Company
A premier insurance and financial services company with worldwide operations.

Project
A Microsoft Exchange gateway was originally developed by Microsoft and a legacy system manufacturer to provide for the interoperability of the legacy e-mail system and Microsoft Exchange Server 4.0. As such, it provided for both the transfer of messages between the two systems as well as the ability to synchronize directory entries between them. With the release of Microsoft Exchange Server 5.0 and Microsoft Windows NT 4.0, the gateway no longer functioned properly and a number of problems were identified. First, the setup program under Windows NT 4.0 failed to execute. Second, the gateway administration extension DLL failed to load under Exchange Server 5.x. And finally, the directory updates made in Exchange Server 5.x where not being recognized by the gateway and consequently not sent to the legacy system. C-Sharp was contracted to work in conjunction with the client to resolve these problems.

Solution
The first step in solving these problems was upgrading the compiler to Microsoft Visual C++ 5.0 and utilizing the most recent libraries from the Platform SDK (which includes an Exchange component). Once compiled, an install script was written in InstallSHIELD 5.0 that mirrored the functionality of the previous install and provided for a more maintainable installation set. Upgrading to the latest SDK solved most of the problems with the gateway administration DLL and the directory updates. The few remaining resource and memory leak issues were resolved quickly and the system was tested in a simulated environment for functionality. A limited company rollout of the software is planned within the next few months with the full rollout following within a year.

Technologies Used
We used the following technologies to solve this problem:

• Microsoft Visual C++ 5.0
• Microsoft Platform SDK
• InstallSHIELD 5.0
• Microsoft NT Server 4.0
• Microsoft Exchange 5.5