Purpose of This Manual

This manual describes the PMDF Application Program Interface (API) and callable SEND facility. While this document is primarily intended for system programmers writing mail software, system managers wanting to become more familiar with the inner workings of PMDF may also benefit from a casual reading of this manual. Readers are assumed to be familiar with PMDF and the electronic messaging standards it employs.¹

This manual does not provide a description of PMDF suitable for end users. Non-privileged users cannot use the routines described in this manual as most PMDF operations require sufficient privileges to access messages in the PMDF message queues as well as to create PMDF processing jobs.

Overview of This Manual

This manual describes two distinct interfaces. The first, called simply "the PMDF API", is a low-level interface which can be used to both enqueue and dequeue PMDF messages. The second interface, referred to as "callable SEND", is a single, high-level routine which can be used to submit (i.e., enqueue) messages to the PMDF mail system.

Programmers writing code to merely send mail will probably find callable SEND sufficient for their needs. Programmers wanting to write gateways or channels should use the PMDF API. Both interfaces may be used simultaneously.

This manual consists of two chapters:

Chapter 1, The PMDF API, describes the low-level interface routines used for enqueuing and dequeuing messages to and from PMDF's message queues.
Chapter 2, Callable Send describes the high-level interface routine used to send (enqueue) mail messages.