Get email on mainframes.

[Kiran Gupta]

I've done sending an email from mainframe environment(JCL) to an email id in Windows, but thequestion is: is there any way to receive an email to mainframe environment from an email ID? If yes, on mainframe, my programs should be able to read and validate the email and write some content to some dataset.

As of now, we use open VMS which can read and validate the subject of email and then writes to MQ queue. From queues mainframe programs reads and writes into a mainframe dataset.

But are there some other ways of doing it - please guide on this.

[Kiran Gupta]

Is there no way of doing it?

[Robert Sample]

What mail client do you propose to use on the mainframe? The fastest and easiest solution is for you to convince your company to buy one of the mainframe products that allow receiving emails -- Google mainframe email software for more information about the products on the market.

[Kiran Gupta]

Thanks Robert. I thought with in built FTP or SMTP on mainframes we'd be able to this but searching on the terms you gave it looks like it's very differnt beast. But i think then very few must be using email from mainframe softwares?

[Robert Sample]

Sending email from a mainframe is pretty easy and can be done on any mainframe running SMTP (which merely requires a little configuration of the TCP/IP stack). However, receiving an email on the mainframe is much more difficult as an email client is needed to process the email and monitor the port for incoming emails. TSO has a send / receive process but that is more for files than for emails.