From: kvc@summer.innosoft.com (Kevin V. Carosso)
Newsgroups: vmsnet.mail.pmdf
Subject: RE: IBM DISOSS <---> UNIX  - Message status problem
Date: 5 Oct 92 04:48:03 GMT
Organization: The Internet
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> However,  when a message from IBM DISOSS is sent out,  there is a status
> code for this message set up. If accepted by the network,  this code is set
> to ACCEPTED.  When it is delivered to the intended mailbox,  the code is
> changed to COMPLETE.  IBM users can have in their set up that when this
> code appears,  the whole status of the message disappears.  In that way the
> only status codes shown are for undelivered messages.
>
> This is where we are stuck at the moment.  Messages from IBM DISOSS are
> delivered to our UNIX users but the status of the message on DISOSS does
> not go to COMPLETE.  We can get a message delivery report back to the
> DISOSS sender, though this report comes from MAILER-DAEMON.  This only works
> if we make a DDS entry for MAILER-DAEMON - a network of UNIX systems would
> therefore require a DDS entry for the MAILER-DAEMON on each machine.
>
>
> What we would like is either one of the following two solutions to the
> problem :-
>
> 1.  that when the message arrives at the intended recipient,  the IBM
>     sender has the status for that message changed to 'completed'.

Unfortunately, there is no way for PMDF to do this at the moment.  Since there
is currently no standard form for delivery notifications in the RFC-822 world,
there is no way for PMDF-MR to turn the notification from the MAILER-DAEMON back
into something meaningful to Message Router, MR/S, or DISOSS.  The information
has usually not been included in what MAILER-DAEMON generated and is
absolutely not in a standardized form such that we can find the information.


> 2.  that when the message arrives at PMDF or even PMDF-MR,  the status of
>     the message on the IBM side goes to 'complete'.  Then if the message fails
>     to get through,  a non-delivery message will be sent.

This may be possible to arrange.  The Message Router mailbox for PMDF is
normally set /SUPPRESS_DELIVERY_REPORT.  If you change that to
/NOSUPPRESS_DELIVERY_REPORT then Message Router itself will generate a
delivery report back to MR/S and DISOSS at the time PMDF-MR successfully
picks up the message.  Hopefully that delivery report will be sufficient
for DISOSS to mark the message as "completed".  Of course since PMDF-MR
won't remove the delivery request, the DISOSS user will still get a message
back from MAILER-DAEMON indicating success or failure at the final delivery.

The Internet world is looking into standardized notifications.  When that
happens PMDF-MR will implement that standard so that your problem will not
be a problem (at least when the remote UNIX machine also adopts the standard).

	/Kevin Carosso
	 Innosoft