Re: [OT] Mailing large number of recipients

[Brice Ruth]

So, to clarify - is the mail-sending slow waiting for the mail server to 
return with a 250 - OK response, or is creating the mail message to send 
(with all the BCC: addresses), before sending it over to the server, 
slow? The point being - in theory, the mail server should bear the brunt 
of the time of sending the message out to the recipients, unless it is 
hanging on to the connection you've opened, until it has sent to all 
recipients, before returning with the 250-OK message, indicating that 
everything was successful.

If that's the case, you might consider sending through a different SMTP 
server, one that doesn't block on that ... and just accepts the message 
for delivery instantaneously.

Shyam A wrote:

Kirk,

Thanks a lot for your suggestions. I will look into
JMS.
In my current approach, the process of sending the
mail is time consuming.I'm concerned that sending an
email to 1000's of recipients from my application
(using JMS, Thread etc) would clog my application
server (OC4J) and slow down its operation, which is
why I was wondering if it could be done at the
backend-Oracle 9i.
Thanks,
Shyam
--- Kirk Wylie <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
 

Shyam A wrote:

   

Hi,

I have a Struts application in which I need to
     

send
   

email notification to a large number of recipients
based on a user action. Currently, I use the Java
     

Mail
   

API and send emails from my application. I use a
single email with all recipients in the "BCC"
     

field.
   

Although, this approach works reasonably well for
small numbers (around 100), it doesn't seem
     

suitable
   

for mailing very large number of recipients (in
     

the
   

order of 1000's). I'm not sure if the mailing
     

process
   

can be done at the backend with Oracle 9i
     

database,
   

using a stored procedure or a trigger.
     

What specifically is taking a long time? Is it the
generation of the 
email, or its sending? Because most email servers
should make sending 
such a message quite quick as they're doing the
actual caching and 
sending to multiple recipients.

But in general, you might look into JMS for this
type of thing (i.e. 
some way to "background process" an operation),
since it's the standard 
J2EE way to do asynchronous event management like
this.

An alternative which is a little messier, but is
probably quicker to do, 
is to have a thread-based operation which you kick
off in your Action 
class immediately before returning from
execute(...). It would then 
create and send the email. In this case you would
return control to the 
user (who's the one who caused the mass email to
kick off) immediately, 
and background-process the emails. The major
problems here are:
1) There are "better" ways to do this (i.e. JMS
and/or message driven beans)
2) You're potentially creating a large number of
threads if this is 
happening on a regular basis. But if it is, that's
even more reason to 
use JMS or a commercial bulk emailing system (where
bulk != spam)
3) You can't provide immediate feedback to the user
about the status of 
the mail job because it's happening in the
background.
4) Because it's not transactional (unlike JMS), you
might "lose" the 
email if there's a failure.

Kirk Wylie
M7 Corporation


   

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--
Brice D. Ruth
Sr. IT Analyst
Fiskars Brands, Inc.


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