[Dnfbb-developers] Mail

[Bosanquet, S. <sim...@tr...>]

From the options presented below I have to say that I prefer the second
option as I think this would give the most power and flexibility even
though it might need a little more work to implement.  The first option
does seem the easiest but I have to say that personally I don't think it
is a particularly neat way of doing it.  It would get the job done but I
am not convinced about its scalability.  The third one would work but I
don't think it would provide the required extensibility of the second
option.
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Options:
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A: Scheduled task, calling a specific .aspx page at regular intervals
which
sends/receives emails.
B: Scheduled task, which hooks into the database directly and
sends/receives
at regular intervals.
C: Send directly when needed through the presentation layer.

As indicated in the original post there could be a large amount of mail
being generated with mailing lists etc... and if you are to send it
directly this could generate a lot of activity on the server end.  The
draw back to not sending it straight away would have to be weighed up
against the volume of email being sent at that time.  For the odd email
this is fine but for large mailing lists it could be better to delay it.
Being able to schedule it would provide the forum admin more power and
control over how the mail is sent.  The only problem is that you
wouldn't want to be waiting too long for a simple registration email to
be sent to you before you could join the forum.
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By using a scheduled task, which interacts directly with the database,
you can achieve a lot more control over the way in which the mail is
delivered.  By implementing this type of scheme there would be nothing
to stop you running a number of different schedules which controlled the
way in which the mail was transmitted.  For example, there could be a
schedule which handled all internal mail (user to user within the
database) which ran at a different rate to the mailing lists which runs
at a different rate to the external mail schedule.  I do like the idea
of the task hooking into the database directly.
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These are just idea's which need more thought but you can probably see
where I am coming from.  I would be interested to hear your comments on
the above.

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