Re: EDI over http

[Gunther Schadow <gunther@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Rachna,

> What about the emails never reaching the destination. In the past, it has
> happened to me and others that we didn't receive the email expected and had
> to ask the sender to resend it. Is there anything done in this area?

There are two problems here:

1. bouncing messages
2. silently lost messages

1. is an error condition that can and needs to be resolved, wherever
something works there can be errors. If errors are reported it is
fine. (BTW: if everyone would stick to standard internet software we
wouldn't have so many bouncing messages)

2. this is a serious problem as you don't know what really
happened. But non-repudiation of receipt can be suitable to detect
this condition: don't have a receipt back within some reasonable time
frame, resend and eventually take the error exit. Fortunately this
occurs much less than bouncing. I only experienced this once,in badly
managed e-mail servers (where people have blind addresses, i.e. the
address was valid, but these people could never fetch their mail from
there -- weird, brain-dead, but true!)

regards
-Gunther