Using JNI to retrieve outlook contacts

Question

Hi all,

I need to retrieve the list of contacts (and only them) from any Outlook application except Outlook Express. I've seen many different libraries that can solve my problem but any of them is opensource. I was wondering if it is worth to solve this problem from scratch using JNI. I have never developed using this framework; have you got any experience in that ? Or do you know a better approach ?

Answer 1

Avoid JNI if you can. It adds complexity, the possibly of memory corruption (if you do it wrong) and will make debugging more complex.

Plus there are plenty of options besides that.

Firstly, if you are talking to an Exchange 2007 server you can get this information via web services.

If its Outlook in particular you want access to, have a look at the Sun Java System Connector for Microsoft Outlook, downloaded here.