Re: i5 text message solution -- MIDRANGE-L

Actually the problem is usually two-fold beyond the fact that the IBM i SMTP and POP services are woefully dated :-)

1.) Getting messages into an inbox. Whether on IBM i, Exchange or whatever. The messages get stored as RAW MIME files ready to be processed by an email client or retrieval service.

2.) Then you need to retrieve the messages from a mailbox using the POP3 protocol and parse the RAW MIME messages into text and attachments. This is the step that causes most of the complexity.

I should know since I wrote our POP/400 component that both Vern and I are referring to :-)

In any case I don't believe there are any other native POP3 clients that I'm aware of for IBM i that can process inbound emails and strip attachments for further processing and then actually process them with RPG or CL exits quickly and painlessly.

If you're in need of this type of processing, feel free to request a 30-day demo from our web site.

Hopefully that clarifies the complexity Vern was trying to describe as well.

Regards,
Richard Schoen
RJS Software Systems Inc.
Where Information Meets Innovation
Document Management, Workflow, Report Delivery, Forms and Business Intelligence
Email: richard@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Web Site: http://www.rjssoftware.com
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message: 3
date: Sun, 21 Apr 2013 17:20:52 +0200
from: Tim Bronski <tim.bronski@xxxxxxxxx>
subject: Re: i5 text message solution

Maybe the problem was in trying to "send" emails to the pop server! The
pop server just reads mailboxes on behalf on clients that connect to it.
It doesn't do any message storage. The SMTP server has a component that
will "mailbox" received email. To receive email onto the i you'd have to
fire up the smtp server as well as the pop server. Sorry if that
re-iterates what you already know.

On 4/21/2013 5:13 PM, Vernon Hamberg wrote:

Hi Tim

This isn't exactly on point, but here goes. I was tasked with figuring
out some stuff with POP3 on IBM i - in particular, I was asked whether
we could receive emails on the box. I said yes, knowing about at least
one client.

I ran into hurdles when trying to find a mailbox to read from. We have
Exchange, but I did not know what the POP3 server address was - did not
know whether it was even allowed to access a box internally. Turns out
it was, fortunately.

So I tried to use the POP server on the IBM i. I turned it on and was
able to use the client against it. The main problem was sending emails
TO it. I just didn't have time to work it all out, and these emails were
going to come from customers, hence, outside our walls. I just wanted
something to test against, but it wasn't working out.

The mailbox on IBM i was basically user-profile@system-domain-name -
that's about all I know for sure for now!

I'm not asking here for more information on setting up the POP server -
have no need or interest right now. I don't think most companies would
use IBM i for this, anyhow, just as the native SMTP server is not used
so much - it usually seems a good idea to avoid the native support (and
especially SNDDST) and merely use a relay on Exchange or some other
email server.

Regards
Vern