Re: db-backed mail back end

[Daniel Pittman <daniel@rimspace.net>]

On Thu, 24 Jan 2002, Karl Kleinpaste wrote:
> Lars Magne Ingebrigtsen <larsi@gnus.org> writes:
>> Yes.  And that's not acceptable.  If it takes 7.5 seconds to enter a
>> group to look at the one new article, then that's too slow.  Much,
>> much, much too slow.
> 
> Sorry, no, I don't buy it.

Lucky you. :)

> Every day, people use Gnus to enter NNTP groups with 100, 500, 1000,
> or 2000 new articles to scan, sort, and maybe even read a few.  

Sure. I also enter some groups with, say, two messages to read, like the
ding list just now... that take seven to ten seconds to enter.

> Every time they do this, they spend tens of seconds while threading,
> scoring, sorting, and summary generation occur. This sort of use is of
> the all-day-every-day kind.

It would be /great/ for it to be faster, especially in groups where
there are ticked, visible messages from a long time ago.

> Yet you want to optimize the case that's so far out to the edge, I
> doubt there's anyone that even actually _has_ a single group with 200K
> messages in it, against which to test the planned optimization.  (Does
> anyone?  Really, right now?  

Nope. I peak at > 90,000 messages at the moment, with the ten most
active groups running down from there to ~ 12,000 messages.

> Does anyone have a group, or does anyone plan to create a group, that
> goes beyond, say, 30K messages?) 

Yes.

[...]

> There's certainly no harm to making Gnus able to handle the storage
> needs of gargantuan archives.  Sure, knock yourself out.  But that's
> not a problem currently being faced by more than maybe 5 people on the
> planet, whereas every single Gnus user has to worry over the entry
> time cost of a busy group with 900 new messages.

That would be something that would be good to address first. Don't
mistake it for the only problem, though.

        Daniel

-- 
Sticks and stones are hard on bones.
Aimed with angry art, Words can sting like anything. 
But silence breaks the heart. 
        -- Phyllis McGinley