The main role of Microsoft Corp.s Mobile Information Server is as a dedicated mail gateway for the companys Exchange mail server, but developers can also use it as infrastructure for their own custom mobile applications.
Mobile Information Server includes two developer-callable interfaces: mmisdeviceinfo, which returns the type of mobile device a particular mobile worker is using, and mmisnotify, which sends a message out to a particular mobile worker. These interfaces are accessible through SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol).
The free Mobile Information Server SDK (software development kit), which will be downloadable from Microsofts Web site next month, will provide documentation, code samples and a dynamic link library file that provides a COM (Component Object Model) interface for the two functions for developers who are using COM-centric development tools such as Microsofts Visual Basic. The COM components still use the SOAP interfaces but hide the SOAP calls from the developer.