Randolph About two months ago, during our automation process, I wanted to add in "send a mail" functionality to notify certain parties of certain events in the process, as one does. This wasn't a problem with SQL Server 2000 and DTS, because it has a MAPI plugin that connects directly to the Exchange Server.
In SQL Server 2005 SSIS however, we needed an SMTP server to send mail to. Turns out our Exchange 5.5 denies all SMTP attempts, as we were informed by one of the higher up IT people.
Today, after another round of attempts at Microsoft.Office.InterOp in C#, I discussed the problem with a colleague, who mentioned (as he did before two months ago) that the portal web server has a web service that sends mail, and I should just hook into that.
For various reasons, including that the web service didn't send attachments, I turned down the idea last time, but today he said he had access to the source code of the web service.
After two minutes in the guts of the code, I found an IP address of a lone SMTP server on the network that allows incoming connections from authenticated users.
To say I'm ecstatic is putting it mildly.