dovecot - Jun 2004 - Is Dovecot able to use PostgreSQL to store mailboxes?

Subject says it all.

(I'm almost positive this is a FAQ, or that the information is online
_somewhere_, but I just spent 20 minutes without finding it ... sorry if I
didn't search hard enough)

-- 
Bill Moran
Potential Technologies
http://www.potentialtech.com

On 21.6.2004, at 21:04, Bill Moran wrote:
> Subject says it all.
>
> (I'm almost positive this is a FAQ, or that the information is online
> _somewhere_, but I just spent 20 minutes without finding it ... sorry 
> if I
> didn't search hard enough)
Well, main Dovecot web page says it:

"Dovecot can work with standard mbox and maildir formats and it's fully
compatible with UW-IMAP and Courier IMAP servers as well as mail 
clients accessing the mailboxes directly. I have also plans to support 
storing mails in SQL databases."

Still not in my near future plans, although I've had one guy contact me 
about making Dovecot use a library derived from dbmail as a backend.

I don't think it's really worth it to store mails in SQL database, 
unless you really need to do it for some reason. Performance is most 
likely never the reason to do it. Reliability and interoperability 
might be.
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Timo Sirainen <tss at iki.fi> wrote:
> On 21.6.2004, at 21:04, Bill Moran wrote:
> 
> > Subject says it all.
> >
> > (I'm almost positive this is a FAQ, or that the information is
online
> > _somewhere_, but I just spent 20 minutes without finding it ... sorry 
> > if I
> > didn't search hard enough)
> 
> Well, main Dovecot web page says it:
> 
> "Dovecot can work with standard mbox and maildir formats and it's
fully
> compatible with UW-IMAP and Courier IMAP servers as well as mail 
> clients accessing the mailboxes directly. I have also plans to support 
> storing mails in SQL databases."
Ahh ... I had a feeling it would be right in front of my face ...
> Still not in my near future plans, although I've had one guy contact me
> about making Dovecot use a library derived from dbmail as a backend.
> 
> I don't think it's really worth it to store mails in SQL database, 
> unless you really need to do it for some reason. Performance is most 
> likely never the reason to do it. Reliability and interoperability 
> might be.
Reliability is the reason for me.  We already have acceptable performance.
I'm dealing with a client that provides IMAP services for multiple clients,
and
we're concerned about what happens in the event of a server failure on the
machine with the HDDs.  There's already RAID in place, but what if the mobo,
PS, controller ... etc fails.

What I'd like to do is use Postgres with Slony to keep the IMAP folders on
two
completely seperate machines in real-time.

Anyway ... thanks for the great work you've done with Dovecot so far.  Maybe
I'll even have time to contribute something in the future.

-- 
Bill Moran
Potential Technologies
http://www.potentialtech.com

Timo Sirainen wrote:
> On 21.6.2004, at 21:04, Bill Moran wrote:
> 
>> Subject says it all.
>>
>> (I'm almost positive this is a FAQ, or that the information is
online
>> _somewhere_, but I just spent 20 minutes without finding it ... sorry 
>> if I
>> didn't search hard enough)
> 
> 
> Well, main Dovecot web page says it:
> 
> "Dovecot can work with standard mbox and maildir formats and it's
fully
> compatible with UW-IMAP and Courier IMAP servers as well as mail clients 
> accessing the mailboxes directly. I have also plans to support storing 
> mails in SQL databases."
> 
> Still not in my near future plans, although I've had one guy contact me
> about making Dovecot use a library derived from dbmail as a backend.
> 
> I don't think it's really worth it to store mails in SQL database, 
> unless you really need to do it for some reason. Performance is most 
> likely never the reason to do it. Reliability and interoperability might 
> be.
I had a conversation with the same fellow a while back.

I'm told that dbmail is actually very fast in mail retrieval.  But I was 
unable to confirm it myself.

If such a venture where to be undertaken, I would reconsider their 
(dbmail) use of postgresql database structure.  They do not build and 
design the database with indexed retrieval in mind.  They are missing 
90% of the performance capabilities that could be obtained by using such 
a powerful database back-end.

In short, they store the entire header in one field and the entire body 
in another field.  Hardly optimized for the three or four most common 
sorts (date, subject, sender, threaded)