Hello,
My name is Evgueni Tsygankov. I am the developer behind SqlAnswersMail. I just wanted to say that appreciate your feedback, and I wanted to address the issues raised in this thread:
- Blat.exe seems to be a good SMTP tool, but the main difference is that it doesn't support sending results of a SQL query. Also, since SqlAnswersMail runs as an out-of-process exe you can use DCOM to secure its permissions, which can be a great plus when running on “public” SQL Servers. The same applies to CDOSys -- no query results generation and lack of security. The "meat and potatoes" of SqlAnswersMail is in its ability to generate output in PDF and HTML formats straight from SQL queries.
- Database Mail in 2005. This comment is right on the money. Microsoft came out with this addition in the July Community Preview. The functionality is very similar to SqlAnswersMail. The two things I can say are better in SqlAnswersMail is that it's 99% compliant with xp_sendmail (Database Mail will require a migration) and SqlAnswersMail supports PDF generation from SQL.
- SqlAnswersMail is a quick way of sending well-formatted email from SQL Server. It's easy to setup, configure and use. Reporting Services is a great tool but it's designed to email reports, which means more work -- these reports need to be designed, developed, tested, deployed, etc.
Evgueni Tsygankov