User Guide

Table Of Contents
1066 Chapter 44: Using the SMS Event Gateway
Notifying users of events such as package shipments or restaurant table availability, or
providing stock or weather alerts
Sending person-to-person text messages
Presenting interactive text-based menus on a cell phone
Providing cellular phone updates, such as direct download of logos
Providing telematics and mobile or remote wireless device applications, such as soda machines,
vehicle tracking, smart gas pumps, and so on
SMS protocol features include, but are not limited to, the following:
Authentication verification is built in.
Communications can be secure.
Store and forward communication is performed in near real time.
Communications can be two-way and session-aware.
Mobile devices such as cell phones already include support; there is nothing to install on the
client.
The following sections provide a very brief technical introduction to SMS and the procedures
required to develop and implement an SMS ColdFusion application:
About SMS
About SMS application development and deployment
How the SMS event gateway and provider SMSC interact
About SMS
The following discussion simplifies SMS technology and describes only a typical use with a
ColdFusion application. For a more complete discussion of SMS, see the publicly available
literature, including the several books that discuss SMS.
In a ColdFusion SMS application, a mobile device such as a mobile phone communicates (via
intermediate steps) with a message center, such as a short message service center (SMSC). For
example, a mobile phone user calls a telephone number that the SMS provider has associated with
your account; the SMSC gets the messages that are sent to this number. The SMSC can store and
forward messages. A ColdFusion application can initiate messages to wireless devices, or it can
respond to incoming messages from the devices.
The SMSC communicates with a ColdFusion SMS event gateway using short message peer-to-
peer protocol (SMPP) over TCP/IP. Information is transferred by exchanging Protocol Data
Units (PDUs) with structures that depend on the type of transaction, such as a normal message
submission, a binary data submission, or a message intended for multiple recipients.