So, I have a largish GSM modem bank I'm now responsible for maintaining. The server bank, is actually composed of many computers and GSM modems scattered throughout the world. The software is NowSMS and ActiveSMS. All these remote servers call home to a mothership to pass messages as SMS. Anyway, the afore mentioned programs are a little expensive and don't have the reporting or other features I particularly want.
I'm basically a PHP guy, but I've been knee deep in Tcl lately, and I'm thinking of writing my own little mini-GSM modem server. It'd basically be a Tcl script installed as a service. It'd check the modems every few minutes for incoming SMS and pass through HTTP API to mothership. It'd connect to the modems on a serial port and use basic AT commands.
So the question is two-fold really. First, I know from my newbie Tcl books that it is great for prototyping, but what about long-term operations? Stable, reliable? If I drink the books' Kool-aid it is, but thought I'd check. Secondly, while I've played with AT commands before and get it, am I biting off more than I can chew here? I mean is the task of retrieving an SMS really more complicated than I think -- particularly for graceful fail overs or exception I might miss? I've been able to get messages manually through AT commands, but I worry about case scenarios or failure issues I may not fully understand.
BTW: I should mention all of this is on Windows 2003 Ent. not a Linux / Unix platform -- not sure if this is relevant to Tcl performance.
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