Re: Notification server

[Aaron Knauf <ak...@xtra.co.nz>]

I will be burned as a heretic for saying this, but I don't believe that 
JAMES is the product that you are looking for.

JAMES is definitely the right thing, if you want to /receive/ messages 
via SMTP.  However, it sounds to me as if you want to /receive/ you 
messages as a generically formatted XML message.  I would use SOAP for 
this.  Check out the Axis project, at http://xml.apache.org/axis.

I have actually written several applications similar to what you are 
asking for.  (Unfortunately I can't let you have the code.)  I very much 
doubt whether or not any kind of a standard API is in the works. 
Messaging is just too diverse.

To address a few issues on which you were unclear in your email:

*	How do WAP and HTML notifications work?  The only way I can see that 
this might work would be to put something on a web/wap site.  This is 
hardly a notification, as it requires a pull from the notifyee.

*	How do you expect to send an SMS message?  I work for a telco, so we 
just send them direct to the SMS network, using the SMPP protocol. 
Unless you work for a telco yourself, you will require a telco-provided 
gateway.  As far as I am aware, there is no industry standard interface 
in to these gateways.  (We have just written a SOAP one, for which we 
invented the SOAP format.)

*	An XSLT transformation will not output SMTP or SMS.  These are 
protocols, and are conversational in nature.  The content of the message 
could be generated using XSLT, however.


Hope you find this helpful

Cheers

ADK


Chris.Black@REQUISITE.com wrote:
> All,
> 
> I'm looking for a generic "notification server" (receives an XML doc and
> user list and sends the doc formatted in a variety of ways using XSLT
> depending upon the destination - WAP, SMTP, SMS, instant messaging, HTML,
> etc).
> 
> James seams like it can be used for this, but not explicitly designed for
> this (missing several formats that should be included for a generic
> notification server).  This seams like a Jakarta kind of project, but James
> is about the closest thing I have found.  Does anyone know of anything like
> this going on in the open-source community?  
> 
> Also, it seams like there should be a standard API for a web app to
> communicate with a notification server, so that the actual notification
> server implementation being used doesn't matter when coding the web app.  I
> have looked around on javasoft and the JSR's, and haven't seen anything like
> this.  Anyone know of anything like this in the works?
> 
> Thanks,
> 
> Chris
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Re: Notification server

[Aaron Knauf <ak...@xtra.co.nz>]

Noel J. Bergman wrote:
>>JAMES is definitely the right thing, if you want to /receive/ messages
>>via SMTP.  However, it sounds to me as if you want to /receive/ you
>>messages as a generically formatted XML message.
> 
> 
> There is no reason why the message body can't be XML.

Absolutely correct.  SOAP is a fully featured specification for sending 
more than just your basic XML message via a number of transports. 
Whether or not the transport is SMTP, SOAP is a great way of doing this 
kind of thing.

> 
> 
>>I would use SOAP for this.
> 
> 
> Are you aware that there are SOAP bindings for SMTP?
> 
> ref: http://xml.apache.org/soap/faq/faq_chawke_smtp.html
>      http://www.pocketsoap.com/specs/smtpbinding/

Yup, I certainly am.

> 
> 
>>Check out the Axis project, at http://xml.apache.org/axis.
> 
> 
> AXIS is an excellent package, and has an transports for HTTP, SMTP and JMS.
> I may be wrong, but I'm not sure if AXIS current supports server endpoints
> other than HTTP.

I haven't been keeping up with the Axis dev list recently, so I am not 
sure, either.

> 
> One of my thoughts, which I've added to the Wiki, has been to support SOAP
> services in James.  I imagine that this would mostly involve matchers &
> mailets.  If you are interested in SOAP, perhaps you'd like to contribute in
> this area.
> 

I have thought about this one, too.  The approach that I would 
investigate first would be to embed Axis within a Mailet.  I don't know 
how much I want to bite off here.  If the config stuff flies, I'll see 
how that one goes first.  (Incidentally, Mailet configuration would have 
to be beefed up to support SOAP.)

> By the way, I am interested to hear of your SOAP Service for SMS.
> 

The SOAP part of this is quite simple.  All of our applications that 
send SMS messages (and there are alot) use an stateless session EJB to 
submit a ShortMessage object to an application that we wrote to take 
care of the SMPP communications and the high load handling involved.  We 
simply use apache soap (not axis) to map a SOAP message to a 
ShortMessage object a make the EJB call.

The main reason that we use SOAP at all is because of incompatibilities 
between different versions of Weblogic.

In the next version of our SMS handling application, we may make SOAP 
the primary interface, rather than EJB.  (Much more open.)


Cheers

ADK


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RE: Notification server

["Noel J. Bergman" <no...@devtech.com>]

> JAMES is definitely the right thing, if you want to /receive/ messages
> via SMTP.  However, it sounds to me as if you want to /receive/ you
> messages as a generically formatted XML message.

There is no reason why the message body can't be XML.

> I would use SOAP for this.

Are you aware that there are SOAP bindings for SMTP?

ref: http://xml.apache.org/soap/faq/faq_chawke_smtp.html
     http://www.pocketsoap.com/specs/smtpbinding/

> Check out the Axis project, at http://xml.apache.org/axis.

AXIS is an excellent package, and has an transports for HTTP, SMTP and JMS.
I may be wrong, but I'm not sure if AXIS current supports server endpoints
other than HTTP.

One of my thoughts, which I've added to the Wiki, has been to support SOAP
services in James.  I imagine that this would mostly involve matchers &
mailets.  If you are interested in SOAP, perhaps you'd like to contribute in
this area.

By the way, I am interested to hear of your SOAP Service for SMS.

> *	An XSLT transformation will not output SMTP or SMS.

I presume that he intended to use the XLST transform to produce the desired
content for the desired target messaging system.

	--- Noel


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