I'm extremely hesitant to draw unwanted attention and vandals to my
networks. I've managed to keep a good track record of not being hacked, and
I'd rather not tempt fate, which is also why I don't use my work email
address. For that matter, you would agree that such anonymity is commonly
practiced here. If you don't want to help me because I won't tell you the
name of my company, then that's your decision, and it's unfortunate for me.
I could really use the help, but I'm not going to expose my company to the
criminal element that read groups like this just waiting for an invitation.
I could easily give you the name of another company, just to satisfy your
requirements, but I'm not about to do that either. My request is just a
legitimate as my business.
I can offer you a description of my company though: We are a healthcare
company on Lake Union, Seattle, Washington. We have been in business for
roughly 6 years. We started out specifically dealing with various cancer
disease types, but have evolved to handle many other diseases such as heart
disease, and lung disease. We have arrangements between pharmaceutical
companies and patients of various diseases. When a pharmaceutical company
comes out with a new treatment, or clinical trial, they need to reach
thousands of candidates quickly the begin the trial. That's just for one
particular treatment, there could be several in a day.
The only reason we have records of such patients or subjects is because they
saught us, signed up, and filled out a profile and elected to be notified
when new treatments are available. We are one of few business that offer a
truly unbiased approach to patient care and education.
So the system works roughly like this: There's a group of databases - MS SQL
databases - which contain patient data, as well as news, drug trials, pharma
companies, etc. We're notified and then contracted to reach at least X
thousand patients of X age groups, with X disease type to let them know that
Merk has a trial drug to treat such a disease. A message is composed using
structured queries against the database, inserting the important key bits of
info per campaign and extracting the email addresses of enlisted patients.
Then thousands of instances of the message are sent from the database server
to the email server (currently Ms Exchange 2000).
By next day, thousands of replies are coming in - some interested in the
clinical trial, some not. Of those that are interested, they are recorded -
again in the database. Many of the outgoing messages never reached their
destination, and subsequent DSN codes were recorded - which will need to be
reviewed to find the fault of the failure.
Next we have clinical specialists (nurses, and such) who correspond with the
interested patients. They need quick access, and fast retrieval of messages
and campaigns which may have been sent last year. Such info is easily and
rapidly available when querried from a database - hence the need to record
message bodies. The Exchange database is cumbersome to deal with, where as a
SQL database lends itslef quite well for such a task. In addition, trends
and other analysis need to be run against campaigns, which is another reason
to have all of the email messages recorded in such a way that they can be
intelligently querried.
What I'm asking for is a good approach to storing and recording message
bodies so they can be retrieved based on intelligent, structured searches. I
had always believed that database storage of emails was the best method for
this, but if there's a better way, I'm all ears.
I don't need help sending thousands of emails to people. That part of our
system wokrs already. We are a listed company, Internap in Seattle's Fisher
Plaza is our ISP. If there were any spam-related issues with regard to my
company, we would have answered to it long ago. The fact is, only patients
who want an alternative treatment for a disease and sign up to be notified
of such will ever hear from us. We comply with all the regulations and
standards set fourth by the government, as well as our ISP, and our patients
ISP's.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.
>From: Jeff Lasman <blists@???>
>To: exim-users@???
>Subject: Re: [Exim] SMTP Logging
>Date: Sun, 13 Jun 2004 08:42:04 -0700
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>FILETIME=[5813AF70:01C4515D]
>
>On Saturday 12 June 2004 03:25 pm, Lonnie Santella wrote:
>
> > Nested deep inside that reply, Greg, in between the sarcasm and
> > insults, is some good advice, indeed some common sense among the BSD
> > pros. If you re-read my question I think you'll discover that I'm
> > completely open to doing this the best way possible.
>
>But nested deep inside this reply of yours, Lonnie, is some very
>important information as well:
>
> > We send out thousands of email campaigns per night - to folks who
> > have registered for such a service.
>
>I strongly believe that you believe you're doing right and good for
>yourself, for your company, and for the recipients of your email.
>
> > "Lonnie Santella" <xxxxxxxxxxxxxx@???>
>
>But then why must you hide from us who you are and the name of the
>company you do this for?
>
> > * Send 25,000 email messages per night as a single campaign.
>
>The last gent who told me this, when all was said and done, was
>attempting more like 25,000,000 emails per night... but he didn't want
>to admit that. You may be telling the truth, but unless you tell us
>who you are and the name of the company you do this for there's no way
>for us to obtain any kind of verification.
>
> > I've stayed away from
> > posting in these groups for as long as I could.
>
>And frankly, that's a red flag for me as well; are you afraid to ask us?
>Afraid of what we might ask you when we know a few details?
>
>I wish I could feel comfortable that you're not abusing the purpose of
>Internet-based email, so that I could feel comfortable in helping you.
>
>But with the information you've given, I can't.
>
>Jeff
>--
>Jeff Lasman, nobaloney.net, P. O. Box 52672, Riverside, CA 92517 US
>Professional Internet Services & Support / Consulting / Colocation
>Our blists address used on lists is for list email only
>Phone +1 909 324-9706, or see: "http://www.nobaloney.net/contactus.html"
>
>
>--
>
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