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Just some ideas:

Spam-fighting programs also have to deal with "mangled" input (think of all the creative ways spammers write "viagra") so their technology also has to bring these different formats to a single "basic" format (say, all spaces and strange characters removed, lowercased form) before the spam-detection routines can be let loose on this "basic" format.
Once that has been done, I think a Bayesian filter can put your different messages in categories
These content based categories will then need to be split up or filtered for the various elements you wish to extract, perhaps by first trying to recognize the general "form" the message has been written in. A template based approach may perhaps be a good idea here.

CountZero

A program should be light and agile, its subroutines connected like a string of pearls. The spirit and intent of the program should be retained throughout. There should be neither too little or too much, neither needless loops nor useless variables, neither lack of structure nor overwhelming rigidity." - The Tao of Programming, 4.1 - Geoffrey James

In reply to Re: Extracting structured data from unstructured text - just how difficult would this be? by CountZero
in thread Extracting structured data from unstructured text - just how difficult would this be? by clinton

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