rc.199011 wrote:

> Just remembering that my problem was that I use third party tools to send email and SMS (mobile phone messages) to customers and suppliers.
> I do not have access to the source code of these tools. I just prepare the required XML file to these tools to work.
> Inside firebird triggers and stored procedures, I populate an external Firebird table that is easily and fastly transformed in this XML file by my own program.
> Summing up, the heavy process is all done inside Firebird which has all necessary data.
>
> I hope, in the future, Firebird can handle XML, send email (receiving email is not important in my case) and send SMS because implement and integrate all these features using closed third party tools takes a lot of time and hard work and never works as we expect.

Those are tasks best suited for separate applications or libraries. IMHO
things like that should not be integrated into one server applicaton
(and certainly not a database server).

For sending mail you have excellent (open source) libraries (and
servers), most SMS services I know use a webservice, email or simple
HTTP access so are also accessible with (opensource) software.

Since you are already using your own software, I am wondering why you
are not doing the formatting for presentation in that application. It is
a lot more flexible in my opinion.

--
Mark Rotteveel