client-server communication using email - which software?

[subrahmanyan]

Hi, I have two machines that are behind firewalls and can communicate only using email and I need to setup a kind of client-server communication between them.

The idea is the following:
The user (client) sends a mail in a special format - for example, to retrieve data from May 1 to July 1 he sends a mail with subject "get-data-2005-05-01-2005-07-01" to the other machine (server). The server recognizes the request, performs a query in the database and sends back a mail with the requested data.

Can someone suggest me which software to use for this?

Thanks for any advice..........................
_________________
emerge -C Microsoft

[neilhwatson]

[subrahmanyan]

The machines are on different networks and mail is the only way how to communicate between them. I didn't describe the whole problem here because it would be long and boring But if you are interested, here is a short summary:
The user opens a web page where he submits a form. This web page generates a mail in a specific format and this mail is sent to the server. The server checks the format of the mail, performs an action (database query if he understands the mail or error message in case of bad format of the mail) and sends a reply to the user. Which means that the structure of the mail is controlled by the web page, the user has no chance to modify the mail in any way. All he does is just a click on a Submit button in the form.

But the problem remains the same - I need software that is able to perform an action after receiving a mail in a specific format.