The WhatsUp Professional SDK is a method by which a Developer (with an appreciation for C++ and COM) or OEM can extend the WhatsUp application to use custom monitoring and alerting strategies.  That is, you can write your own Active Monitor Plugins, your own Passive Monitor Plugins (listeners and filters), and your own types of Actions.  It also details the database Schema (which happens to also be published here: http://www.ipswitch.com/support/whatsup_professional/guides/WhatsUpDBSchema.zip).  And it provides access to listen in and inject Syncronization Event traffic that bounces back and forth from the engine and the console(s).

The SDK is a powerful thing, internally we use the SDK to write all the Active Monitors in the WhatsUp Professional application (SNMP checks, TCP checks, DNS, Telnet, Echo, etc).  We use the SDK to write all the Actions (SMTP, Beeper, Pager, SMS, Sound, TextToSpeech, etc).  We use the SDK to write the Passive Monitors (SNMP traps, syslog, Windows Event listener).  Sorry the code for these is not included in the SDK.  We also use the SDK to communicate between the polling engine and the console(s) via the Event Listener.

However it also requires technical talent to leverage.  You may find that the Program Action triggering a batch file or a wsh script is just fine for your purposes.  You may find that the example in the SDK that runs an application on monitor checking is just fine for your purposes.  Or you may find that the (very) simple TCP/IP script in the base application is fine if you know the protocol of the service you are querying (for example TFTP monitoring http://support.ipswitch.com/kb/WG-20020430-DM01.htm).  Or perhaps (new with WUP2006) you may find that the Active Script Active Monitor and Actions give you the ability to program custom code in jscript or vbscript to solve your specific problem without dropping down into compiled C++ code.  Perhaps you could rapidly prototype your solution in an Active Script language and use the SDK to create a compiled version for distribution.

The WhatsUp Professional SDK does not work with Gold.

The plugin extensions use COM.  The SDK itself is an extension to the Microsoft IDE (very specifically the 2003 version of the IDE).  These extensions allow you to create new projects which are Actions and Monitors.  The wizards within the Microsoft IDE are extended such that by using them they create the shell of your plugin for you (all the messy COM mechanics) and leaves areas in the code for you to 'fill in the blanks'.  The examples and the wizards are in C++.

The SDK doesn't allow you to re-engineer the basic WhatsUp application by re-arranging the basic elements of the application or UI.  However if you do want to re-vamp the UI then consider the web interface - it is all ASP jscript - tinker there to affect the Web UI to your hearts content.  Just know that you need to manage your own changes across version updates.

The SDK is a framework that allows you to write your own Actions and Monitors (and has that Syncronization Event traffic thing).  If you, say, want to monitor a strange thing using a strange protocol to report a health statistic, then the SDK could be your answer.  For example, the status/discovery of IP Phones.  IP Phones themselves may be quite dumb (can return a Ping but are not SNMP manageable) - but there may be a Phone server out there that knows a great deal about them.  So you Active Monitor could check the server eventhough the monitor is applied to the IP of a phone. A type of "don't ask me ask him" monitor.  Actions are interesting too - for example say you want to interface with a trouble ticketing system - open a ticket on Down and Close it on up.  Another example is say you need to cross correlate SNMP traps before considering them important - or filter out bursts of traps - then perhaps you need to write your own Passive Monitor plugin that replaces the standard SNMP trap listener and processor that comes with WhatsUp Professional.

Perhaps you want to listen in to the engine and trigger some logic whenever any device changes state (without the end user setting anything up per device).  Then subscribe to engine Events using the EventListener and when you detect the event(s) of interest take some action.  For example, listen for newly added device events and auto-sync with some other database or application.

So given this info, perhaps the SDK is still not what you are looking for - be sure to tell us anyway - we want to know how we can improve it.

hth