Mail, wouldn't it make sense to use the existing mail system to move information around your network?
Think of your existing systems as the Electronic Backbone that will be used to support your system. Using MAPI, you'll be able to insulate your applications from the work of moving information around, focusing instead on the application and processing of that information. Your application won't even need to know if the users of the program are local, remote, across a gateway, or a mixture of these. Let the existing systems do the work for you.
Electronic Backbone
In this review of messaging, we'll be focusing on using the MAPI component of the electronic backbone.