Email delivery confirmation

Question

Hi,
I want to send an email with the help of the utl_smtp package. So I write a store procedure to send email and it works. Additional to every send I want a delivery confirmation to the sender adress, because it is very important to see, which mails weren't delivered. I've searched for a parameter, that I could set and found these syntaxes in the "PL/SQL Packages and Types Reference".
UTL_SMTP.MAIL (
c IN OUT NOCOPY connection,
sender IN VARCHAR2,
parameters IN VARCHAR2 DEFAULT NULL);
UTL_SMTP.RCPT (
c IN OUT NOCOPY connection,
recipient IN VARCHAR2,
parameters IN VARCHAR2 DEFAULT NULL)
RETURN reply;
UTL_SMTP.RCPT (
c IN OUT NOCOPY connection,
recipient IN VARCHAR2,
parameters IN VARCHAR2 DEFAULT NULL);
The following statement stay in the Reference for the description of "parameters":
parameters The additional parameters to RCPT command as defined in Section 6 of [RFC1869]. It should follow the format of "XXX=XXX (XXX=XXX ....)".
I read a little bit about SMTP in RFC1869 and I changed the statements:
utl_smtp.mail(mail_conn,sender);
utl_smtp.rcpt(mail_conn,recipient);
to:
utl_smtp.mail(mail_conn,sender, 'NOTIFY="SUCCESS,FAILURE"');
utl_smtp.rcpt(mail_conn,recipient, 'NOTIFY="SUCCESS,FAILURE"');
I get now the following syntax error: "ORA-29279: SMTP permanent error: 501 Syntax Error"
I tried also the statement without success:
utl_smtp.mail(mail_conn,sender, 'NOTIFY=SUCCESS,FAILURE');
utl_smtp.rcpt(mail_conn,recipient, 'NOTIFY=SUCCESS,FAILURE');
What can I do to get this delivery confirmation. E.g. in Outlook is possible to set this as option for emails before you send it. Any ideeas?
Thanks!
Serban Vettori

Answer 1

No fenton, does not exist. However, you can set up a Rule to trigger a reply to anyone who sends you mail.
But beware that this will validate your email address for every spam mail that you recieve and may loop endlessly if someone on the other end does the same, or has an out-of-office reply set up (unless their server is prepared to stop such a loop).
If you really need legal mail receipt certification, use special services such as
http://www.readnotify.com/readnotify/email_tracking.asp
Real "big brother is watching you stuff" you may not want to use