METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR INTERPROCESS MESSAGING AND ITS USE FOR AUTOMATICALLY GENERATING TRANSACTIONAL EMAIL

摘要

A method of defining and passing messages among separate computer application servers is disclosed. The method uses a specially formatted extensible markup language (XML) formatted message known as an extensible mail format (XMF). The XMF message includes attribute and data value pairs. The method is defined with reference to a method of creating transactional email messages. The method of creating transactional email messages receives specially formatted instructional email messages from other computer systems. The instruction email message includes a destination address, zero or more data fields, and zero or more instructions. The method parses the instructional email message to extract data from the data fields. The method then generates a template outgoing message from the instructional email message. The template outgoing message usually contains one or more merge fields. The method then fills in the merge fields using the data extracted from the instructional email message or external data sources to create a final outgoing message.