From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Msuck: nntp://news.gmane.io/gmane.emacs.gnus.general/42449 Path: main.gmane.org!not-for-mail From: Daniel Pittman Newsgroups: gmane.emacs.gnus.general Subject: Re: db-backed mail back end Date: Wed, 23 Jan 2002 11:23:49 +1100 Organization: Not today, thank you, Mother. Sender: owner-ding@hpc.uh.edu Message-ID: <87g04x7w4q.fsf@inanna.rimspace.net> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: coloc-standby.netfonds.no Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Trace: main.gmane.org 1035177684 11441 80.91.224.250 (21 Oct 2002 05:21:24 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@main.gmane.org NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 21 Oct 2002 05:21:24 +0000 (UTC) Return-Path: Original-Received: (qmail 2314 invoked from network); 23 Jan 2002 00:26:08 -0000 Original-Received: from malifon.math.uh.edu (mail@129.7.128.13) by mastaler.com with SMTP; 23 Jan 2002 00:26:08 -0000 Original-Received: from sina.hpc.uh.edu ([129.7.128.10] ident=lists) by malifon.math.uh.edu with esmtp (Exim 3.20 #1) id 16TBEA-0000l3-00; Tue, 22 Jan 2002 18:25:22 -0600 Original-Received: by sina.hpc.uh.edu (TLB v0.09a (1.20 tibbs 1996/10/09 22:03:07)); Tue, 22 Jan 2002 18:25:15 -0600 (CST) Original-Received: from sclp3.sclp.com (qmailr@sclp3.sclp.com [209.196.61.66]) by sina.hpc.uh.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with SMTP id SAA07093 for ; Tue, 22 Jan 2002 18:25:05 -0600 (CST) Original-Received: (qmail 2293 invoked by alias); 23 Jan 2002 00:25:05 -0000 Original-Received: (qmail 2288 invoked from network); 23 Jan 2002 00:25:04 -0000 Original-Received: from melancholia.rimspace.net (HELO melancholia.danann.net) (210.23.138.19) by gnus.org with SMTP; 23 Jan 2002 00:25:04 -0000 Original-Received: from localhost (melancholia.rimspace.net [210.23.138.19]) by melancholia.danann.net (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1250A2A818 for ; Wed, 23 Jan 2002 11:24:48 +1100 (EST) Original-Received: by localhost (Postfix, from userid 1000) id D99ED8204E; Wed, 23 Jan 2002 11:23:49 +1100 (EST) Original-To: ding@gnus.org In-Reply-To: (Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen's message of "Wed, 23 Jan 2002 00:33:58 +0100") User-Agent: Gnus/5.090005 (Oort Gnus v0.05) XEmacs/21.5 (bamboo, i686-pc-linux) Original-Lines: 48 Precedence: list X-Majordomo: 1.94.jlt7 Xref: main.gmane.org gmane.emacs.gnus.general:42449 X-Report-Spam: http://spam.gmane.org/gmane.emacs.gnus.general:42449 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