dovecot - May 2009 - What's faster for getting mails into Rails: Dbmail & direct MySQL or net/pop with maildir

Hi,

it's my first message in this list, so please excuse any mistakes!

I have a quite specific problem and nobody in the Ruby on Rails lists  
could help me, because it is actually more a question for mail- 
experts. So I hope you can help me.

I'm planning to set up a mailserver using dovecot. Users of my Rails  
App can forward their emails (john at doe.com) to an personal address (john.doe
at myapp.com
). These emails will be received by my mailserver.

So far so good, the tricky part is to get the mails into my Rails App  
for processing them. After that they will be deleted (so I'll never  
accumulate a big ammount of mails on the mailserver).

I thought of 2 different approaches.

1) Just use a normal Dovecot setup, using maildir and get the mails  
with a mailpoller script, connecting to the server via Pop3
2) Use Dbmail for storing the emails, don't use Pop3 but let the  
mailpoller script connect to the database directly

I understand that Dbmail seems to be slower than maildir (in terms of  
processing many incoming mails) but I'm not sure if a connection via  
net/pop (of the mailpoller script) is maybe that much slower than  
mysql that it wouldn't matter at all.

What's your opinion? I'm gratefull for every hint.

Thanks

Olaf Spaarmann wrote:
> Hi,
> I'm planning to set up a mailserver using dovecot. Users of my Rails
App
> can forward their emails (john at doe.com) to an personal address 
> (john.doe at myapp.com). These emails will be received by my mailserver.
Will people be accessing mail other than via your RoR app?  If not, my 
suggestion below could simplify things...
> So far so good, the tricky part is to get the mails into my Rails App 
> for processing them. After that they will be deleted (so I'll never 
> accumulate a big ammount of mails on the mailserver).
If the mail is to be delivered directly to your RoR app (I'm guessing
you'll
import it into your SQL DB, instead of using a mail-specific DB?) why not 
have a custom LDA that imports the message on delivery?

This would remove the need for Dovecot entirely, and give you instant 
update.  True, it would require you to write a compatible LDA, and you could 
take some tips from Dovecot deliver in doing that.
> I understand that Dbmail seems to be slower than maildir (in terms of 
> processing many incoming mails) but I'm not sure if a connection via 
> net/pop (of the mailpoller script) is maybe that much slower than mysql 
> that it wouldn't matter at all.
That's because DBMail is using a "general purpose" SQL database,
whereas
mbox and maildir are "special purpose" databases, specifically
designed for
mail storage.

-- 
Curtis Maloney
cmaloney at cardgate.net