PRB: fnevObjectDeleted returns short term entry ID from Exchange

An Extended Messaging Application Programming Interface (MAPI) program implements the IMAPIAdviseSink interface to be notified on changes in a folder on an Exchange Server. When an fnevObjectDeleted notification event is received, the entry ID contained in the accompanying OBJECT_NOTIFICATION structure is a short term entry ID instead of a long term entry ID.

All entry IDs that are returned by the Exchange providers in notifications are short term, because short term entry IDs are quicker to compute than long term entry IDs.

This is only a problem if you are storing the long term entry IDs of items in another database and need information from the delete event to determine which item to remove. Because the item has already been deleted, it cannot be opened to obtain the long term entry ID. At this point, there is no way, other than rescanning the folder, to identify the deleted item.

If the notification is table-based instead of folder-based, a TABLE_NOTIFICATION structure is returned. This structure contains enough information to identify which row of the table was deleted. For most client applications, this is sufficient to maintain a list of items that are currently in a container.

In general, however, MAPI notification is not a recommended method of synchronizing databases with Exchange. Notifications are not guaranteed by Exchange and may be dropped under high loads.

Exchange 2000 supports Store Event Sinks, which can be used to track saves and deletes to any folder in an Exchange 2000 store. For a sample that uses folder notification to keep track of the contents of a folder, click the article number below to view the article in the Microsoft Knowledge Base: