Re: db-backed mail back end

[Daniel Pittman <daniel@rimspace.net>]

On Wed, 23 Jan 2002, Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen wrote:
> Now that there are nice, free SQL-based database servers out there
> (PostgreSQL, and, er, PostgreSQL), would it be an idea to have a
> db-backed mail back end?  

Oh, yes, it would indeed. IMO, of course, and I never did get off my
backside and work out if it was worth the trouble to migrate to any of:
* SQL
* GDBM, &c.
* Some random Lisp reader format...

> What would you gain by such a beast, and what would you lose?

Gain?  For me, the biggest pain with Gnus right now is that there are
some scalability issues. I got sick of losing information that had been
on mailing lists, so I stopped expiring mail a couple of years ago.

Disk space is sufficiently cheap, even for a laptop, that I don't have
space issues with this. Gnus starts to feel a little pain, sometimes,
though when dealing with groups in the > 75,000 messages range (with
NNML.)

> 1) You would be able to search

...this is one of the places; I go for 'M-x grep' and 'j' to search
messages...

> 2) You could create new groupings on-the-fly -- by altering
>    the "splitting" criteria, you would alter which messages
>    end up where (perhaps) (or not)
> 3) erm...

...hopefully, some improvement in performance. Er, especially with
XEmacs and Postgresql, where there is a native implementation of the
client connection stuff. Mmmm, native C code.

At the very least it should improve the speed of finding files and
returning them, which is the second biggest performance issue.
Especially now that some of my NNML groups are too big for a standard
'ls *' to work on. ;)

        Daniel

-- 
It is quite humbling to realize that the storage occupied by the longest line
from a typical Usenet posting is sufficient to provide a state space so vast
that all the computation power in the world can not conquer it.
        -- Dave Wallace