Subject: Re: We do have a marketing problem ...

From: "Chuck Fenton" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1999 15:37:28 -0400

Carl,

You make very good technical points on why it should not be a problem, but
the real issue is emotional, not rational/technical.  Too many folks have
lost important e-mail, and felt they didn't have the level of control at
that moment with that kind of facility (SMTP).

Once a failure occurs in any application that provokes an emotional
response/imprint in a user, it takes a long time and consistent positive
experience for the bad on to be unseated.  Technical arguments can be made
to a very technical audience, but unfortunately, even a technical audience
will react with emotions before reason, if the bad experience is imprinted
sufficiently (and supported in the media).

-Chuck Fenton
Sterling Commerce, Inc.
[email-masked]
734-930-7862

"Carl Hage" <[email-masked]> on 04/20/99 03:12:56 PM

 To:      [email-masked]                                 
                                                              
 cc:      (bcc: Chuck Fenton/Dublin-ISG)                      

 Subject: Re: We do have a marketing problem ...              

Date sent:          Tue, 20 Apr 1999 11:01:36 -0400
From:               "Kit Christopher J. Lueder" <[email-masked]>

> With
> e-mail, even using the EDIINT secure receipt, you don't know untill
> later whether it succeeded or failed (including the use of a timeout if
> you don't receive a response at all).

It depends on whether a store-and-forward gateway is used. Most
people use a gateway by default since it's easier and automatically
queues if the recipient is inaccessable.

With direct SMTP connection, the system knows when the
message has been received. A receipt is still important, since the
message could be lost on the recipients system before it's
processed.

 So EDIINT takes more effort to
> implement, since you have to keep track of it and save the original
files,
> and not know whether they are "checked off" until later.

You'd have to do the same with FTP, or even with a VAN if you
wanted maximum reliability and detection of problems.

> There is also the risk that your EDIINT transmission succeeded, but the
> receipt that was sent back in response failed, in which case you resend
> your original transmission after a timeout of waiting for the receipt.

Most failures can be detected and the sender can retry. For
completeness, the original can be resent.

> Maybe we need a
> definition of "real-time".

Messaging within a few seconds, on a non-overloaded link. Of
course this is what SMTP can do technically, not necessarily what
implementations do.

> You don't have a session or a virtual
> connection with e-mail.

With SMTP you have a socket connected to the recipients system,
and using the TURN operation, the same socket can be used for
the reply. Otherwise, a separate socket would be used.

The asynchronous wait for reply includes processing of the
message. If the recipient system can't process immediately, then
the checkoff of the reply needs to wait.

The smtp (or http post) is synchronous in that the incoming
message is immediately delivered to a processing application.
With FTP, normally, the file system must be polled and checked
for changes. There is a problem in that it is not always easy to tell
when the FTP file transfer is complete and correct. Errors can
occur, undetected to the sender, leaving partially complete files
laying around. I suppose FTP could be made to work
synchronously, but it's more complex than SMTP.

Any high-reliability system is going to need to keep a log of
transactions, and check to make sure there are no problems, so I
don't see that checking for missing reciepts is any extra effort. It's
much simpler than getting FTP to work.

 Can't you have a session with http (maybe that is
> what cookies are used for), in which case http is real-time?

A cookie "session" is a way to associate separate transactions,
which otherwise have no relationship. With EDIINT, Message-Ids
are used to establish a relationship. BTW, with FTP there are 2
connections made: 1 a "session" control link, and a separate link
for each file transmitted.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Carl Hage                                              C. Hage Associates
<mailto:[email-masked]> Voice/Fax: 1-408-244-8410      1180 Reed Ave #51
<http://www.chage.com/chage/>                          Sunnyvale, CA 94086

---

From: "Carl Hage" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1999 14:06:18 -0800

From:           	"Chuck Fenton" <[email-masked]>
To:             	"Carl Hage" <[email-masked]>
Copies to:      	[email-masked]
Date sent:      	Tue, 20 Apr 1999 15:37:28 -0400
Subject:        	Re: We do have a marketing problem ...

> the real issue is emotional, not rational/technical.

Yes, I agree with you. I guess the question was, how to overcome 
this emotional bias.