Re: T2 Retry with Delivery Receipt

[Dan Weinreb <dlw@exceloncorp.com>]

   Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 13:40:58 -0400
   From: Christopher Ferris <chris.ferris@sun.com>

   AN SMTP node is NOT an MSH node. It is not part of the equation.
   The MSH nodes that are communication via SMTP are the ones that
   adopt the RM protocol of retries in the absence of an Acknowledgment.
   The SMTP nodes are incidental.

I agree.  An SMTP store-and-forward mailer is *not* an MSH IM.  SMTP
is at the next layer down, which is an entirely different matter.
From the vantage point of ebXML MS, SMTP store-and-forward mailers are
just part of the vast, foggy, unreliable cloud labelled "Internet".
From our point of view, if an SMTP mailer drops a message, that's
exactly the same as a message being "lost in the Internet" while in
transmit between one MSH and another MSH.

What's needed is a use case that's unreliable but must act at the
ebXML MS level of abstrction, i.e. it understands and interprets the
data formats described in the MS spec.  An SMTP mailer just takes
the packaged message and passes it along, treating it as opaque.