Java Training
Introduction to Java Mail
What is JavaMail? -1

JavaMail is an API for sending and receiving email using
Java. The current version is 1.3.1 and can be downloaded
from Sun's website at:
http://java.sun.com/products/javamail/

Possible uses:

Send email from web pages using servlets

Create a GUI email client

Send email from Java stored procedures

Send email from any type of Java application

Spam your friends and enemies! (read email addresses
from a database, write a for () loop, and away the emails
go!)
What is JavaMail? -2

To send JavaMail, you'll need to add at least two JAR files
from Sun to your classpath (placing them in a lib directory
may be a good idea)

activation.jar
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mail.jar

sendmail is the most commonly used mail server in the
world, as it generally comes free with Unix and Linux
installations

very powerful and flexible. Supports POP3 and IMAP

well documented (lots of books on setting up sendmail)

long track record (first version appeared in early '80s)

tedious to set up (lots of cryptic configuration files)

free

www.sendmail.org
Mail Servers (qmail)-2

qmail is probably the most popular alternative to sendmail
in the UNIX world

perhaps more secure than sendmail (at least older
versions of sendmail)

Easier to set up and administer than sendmail

pretty good documentation (several books written on
qmail in the past few years)

free


POP3 is the oldest and most widely used. It was designed
to support offline mail processing.

Mail is delivered to a server and a user's computer runs
a mail client program to download any new mail

Once messages are delivered, they are generally
deleted from the mail server

This minimizes disk space requirements for mail server,
but ties the mail to a particular machine. If user goes to
another computer, he can't access his mail

POP3 has limited support for reading mail online (and
leaving the mail on the mail server)

Simpler protocol than IMAP makes it easier to
implement. More POP3 mail clients available
IMAP

IMAP

Developed at University of Washington

Primarily used to access mail and leave it on the mail
server. This allows users to access their mail from any
computer

Requires more disk space to store email messages
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