Alistair.Gordon@NEWTYNE.COM wrote: >Is this possible? > >We have a SAS BI Enterprise and a big UNIX server. Is it possible for >someone to email into the server and attach a CSV file say, and upon >receipt of the file the server goes 'Ah ha!' and kicks off a SAS job >that rips out the attached file and does something or other with it? > >What needs to be done?

Yes, this is possible. Although I agree with Mike and Alan that other approaches may be better.

You'd want to set up procmail or a similar mail processing tool.

Then you'd want to assign a particular email address as the official destination for all these jobs.

Then you'd want to build procmail rules to handle each email coming to the given address and start up a process. The process would need to parse the message or pull out the attachment, then hand that off to a SAS process. You'd want a lot of error-handling to make sure that the incoming file is in the correct format and can be handled by the given SAS code. And you'd want to set up a notification system afterward, so that you knew when a new file came in, and you knew whether the file was usable, and you knew whether the SAS code ran properly.

HTH, David -- David L. Cassell mathematical statistician Design Pathways 3115 NW Norwood Pl. Corvallis OR 97330

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