From: Kirk Haines <khaines@...>
Date: 2005-08-04T22:51:30+09:00
Subject: Re: Ruby SMTP server library ?

On Thursday 04 August 2005 5:52 am, Lothar Scholz wrote:
> Hello James,
>
> >> I think Lothar was asking about the sending end of the transaction.
>
> Exactly. I run into it when i wrote a script yesterday helping me to
> send out some mass email. Even with about a few hunderts of email
> addresses the current SMTP class is running into problem very soon if
> you use foreign SMTP servers.

I send some email newsletters for clients, and have had absolutely no problems 
with this.  A completely unoptimized single threaded process going to a 
completely unoptimized sender, constructing dynamic emails (content is 
constructed from a database profile according to recipient data) nets me 
about 200 messages sent per minute from my server.  I'm just using tmail for 
this.

If you are doing a lot of email generation, the efficient way to do it is to 
generate the emails and put them out to disk where you can have a seperate 
queuing system running multiprocess/multithreaded to submit these to your 
sending system (likely a send farm of more than one dedicated sender if you 
really do a lot of email).  That way your generating throughput isn't 
throttled down by your sending throughput, and it gives you more control to 
generate when it's convenient and send when it's convenient.

I worked for years in the email business, and I have no doubt that my Ruby 
based engine could, when compared to the engine that my last employer still 
uses (Java based), compete well in the performance area with theirs (and 
completely blow the doors off of their when it comes to ease of constructing 
new dynamic emails).

But, I'm going off on a tangent.  The point is, I don't see any weakness with 
Ruby when it comes to sending email.


Kirk Haines