Monitoring of WINS and DNS

I was wonding if it is possible to monitor the status of WINS and DNS?

Can you request the resolution of a host name against a specific WINS or DNS server and see if the resolution occurs - if not, an alarm is produced.

Is it also possible to send an email to an autoresponder to see if a response comes back in a certain time?

We have a BlackBerry server and want to monitor it as well to see response time, availablility etc. - is there a way to do this on an application level from a user perspective other than just a port, service or ping? I.e. email response time etc.

Thanks for your input, so far a great product!

Garth Nel