[Dovecot] SQL mail storage - yes yes yes!

[Jens Knoell]

Charles Marcus wrote:
> On 3/31/2007 Stephen Lee wrote:
>> WRT size of the db, what about keeping just the message headers and 
>> indices in the db and the body as a file? This is akin to some
>> content management systems where the file info is in a db and the
>> content resides as a file. Don't know what the logistics and
>> performance issues are though. Clearly SQL mail storage is not for
>> everyone.
>
> One of the biggest advantages I can think of is single instance storage.
>
> Break the message into its constituent parts (headers, body, 
> attachments), and now you can forget about the idiots that send a 15MB 
> attachment to everyone in the company - resulting in 523 copies of 
> that attachment in the mail system - with SQL storage (done right) - 
> you only have one copy - 15MB instead of 523 x 15MB.
>
> Timo? Can you elaborate on how thi sis implemented? Is the message 
> broken up into parts? How hard would it be to implement single 
> instance storage if an SQL db is used for the storage?
>
> Thanks for all your efforts!
>
> Charles
That can be done without SQL as well as long as you're on a *nix system: 
with hard links. One of the reasons that's not usually done is that most 
MTAs split up the message in one copy per recipient before handing them 
to the LDA. At least I'm relatively sure that the splitting happens at 
MTA level.

-- 

Jens Knoell
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