The comparison between Exchange and Domino is a persistent ghost that refuses to be laid to rest. Search this forum for Exchange and you will certainly find enough material to make yourself an opinion. I have personally contributed to such discussions here.
In brief, with as much objectivity as is possible, I will try to summarize what I remember of these discussions.
First, Domino and Exchange are two different products. Exchange does mail, and happens to integrate some processing abilities with VB. Domino is made for workflow processing and happens to do mail because it is necessary for workflow processing. Comparing them is therefore an exercise in futility.
So much for the summary. The rest is my own personal opinion.
And my opinion is that you will always be better off with Domino as an admin, since a Notes user is less prone to having his address book used abusively to resend virus mails to the world. That is the prerogative of Outlook and Exchange and that situation will not change any time soon.
If I understand correctly, you are evaluating the needs of a mail server for a school. I cannot help but strongly counsel you to go for Domino. If students are to have mail, you are sure to rip your hair out with pranks and foolish things kids are sure to be able to do with Exchange. There is much freely available info on hacking Exchange and SQL servers, and in a school you are statistically certain to have, every year, at least one student intent on finding out whether or not that info is true, to your expense.
Domino, on the other hand, is quite stable in the face of student attacks, since there is much less hacking info available on this subject, due to the fact that there are very few hackers that toy with it.
More importantly, if you are developing school management software, Domino will ideally help you with its robust design system and workflow methods. As far as I can see, Domino can only help you in your endevour by adding value to your application structure.
Finally, with Domino all you need is Domino, and upgrades are next to painless. With Exchange, you need VB and SQL server and upgrading Exchange is more and more a nightmare every year. Not to mention maintaining it.
Now, bear in mind that if you go to an Exchange forum, which isn't far off, you'll quite probably get an entirely different answer ;-).
Pascal.
