Trying to troubleshoot a questionable plugin a client is experiencing issues with in production, and one possible issue I see is the fact that they're sending SMTP synchronously from within our heavily-transacted C# web application. In the past I believe I've read or been told that sending SMTP synchronously from within a transaction is a precarious bet, but I can't seem to find anything to back it up that I can present to the client's dev team.
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I think more generally that the problem is; does the e-mail send truly need to be part of the transaction, especially since sending an e-mail does not necessarily mean anything about whether the message is received?
Given the unreliability of e-mail in general, it seems like a bad fit for something to put in a transaction - where you are looking for a set of items to absolutely complete as a group, or not at all; How do you know if the e-mail actually, absolutely, has been received?
Assuming then that they agree that the e-mail should not be part of the transaction scope itself, it becomes extra fluff - fluff that takes time, holding up the transaction for something technically unrelated.
Andrew Barber
2010-10-25 21:11:46
Problem is, the client's dev team is a third-party offshore group, and their priority is to save time, not necessarily to implement the best solution if it costs more time. So I'm trying to find objective information to qualify my previously communicated thoughts that they should not be firing off synchronous SMTP within EnlistmentTransactions.
andrewbadera
2010-10-27 10:45:13