Dave,
Another brief clarifying comments re your response to Rex. In
the DMS environment, and its predecessor, organizational messages are
addressed to rather generic organizational names, such as the one used
by Rex in his example. Upon receipt, a special form of user agent
scans the message and uses internal sub addreses, and/or keywords, for
to redistribute the message within the organization to which the
message was directed. The motivation for this approach comes from
several sources:
- people outside the target organization should not address
mail to a specific person inside the organization, as that person may
be reassigned and may no longer be the right point of contact (POC)
- specific POCs within an addressable organization should not
be disclosed to the mail relay routing structure for security purposes
- using keyword in context searches allows the organization to
direct message to different individuals or internal sub-organizations
without needing to inform the rest of the world, even if there are no
security concerns
- in the DMS, messages are cryptographically protected from
sender to recipient, so the organizational UA is the first point at
which the message can be decrypted and processed for further
distribution
So, there are good reasons for the sort of addressing used in
the military messaging environment. I won't argue that these reasons
require the use of X.400 vs. SMTP, but I just thought you should be
aware of some of the rationale behind the system design.
Steve