Q: Mailbox format

[cbbrowne-HInyCGIudOg at public.gmane.org]

> On Thu, 22 Apr 2004, Lennart Sorensen wrote:
> >> http://www.washington.edu/imap/documentation/formats.txt.html
> >
> >Deleting a single message in mailbox format takes longer than maildir
> >usually, since you have to rewrite at least part of a large file, vs
> >just unlinking a file.
> 
> That's probably why in IMAP, we tag messages to be deleted before actually
> delete them (expunge) in group (several messages at once).

Batching up such work is a good idea, when you can arrange for it...

> >If you have email with large attachments, it is much faster to open and
> >read a the header of each file than it is to read past each attachment.
> 
> In mbx format, there is a pointer to jump over messages quickly.
> 
> >If you have mainly small emails, then mailbox format is faster due to
> >open/close overhead.  It's a tradeoff really.  Perhaps a better format
> >would be some kind of database which can have just one large file, but
> >have the indexing to help it jump to headers and such.  Could even make
> >searching faster by indexing each header field and such.
> 
> The article said in the end about using database as mailboxes.
> 
> Is there any development on mail library -- and consequentially IMAP
> server, POP server, etc. -- that use database engine as it backend?

There are several IMAP/POP servers that do this:
  <http://wmf.editthispage.com/discuss/msgReader$8127?mode=topic>
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