How to call the unix Sendmail from oracle

Question

I know that is possible to send mails using the oracle-db by UTL_SMTP, and there are several examples of such usage everywhere.

My question is: Can I call the GNU/Unix/Linux Sendmail to perform a similar action?

Why do you want to do this? Look into the dbms_scheduler package which has support for invoking an external program. — Colin 't Hart, May 29 '14 at 19:54
@Colin'tHart, thank you! I didn't know where to look for it (: — Mansueli, May 29 '14 at 20:13

Joshua Huber · Accepted Answer · 2014-05-29 21:14:12Z

Why do you want to use sendmail? Is it just because it is simpler than UTL_SMTP? You should really look into UTL_MAIL.

To send mail from an Oracle db, you might:

Use UTL_TCP, way too low-level, old school, not recommended.
Call Unix Sendmail (external program) using DBMS Scheduler. Kind of complex -- you need to setup credentials to run OS processes. Anyone who has tried this knows it's not trivial. Technically possible, but why put yourself through the pain. I personally wouldn't do this.
Use UTL_SMTP, better than UTL_TCP, was the best approach pre-10g.
Custom mail proc that you write, which makes use of UTL_SMTP. Okay for 9i, but for 10g+ you'd just be reinventing the wheel, so use UTL_MAIL instead.
Use UTL_MAIL, simplest approach on 10g/11g/12c
If you are really bent on using sendmail and would be open to an asychronous/batch solution, consider creating a DIRECTORY that Oracle can write text files in MIME format into (via UTL_FILE), then set up a cron job that runs every 5 minutes which processes these files through sendmail and deletes them if successful.

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