Please, understand that I am not complaining about Firebird, I just said and I am saying that some features would be nice to have one day in the future. I use and love to use Firebird for many reasons.

I am not doing that because I just don't have the power to make decisions on programming or choosing third party tools.
Our software is divided into tiers and I am responsible only for the data tier.
Most of our software inteligence is on database via triggers and stored procedures because is easier and faster to customize and audit on customer structure.
We provide Firebird, Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server as a customer choice. Using Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server, we have easier solutions like the ones listed below, but we still use third party tools via XML for Firebird. It was not me who choose those tools and I do not have authority to change that.

Email solutions:
-----------------
http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-6078020.html
http://oraclepitstop.wordpress.com/2008/04/24/how-to-send-email-from-10g-oracle-database-utl_mail/
http://it.toolbox.com/wiki/index.php/Send_email_from_Oracle_Database
-----------------
http://classicasp.aspfaq.com/email/how-do-i-send-e-mail-from-sql-server.html
http://www.sqlteam.com/article/sending-smtp-mail-using-a-stored-procedure
http://blog.sqlauthority.com/2008/08/23/sql-server-2008-configure-database-mail-send-email-from-sql-database/
-----------------

SMS solutions:
-----------------
http://www.inside-oracle-apex.com/sending-sms-to-mobile-phone/
http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=378726
http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/forms/htdocs/10gr2/howto/webservicefromforms/ws_10_1_3_from_forms.html
-----------------
http://www.sqlservercentral.com/Forums/Topic755727-146-1.aspx#bm759659
http://bytes.com/topic/sql-server/answers/537664-send-sms-sqlserver2005-mobilephone
http://www.ozeki.hu/index.php?ow_page_number=425
-----------------

Sorry for this kind of conversation here and thanks for everybody's help.

Best wishes,

Roberto Carlos

--- In firebird-support@yahoogroups.com, Mark Rotteveel <Avalanche1979@...> wrote:
>
> 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
>