Topic awaiting preservation: How do they do that?

My bank has a new feature that allows you to send an SMS text message to them with the phrase "bal" and the bank replies with your balance. What I would like to know is what technologies are most likely used to perform this process. I understand that SMS, a scripting language, a database are all necessary but can anyone shed any light on whatelse may be involved to make this work? I have many ideas on how this SMS DB querying could be used on several of my projects for management to get quick results for data they want to acquire while say on the road...

Mostly you'd need a sms number registred that then will probably either send an e-mail, or call a webservice.
The webservice then does the lookup (scripting, db, connection to the bank's systems),
and calls a webservice/email->sms gateway to send the actual sms...

Inquire with any mobile network provider to learn about those 'special' sms numbers.



Big alternative is of course to hook a up an actual mobile - but it's less reliable, and you're stuck with one of the
usual umteen digit numbers.