Project Summary
Many of our network or service oriented applications require the capability to receive messages instructing them to perform one or more tasks. For devices such as mobile phones and PDA's, e-mail/text messaging is the only option available for accessing network information.

We sought an inexpensive solution to provide data retrieval capabilities for mobile phones and PDAs using e-mail/text messaging. This solution had to meet the following requirements:

• Download e-mail messages via POP3 or IMAP protocol and store in a database
• Notify and/or start helper applications to process the message request
• Capability to restrict who can send messages to the service
• Capability to reject message based on message size or content type

Solution
The MailIn Service monitors one ore more POP3 or IMAP mailboxs on behalf of one or more external applications. After messages are downloaded, the MailIn Service runs the specified external program (Helper Program) to process the messages. Helper Programs are console applications (No GUI), that can be written in the developer's language of choice.

Below is a sample list of MailIn helper programs that we developed for our clients:

• LDAP Search: Search LDAP directory for contact information
• Stock Quote: Lookup of one or more stock quotes
• Sport Scores: Lookup sports scores for MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, NCAA football
• Book Search: Lookup Amazon.com book price
• Ship Track: Lookup FedEx and UPS package shipping status
• Other: Several data specific programs to retrieve information from back-end databases

Because the e-mail messages are stored in a database, reporting can be easily be performed using standard database query tools (Crystal Reports, MS Access, Excel, etc). A web interface allows users to query the MailIn database for received messages using a web browser.

Requirements

• Java 2 runtime environment (J2SE)
• JDBC driver for database used as the message store.