SMTP Delivery Status Notification and Message Disposition Notification(RFC 1891 and RFC 2298)

[Arvola Chan <arvola@tibco.com>]

The following is an excerpt from section 2.4.3.3 in the RNIF 2.0 Core Specification:

Email-based message transfer is a store-forward-based message delivery mechanism and the SMTP messages need not be sent directly between the source and the eventual recipient's SMTP nodes (due to SMTP routing involved). Hence, trading partners cannot rely on any synchronous transport level errors (analogous to HTTP response/error codes) being returned. Therefore, trading partners MUST have a mechanism in place to handle undeliverable email messages sent to each other. Delivered messages with content problems SHOULD, however, result in the recipient sending separate RosettaNet Exception business signals. If desired, trading partners could use the SMTP Delivery Status Notification (DSN) mechanism (see RFC 1891) to request that the recipient notify the sender of SMTP message delivery status. Partners could also use the SMTP Message Disposition Notification (MDN) mechanism as needed. These are part of the standard SMTP message delivery mechanism / standard and can be used by trading partners as needed and feasible, based on their SMTP set-ups. RosettaNet does not provide any explicit specification in this respect.

Should the use of DSN and MDN be specifiable as part of the SMTP protocol?

-Arvola