dovecot - Dec 2008 - MySQL as a storage only.?

Hello,

    I was wondering is I could use MySQL as storage only..? Meaning that no
user information, other than the obvious email address associated with an
specific email so that each email can be showed to the right user, will be
stored in a MySQL database instead of /home/vmail/DOMAIN/<user>

    Would I get any advantages.? Would it be better, faster?

Thanks

On Wed, Dec 10, 2008 at 02:24:05PM -0600, Romer Ventura
wrote:
> Hello,
> 
>     I was wondering is I could use MySQL as storage only..? Meaning that no
> user information, other than the obvious email address associated with an
> specific email so that each email can be showed to the right user, will be
> stored in a MySQL database instead of /home/vmail/DOMAIN/<user>
> 
>     Would I get any advantages.? Would it be better, faster?

You may want to have a look at dbmail for this: http://www.dbmail.org/
AFAIK it's currently not in scope for Dovecot.

	Geert

Romer Ventura wrote:
> Hello,
>
>     I was wondering is I could use MySQL as storage only..? Meaning that no
> user information, other than the obvious email address associated with an
> specific email so that each email can be showed to the right user, will be
> stored in a MySQL database instead of /home/vmail/DOMAIN/<user>
>
>     Would I get any advantages.? Would it be better, faster?
>
> Thanks
>
>   
I think IF it would be supported in a future version it would be a great
addition. Especially if you try
to implement cloud-like services, where you have the possibility of
links temporarily going down between servers, and mail can come in to
any point, and be retrieved or moved at any point.

You really need transactions then, to track every mails change in time,
and to replicate those when you get connectivity back. You "can"
possibly do it by tracking dovecot logs and do the replication yourself
with scripts, but using a database would probably be easier here.

Also I think it might be good if you use imap flags a lot, I see a
definitive benefit if dovecot could use sql as an index storage anyway.

For speed just as a plain storage, it would most likely be a bit slower...

So, for some it might be better, for others it would not...

-Roger