Hello Everyone and thanks for your help in advance.  I have an 
application that allows the user to send an email along with and 
attachment.  However, I have two problems that need to be solved.

1.  Since the file first needs to be uploaded to the server, depending on 
the size of the file, the user may close the application before the 
upload is complete.  I need to be able to display a status message (or 
even a status bar) to let the user know when it is finished.  I can think 
of a few hacks to make this work, but I was hoping someone has an elegant 
solution.

2.  As this is a company intranet, the email may be distributed to around 
2000 people.  Thus, I would prefer to transfer the actual emailing to a 
separate component(I think - maybe wrong terminology) and thus allow the 
user to close (and also avoid timing out).  I know there are commercial 
applications for sale out there, but would prefer to write it myself.

Any help on these issues would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks.

Hugh,

As far as #2 goes:  If you generate the email in your code, and you need to
send it to lots of people, you should be alright in creating an email with
lots of recipients... granted you might not be able to do all 2000 at once,
but several hundred at a time.  Even with a large uploaded file, you
shouldn't run into too much of a timeout problem cause you are just sending
it to a lot of people (just a small bit of text for each person's email
address vs. 1 email with the file in it for each).

Slightly related to this...
Here are the facts I've acquired from your email and my own assumptions:
a. The page is hosted on a company intranet
b. The email may go to around 2000 recipients
c. You're worried about timing out the server that's generating the
email(s).
d. The uploaded file may be big.
So...
<soapbox>
a. I would be more worried about crashing a mail server with 2000 emails
with an attachment (regardless of size).
b. If you are on a company intranet than it's assumed that most (if not all)
of the individuals who may receive this email could access some network
resource where the uploaded file could reside.  Can you put the file in a
place on your network that is publicly accessible?  (Depending on your
company's network structure, this might not be possible.)
c. If you have this page hosted on an intranet web server, couldn't you just
save the file on the web server (which it would seem you are already doing)
and instead of emailing the file, email a URL to the file
(http://intranet.company.com/publicfiles/thefile.ext) or something like
that?

I always get annoyed when someone in my company emails me a file that is
a)already on a public file server (as if I couldn't get it there)
or
b)in Visual Source Safe (even worse, cause the DEVELOPERS, of all people, do
this.  I would expect them to be able to use the network wisely).
Ok, I'm done now.
</soapbox>

Peter

-----Original Message-----
From: Hugh McLaughlin [mailto:hugh@k...]
Sent: Wednesday, February 05, 2003 13:06
To: ASP.NET
Subject: [aspx] Uploading and Emailing


Hello Everyone and thanks for your help in advance.  I have an
application that allows the user to send an email along with and
attachment.  However, I have two problems that need to be solved.

1.  Since the file first needs to be uploaded to the server, depending on
the size of the file, the user may close the application before the
upload is complete.  I need to be able to display a status message (or
even a status bar) to let the user know when it is finished.  I can think
of a few hacks to make this work, but I was hoping someone has an elegant
solution.

2.  As this is a company intranet, the email may be distributed to around
2000 people.  Thus, I would prefer to transfer the actual emailing to a
separate component(I think - maybe wrong terminology) and thus allow the
user to close (and also avoid timing out).  I know there are commercial
applications for sale out there, but would prefer to write it myself.

Any help on these issues would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks.

One hole in your assumptions.  Not everyone has access to the server as  
there are many remote users.  So it either comes down to giving remote 
users access to server resources (not an option) or simply distributing 
them in some fashion.  Thus the need for something web based.  As far as 
crashing the server, I can limit the size of the attachment.

Any feedback?

> Hugh,

As far as #2 goes:  If you generate the email in your code, and you need 
to
send it to lots of people, you should be alright in creating an email with
lots of recipients... granted you might not be able to do all 2000 at 
once,
but several hundred at a time.  Even with a large uploaded file, you
shouldn't run into too much of a timeout problem cause you are just 
sending
it to a lot of people (just a small bit of text for each person's email
address vs. 1 email with the file in it for each).

Slightly related to this...
Here are the facts I've acquired from your email and my own assumptions:
a. The page is hosted on a company intranet
b. The email may go to around 2000 recipients
c. You're worried about timing out the server that's generating the
email(s).
d. The uploaded file may be big.
So...
<soapbox>
a. I would be more worried about crashing a mail server with 2000 emails
with an attachment (regardless of size).
b. If you are on a company intranet than it's assumed that most (if not 
all)
of the individuals who may receive this email could access some network
resource where the uploaded file could reside.  Can you put the file in a
place on your network that is publicly accessible?  (Depending on your
company's network structure, this might not be possible.)
c. If you have this page hosted on an intranet web server, couldn't you 
just
save the file on the web server (which it would seem you are already 
doing)
and instead of emailing the file, email a URL to the file
(http://intranet.company.com/publicfiles/thefile.ext) or something like
that?

I always get annoyed when someone in my company emails me a file that is
a)already on a public file server (as if I couldn't get it there)
or
b)in Visual Source Safe (even worse, cause the DEVELOPERS, of all people, 
do
this.  I would expect them to be able to use the network wisely).
Ok, I'm done now.
</soapbox>

Peter

-----Original Message-----
From: Hugh McLaughlin [mailto:hugh@k...]
Sent: Wednesday, February 05, 2003 13:06
To: ASP.NET
Subject: [aspx] Uploading and Emailing


Hello Everyone and thanks for your help in advance.  I have an
application that allows the user to send an email along with and
attachment.  However, I have two problems that need to be solved.

1.  Since the file first needs to be uploaded to the server, depending on
the size of the file, the user may close the application before the
upload is complete.  I need to be able to display a status message (or
even a status bar) to let the user know when it is finished.  I can think
of a few hacks to make this work, but I was hoping someone has an elegant
solution.

2.  As this is a company intranet, the email may be distributed to around
2000 people.  Thus, I would prefer to transfer the actual emailing to a
separate component(I think - maybe wrong terminology) and thus allow the
user to close (and also avoid timing out).  I know there are commercial
applications for sale out there, but would prefer to write it myself.

Any help on these issues would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks.

So, if the device for uploading the file and thus creating the
"distribution" is web base, couldn't the access method be similarly web
based?  Save the file to a web accessible directory and distribute a link to
it.

-----Original Message-----
From: Hugh McLaughlin [mailto:hugh@k...]
Sent: Friday, February 07, 2003 05:01
To: ASP.NET
Subject: [aspx] RE: Uploading and Emailing


One hole in your assumptions.  Not everyone has access to the server as
there are many remote users.  So it either comes down to giving remote
users access to server resources (not an option) or simply distributing
them in some fashion.  Thus the need for something web based.  As far as
crashing the server, I can limit the size of the attachment.

Any feedback?

> Hugh,

As far as #2 goes:  If you generate the email in your code, and you need
to
send it to lots of people, you should be alright in creating an email with
lots of recipients... granted you might not be able to do all 2000 at
once,
but several hundred at a time.  Even with a large uploaded file, you
shouldn't run into too much of a timeout problem cause you are just
sending
it to a lot of people (just a small bit of text for each person's email
address vs. 1 email with the file in it for each).

Slightly related to this...
Here are the facts I've acquired from your email and my own assumptions:
a. The page is hosted on a company intranet
b. The email may go to around 2000 recipients
c. You're worried about timing out the server that's generating the
email(s).
d. The uploaded file may be big.
So...
<soapbox>
a. I would be more worried about crashing a mail server with 2000 emails
with an attachment (regardless of size).
b. If you are on a company intranet than it's assumed that most (if not
all)
of the individuals who may receive this email could access some network
resource where the uploaded file could reside.  Can you put the file in a
place on your network that is publicly accessible?  (Depending on your
company's network structure, this might not be possible.)
c. If you have this page hosted on an intranet web server, couldn't you
just
save the file on the web server (which it would seem you are already
doing)
and instead of emailing the file, email a URL to the file
(http://intranet.company.com/publicfiles/thefile.ext) or something like
that?

I always get annoyed when someone in my company emails me a file that is
a)already on a public file server (as if I couldn't get it there)
or
b)in Visual Source Safe (even worse, cause the DEVELOPERS, of all people,
do
this.  I would expect them to be able to use the network wisely).
Ok, I'm done now.
</soapbox>

Peter

-----Original Message-----
From: Hugh McLaughlin [mailto:hugh@k...]
Sent: Wednesday, February 05, 2003 13:06
To: ASP.NET
Subject: [aspx] Uploading and Emailing


Hello Everyone and thanks for your help in advance.  I have an
application that allows the user to send an email along with and
attachment.  However, I have two problems that need to be solved.

1.  Since the file first needs to be uploaded to the server, depending on
the size of the file, the user may close the application before the
upload is complete.  I need to be able to display a status message (or
even a status bar) to let the user know when it is finished.  I can think
of a few hacks to make this work, but I was hoping someone has an elegant
solution.

2.  As this is a company intranet, the email may be distributed to around
2000 people.  Thus, I would prefer to transfer the actual emailing to a
separate component(I think - maybe wrong terminology) and thus allow the
user to close (and also avoid timing out).  I know there are commercial
applications for sale out there, but would prefer to write it myself.

Any help on these issues would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks.

Very true.  However, the same problem exists as my initial question.  The 
remote user still has to be able to upload a file.  Thus, if the file 
takes more than a few seconds, the user may close the application, thus 
terminating the upload.  Second, I still need the ability to email up to 
about 2000 recipients.  Again, a possible timeout situation, and certainly 
not worth tying up the webserver if I can avoid.  Thus the need for some 
type of "threaded" solution that can run in the background.

> So, if the device for uploading the file and thus creating the
"distribution" is web base, couldn't the access method be similarly web
based?  Save the file to a web accessible directory and distribute a link 
to
it.

-----Original Message-----
From: Hugh McLaughlin [mailto:hugh@k...]
Sent: Friday, February 07, 2003 05:01
To: ASP.NET
Subject: [aspx] RE: Uploading and Emailing


One hole in your assumptions.  Not everyone has access to the server as
there are many remote users.  So it either comes down to giving remote
users access to server resources (not an option) or simply distributing
them in some fashion.  Thus the need for something web based.  As far as
crashing the server, I can limit the size of the attachment.

Any feedback?

> Hugh,

As far as #2 goes:  If you generate the email in your code, and you need
to
send it to lots of people, you should be alright in creating an email with
lots of recipients... granted you might not be able to do all 2000 at
once,
but several hundred at a time.  Even with a large uploaded file, you
shouldn't run into too much of a timeout problem cause you are just
sending
it to a lot of people (just a small bit of text for each person's email
address vs. 1 email with the file in it for each).

Slightly related to this...
Here are the facts I've acquired from your email and my own assumptions:
a. The page is hosted on a company intranet
b. The email may go to around 2000 recipients
c. You're worried about timing out the server that's generating the
email(s).
d. The uploaded file may be big.
So...
<soapbox>
a. I would be more worried about crashing a mail server with 2000 emails
with an attachment (regardless of size).
b. If you are on a company intranet than it's assumed that most (if not
all)
of the individuals who may receive this email could access some network
resource where the uploaded file could reside.  Can you put the file in a
place on your network that is publicly accessible?  (Depending on your
company's network structure, this might not be possible.)
c. If you have this page hosted on an intranet web server, couldn't you
just
save the file on the web server (which it would seem you are already
doing)
and instead of emailing the file, email a URL to the file
(http://intranet.company.com/publicfiles/thefile.ext) or something like
that?

I always get annoyed when someone in my company emails me a file that is
a)already on a public file server (as if I couldn't get it there)
or
b)in Visual Source Safe (even worse, cause the DEVELOPERS, of all people,
do
this.  I would expect them to be able to use the network wisely).
Ok, I'm done now.
</soapbox>

Peter

-----Original Message-----
From: Hugh McLaughlin [mailto:hugh@k...]
Sent: Wednesday, February 05, 2003 13:06
To: ASP.NET
Subject: [aspx] Uploading and Emailing


Hello Everyone and thanks for your help in advance.  I have an
application that allows the user to send an email along with and
attachment.  However, I have two problems that need to be solved.

1.  Since the file first needs to be uploaded to the server, depending on
the size of the file, the user may close the application before the
upload is complete.  I need to be able to display a status message (or
even a status bar) to let the user know when it is finished.  I can think
of a few hacks to make this work, but I was hoping someone has an elegant
solution.

2.  As this is a company intranet, the email may be distributed to around
2000 people.  Thus, I would prefer to transfer the actual emailing to a
separate component(I think - maybe wrong terminology) and thus allow the
user to close (and also avoid timing out).  I know there are commercial
applications for sale out there, but would prefer to write it myself.

Any help on these issues would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks.

Aha!

Hugh, your time-out concern has now become more clear.  Unfortunately, I
don't think there's a way out of the hole for this one. If the file take x
amount of time to upload, there's little more you can do aside from put up a
message that says "If the file's big, it'll take a long time to upload" :-).
Given that the upload speed is bottlenecked by the client's connection,
there's no component in the world that can make it any faster (apart from
writing a client application that they'd have to download, install and then
... etc etc.)  If you find a way to make the upload faster, I'd like to buy
stock in your company! ;-)

As far as the email problem goes...
If you create an email that is addressed to 2000 people, then it would be up
to the mail server to handle creating each one. I have never tried
generating an email to that many people at once, but I can somewhat
assuredly say that most mail servers would prefer slightly smaller "TO:"
lists.  But leaving 10-20 messages (each with many addresses, say in the
order of hundreds) up to mail server shouldn't be a BIG problem.  You could
look into a mail distribution service that may have some kind of web API
that you can use to create a mailing.  I haven't worked with that kind of
thing so I'm afraid I'm not much help there.

Peter

-----Original Message-----
From: Hugh McLaughlin [mailto:hugh@k...]
Sent: Friday, February 07, 2003 19:23
To: ASP.NET
Subject: [aspx] RE: Uploading and Emailing


Very true.  However, the same problem exists as my initial question.  The
remote user still has to be able to upload a file.  Thus, if the file
takes more than a few seconds, the user may close the application, thus
terminating the upload.  Second, I still need the ability to email up to
about 2000 recipients.  Again, a possible timeout situation, and certainly
not worth tying up the webserver if I can avoid.  Thus the need for some
type of "threaded" solution that can run in the background.

> So, if the device for uploading the file and thus creating the
"distribution" is web base, couldn't the access method be similarly web
based?  Save the file to a web accessible directory and distribute a link
to
it.

-----Original Message-----
From: Hugh McLaughlin [mailto:hugh@k...]
Sent: Friday, February 07, 2003 05:01
To: ASP.NET
Subject: [aspx] RE: Uploading and Emailing


One hole in your assumptions.  Not everyone has access to the server as
there are many remote users.  So it either comes down to giving remote
users access to server resources (not an option) or simply distributing
them in some fashion.  Thus the need for something web based.  As far as
crashing the server, I can limit the size of the attachment.

Any feedback?

> Hugh,

As far as #2 goes:  If you generate the email in your code, and you need
to
send it to lots of people, you should be alright in creating an email with
lots of recipients... granted you might not be able to do all 2000 at
once,
but several hundred at a time.  Even with a large uploaded file, you
shouldn't run into too much of a timeout problem cause you are just
sending
it to a lot of people (just a small bit of text for each person's email
address vs. 1 email with the file in it for each).

Slightly related to this...
Here are the facts I've acquired from your email and my own assumptions:
a. The page is hosted on a company intranet
b. The email may go to around 2000 recipients
c. You're worried about timing out the server that's generating the
email(s).
d. The uploaded file may be big.
So...
<soapbox>
a. I would be more worried about crashing a mail server with 2000 emails
with an attachment (regardless of size).
b. If you are on a company intranet than it's assumed that most (if not
all)
of the individuals who may receive this email could access some network
resource where the uploaded file could reside.  Can you put the file in a
place on your network that is publicly accessible?  (Depending on your
company's network structure, this might not be possible.)
c. If you have this page hosted on an intranet web server, couldn't you
just
save the file on the web server (which it would seem you are already
doing)
and instead of emailing the file, email a URL to the file
(http://intranet.company.com/publicfiles/thefile.ext) or something like
that?

I always get annoyed when someone in my company emails me a file that is
a)already on a public file server (as if I couldn't get it there)
or
b)in Visual Source Safe (even worse, cause the DEVELOPERS, of all people,
do
this.  I would expect them to be able to use the network wisely).
Ok, I'm done now.
</soapbox>

Peter

-----Original Message-----
From: Hugh McLaughlin [mailto:hugh@k...]
Sent: Wednesday, February 05, 2003 13:06
To: ASP.NET
Subject: [aspx] Uploading and Emailing


Hello Everyone and thanks for your help in advance.  I have an
application that allows the user to send an email along with and
attachment.  However, I have two problems that need to be solved.

1.  Since the file first needs to be uploaded to the server, depending on
the size of the file, the user may close the application before the
upload is complete.  I need to be able to display a status message (or
even a status bar) to let the user know when it is finished.  I can think
of a few hacks to make this work, but I was hoping someone has an elegant
solution.

2.  As this is a company intranet, the email may be distributed to around
2000 people.  Thus, I would prefer to transfer the actual emailing to a
separate component(I think - maybe wrong terminology) and thus allow the
user to close (and also avoid timing out).  I know there are commercial
applications for sale out there, but would prefer to write it myself.

Any help on these issues would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks.

Is there no way you could use distribution lists instead? You could
maybe use an "everyone" list (not good practice normally but that's by
the by) and send one email to that address. I'm creating something
slightly similar whereby asp.net forms (which are created automatically
but that's by the by) send emails to distribution lists set up on the
internal mail server. Exchange has large amount of asp.net linkage so
the distribution list should be able to be edited via a web interface.
In my case I am using Novell and I also don't need this sort of
functionality (limited time).

Otherwise could you call a program on the server itself and let the
server send all of the mail requests to the mail server. I don't know
enough asp.net to know if that is possible or not but I'm sure someone
else on this mailing list can.

Finally try the following to stop asp.net timeouts. Find out how many
emails can be done safely (eg 100 mails before asp.net timeouts at the
required timeout length) then just response.redirect to the same page
with a querystring value for the starting index of the next address to
send the mail to. Or just be simple and change the timeout value

Just some ideas - might be useful - might not :)

-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Lanoie [mailto:planoie@n...] 
Sent: 10 February 2003 19:37
To: ASP.NET
Subject: [aspx] RE: Uploading and Emailing


Aha!

Hugh, your time-out concern has now become more clear.  Unfortunately, I
don't think there's a way out of the hole for this one. If the file take
x amount of time to upload, there's little more you can do aside from
put up a message that says "If the file's big, it'll take a long time to
upload" :-). Given that the upload speed is bottlenecked by the client's
connection, there's no component in the world that can make it any
faster (apart from writing a client application that they'd have to
download, install and then ... etc etc.)  If you find a way to make the
upload faster, I'd like to buy stock in your company! ;-)

As far as the email problem goes...
If you create an email that is addressed to 2000 people, then it would
be up to the mail server to handle creating each one. I have never tried
generating an email to that many people at once, but I can somewhat
assuredly say that most mail servers would prefer slightly smaller "TO:"
lists.  But leaving 10-20 messages (each with many addresses, say in the
order of hundreds) up to mail server shouldn't be a BIG problem.  You
could look into a mail distribution service that may have some kind of
web API that you can use to create a mailing.  I haven't worked with
that kind of thing so I'm afraid I'm not much help there.

Peter

-----Original Message-----
From: Hugh McLaughlin [mailto:hugh@k...]
Sent: Friday, February 07, 2003 19:23
To: ASP.NET
Subject: [aspx] RE: Uploading and Emailing


Very true.  However, the same problem exists as my initial question.
The remote user still has to be able to upload a file.  Thus, if the
file takes more than a few seconds, the user may close the application,
thus terminating the upload.  Second, I still need the ability to email
up to about 2000 recipients.  Again, a possible timeout situation, and
certainly not worth tying up the webserver if I can avoid.  Thus the
need for some type of "threaded" solution that can run in the
background.

> So, if the device for uploading the file and thus creating the
"distribution" is web base, couldn't the access method be similarly web
based?  Save the file to a web accessible directory and distribute a
link to it.

-----Original Message-----
From: Hugh McLaughlin [mailto:hugh@k...]
Sent: Friday, February 07, 2003 05:01
To: ASP.NET
Subject: [aspx] RE: Uploading and Emailing


One hole in your assumptions.  Not everyone has access to the server as
there are many remote users.  So it either comes down to giving remote
users access to server resources (not an option) or simply distributing
them in some fashion.  Thus the need for something web based.  As far as
crashing the server, I can limit the size of the attachment.

Any feedback?

> Hugh,

As far as #2 goes:  If you generate the email in your code, and you need
to send it to lots of people, you should be alright in creating an email
with lots of recipients... granted you might not be able to do all 2000
at once, but several hundred at a time.  Even with a large uploaded
file, you shouldn't run into too much of a timeout problem cause you are
just sending it to a lot of people (just a small bit of text for each
person's email address vs. 1 email with the file in it for each).

Slightly related to this...
Here are the facts I've acquired from your email and my own assumptions:
a. The page is hosted on a company intranet b. The email may go to
around 2000 recipients c. You're worried about timing out the server
that's generating the email(s). d. The uploaded file may be big. So...
<soapbox> a. I would be more worried about crashing a mail server with
2000 emails with an attachment (regardless of size). b. If you are on a
company intranet than it's assumed that most (if not
all)
of the individuals who may receive this email could access some network
resource where the uploaded file could reside.  Can you put the file in
a place on your network that is publicly accessible?  (Depending on your
company's network structure, this might not be possible.) c. If you have
this page hosted on an intranet web server, couldn't you just save the
file on the web server (which it would seem you are already
doing)
and instead of emailing the file, email a URL to the file
(http://intranet.company.com/publicfiles/thefile.ext) or something like
that?

I always get annoyed when someone in my company emails me a file that is
a)already on a public file server (as if I couldn't get it there) or
b)in Visual Source Safe (even worse, cause the DEVELOPERS, of all
people, do this.  I would expect them to be able to use the network
wisely). Ok, I'm done now. </soapbox>

Peter

-----Original Message-----
From: Hugh McLaughlin [mailto:hugh@k...]
Sent: Wednesday, February 05, 2003 13:06
To: ASP.NET
Subject: [aspx] Uploading and Emailing


Hello Everyone and thanks for your help in advance.  I have an
application that allows the user to send an email along with and
attachment.  However, I have two problems that need to be solved.

1.  Since the file first needs to be uploaded to the server, depending
on the size of the file, the user may close the application before the
upload is complete.  I need to be able to display a status message (or
even a status bar) to let the user know when it is finished.  I can
think of a few hacks to make this work, but I was hoping someone has an
elegant solution.

2.  As this is a company intranet, the email may be distributed to
around 2000 people.  Thus, I would prefer to transfer the actual
emailing to a separate component(I think - maybe wrong terminology) and
thus allow the user to close (and also avoid timing out).  I know there
are commercial applications for sale out there, but would prefer to
write it myself.

Any help on these issues would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks.
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