An Introduction into Terminal Services API Programming

Posted by Benny Tritsch on July 4, 2007 – updated on November 30, 2007

[Introduction] [TS API] [Programming Basics] [More Sample Code]

Introduction

Most Windows applications don’t require specific adaptation on code level before they are able to run in a terminal server environment. However, there are good reasons why some applications or management tools cannot work as desired without direct access to Terminal Services functionalities through a dedicated set of Application Programming Interface (API) calls. The Terminal Services API gives software developers everything they need to customize existing applications and even develop completely new applications utilizing multi-user capabilities.

If you are an IT professional this is the point where you may ask yourself why you should care about the Terminal Services API. But there are good reasons why this background information can be very helpful for your daily work. You may want to have your own custom management tools and after reading this chapter you will be able to explain developers exactly what you want them to develop – using their terminology. The resulting custom tools and their richer feature sets can go far beyond what standard management tools allow you to do, an important fact if you have the requirement to analyze and potentially modify terminal server settings in a very specific way.

But there are more good reasons for learning about the Terminal Services API. If you run into issues with applications incompatible to the terminal server platform you may want to contact the responsible developers. You will be able to ask for the required application modifications more precisely. You may even suggest how an application can be extended in order to use features specific to Terminal Services, making this platform more powerful. Last but not least, looking at the Terminal Services API will help you to better understand the Terminal Services architecture.

NOTE: This whitepaper only covers the development of unmanaged code using the native Terminal Services API. All sample code is in C.

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