Austin posted on November 28, 2011 10:12
Announcing a mechanism to connect
@twilio with SQL server to place telephone calls and text messages in a single line of code through a simple .net library and supplied UDFs!
Have you ever had a need to make your
Microsoft SQL Server do some things that maybe it was not designed to do? I know in my experience I have used SQL server to control all sorts of business processes that technically were probably not the core function of a relational database system. Why would I do this? Because it is easy to do... there is a built in job controller and through creative scripting most anything can be accomplished without the need to develop a separate business process controller.
Sure - there are cases where the transactional cost of this method makes it not feasible - but there are loads of businesses that can get the job done quickly and a solution that lives 100% inside of SQL code is perfect for their needs. The project I am announcing is for the users that fall into this category.
Have you ever heard of
Twilio.com? If not check them out... they have a web based API that allows you to rapidly integrate SMS and telephony functions into your application. This project is a wrapper on these powerful API functions that exposes them to a SQL server through UDF integration. The net of this is that you will have a set of user defined functions on your SQL server that allow you to make telephone calls and send text messages in a single line of SQL code.
If you are curious about how this works check out the
twiSQL project page and give it a test drive. This project is being released to help support
my cause of adoption, if you are motivated to support that is great, but if not the project is free to download and use as you see fit.