Re: sending mail from Postgres

Randal L. Schwartz wrote:

> I fear for the future.
>
> Did someone forget what a "database" is for?
>

You have nothing to fear but fear itself....
(FDR http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/5057/)

Let us see why this might be handy(sending a email or connecting to a
socket server).

The email function would be handy to send a notifiction of a certain
event, like a trigger. hmm.. a 60 day notifcation trigger fires on a
financial application, some one needs to be notified.

A real world example of the socket server would be for a notification
system for Pro FTP (which has pg integeration). A file comes in, Pro
FTP writes it to the Postgresql based log table, a trigger fires that
the log has been updated for a new file upload, the PL-perl function
then connects to the pop up notification server and sends a unicast
message to the users connected to the popup notification server.
hmm..pretty handy, you just extended Pro FTP with out having to hack the
Pro FTP source.

This is actually in use in a large corporate setting. while this might
not be a good idea for something out on the internet because of email
latencies etc, it does work extremely well in a setting where that is
not a issue.

A database can be used for much more than simply storing data....