I discuss the desired properties of a general Email-based solution, a specific Email solution and a migration path for using new Email technologies as they become more widely available. Background Facsimile machines and Email have been around for about two decades and originally served somewhat similar purposes. Primarily they were intended to transmit small amounts of information from one point to another. It was good for normal text, handwritten messages and pictures or illustrations that could be transmitted at low resolution. It was good only for text, but had the advantage that the information received could be viewed, stored, or even simply deleted before being read or printed.
Traditional faxes have problems with large amounts of data, traditional Email with non-textual data.
Now both Email and fax technologies have improved dramatically, as have the new requirements that users have demanded. The specific problem addressed here is based on an issue I encountered in helping support college staff in working with their database. The College needs to send a 50 page fax to about 100 locations around the world. The data to be sent originates from inside an Oracle database, and can be printed to a postscript printer or output as a postscript file. The data processing capabilities and facilities at the 100 locations is unknown, variable and unpredicatable.