Automail: an Automated System for Managing E-mail Queries to Servers*

Elaine Best, Joe Gatewood

Computing, Information and Communications Division and Life Sciences Division, Los Alamos National Laboratory

Automail is a UNIX package which automates the process of sending queries to an Email-based server, tracking the messages, and then handling the response. It accepts sequences either as a list of files or from a SYBASE database. The responses are either stored in the SYBASE database or placed in a directory accessible by the user. Once the user submits the sequences, the package runs periodically without human intervention.

Automail offers the following useful features:

• Given a sequence, Automail can format the query in the style required by each server.
• Each query is logged and tracked. If a response is not received within a designated time period, the query is resent.
• Automail avoids flooding the server with a large number of queries at once. No more than a designated number of queries to a server are permitted to be outstanding. As responses are received, new queries are sent out.
• Automail works around the clock, making use of nighttime and weekend periods, when the servers may be less busy.
• If the database option is chosen, Automail will parse the response and store it in a database.

Automail is currently configured to work with Genquest in the file-based option, and cDNA-Inform for the database option. However, new servers can be added with a minimum of trouble.

*This work was funded by USDOE under contract W-7405-ENG-36.