On Mon, 2004-06-28 at 22:04, Dan Stromberg wrote:
It could be fast, but it couldn't be faster than doing "cat mailfile", which is basically what maildir clients do.
Actually, in a really large folder, a database (with a decent organization) could be significantly faster than "cat mailfile" on more traditional filesystems.
However, as filesystems take on more database-like features, this distinction will likely become less important. (EG: dir_index on ext3).
Right. Directory indexes are really important with maildirs, especially large ones. I guess a database can be slightly faster even with those, depending on how much better it stores the data internally than filesystems. But SQL databases still have the overhead of parsing SQL commands, IPC and what else..
ReiserFS 4 promises very good performance with small files as well as other great things. I've been thinking about adding native support for it once it's more widely used. It should be able to at least partially replace Dovecot's indexes.