Your confirmation number is just a reservation record locator and the fare is not quaranteed until ticketed. If you got your confirmaiton number from a travel agency, you should call them with that number and ask them to issue the ticket. If they don't and your reservation expires, rebooking the reservation from the current inventory availability can result in a different fare. You can't fly without a ticket number. Otherwise it's just a reservation.

When booking on an airlines website, it often takes time for you to receive the ticket number sent via email because once your online purchase is made, the purchase is put in a queue in the system to issue the ticket and then email you a new itinerary with ticket number. It take time depending on the volume.

In both cases, if you don't have a ticket number, you don't have an E-ticket. I friend found this out the hard way.