Matthew T. O'Connor wrote:
Again, I don't think we should have columns specific to particular headers,
I think it would be better to have a more generic structure for the
message_headers table like:
id serial primary key
header text (possibly an int referencing a lookup table of headers)
header_value text (contains the value of the header)
Index both of these columns and it will be quite fast. By default we would
probably only add typical columns such as To, From, Subject, Date etc... but
this allows things to be added as needed. If a particular site / user /
mailbox / folder needs to search on a non default header (size for example)
then the server can be configured to track this information without needing
to change database structure.
I believe we should look at typical imap/pop queries that the
typical imap/pop clients do, you know outlook, outlook express,
mozilla, pine, etc.
When we know the typical queries, can we optimize the database
structure.
This is something you can and should hard code into your software.
The case of a particular site / user ... is probably so rare that
you should allow a little bit extra load on the database for
these queries.
From the mailinglist have I seen that the IMAP copy command
required a change in the next generation database layout for
improved performance.
/Magnus
