All true..though not completely honest comparisons. If there's a business requirement, size the solution and tell the business how much it costs. Simply telling people "I know you spent thousands/millions, but I won't help you store files in a way that's easy for the business to understand" doesn't get you very far.
--James On 5/7/09, Maglinger, Paul <pmaglin...@scvl.com> wrote: >> Ultimately, computers should be a tool that serves the needs of >> people. Telling people not to use email they way they *want* to use >> email is not an ideal situation. Sometimes one has to adapt to the >> limitation of a system, but when possible, it's better to adapt the >> system to better do the job. > > Okay... I want to use my car to go 85 mph down the highway, but I have > people telling me not to use it that way. I want to use my screwdriver > as a > pry bar, but there are people telling me not to use it that way. There > are > people who want to use their computer to download pirated music and > movies from > the internet, but there are people telling them not to use it that way. > There > are people who want to connect various USB devices to the company > computers, but > there are people telling them not to use it that way. There are people > who want > to use their computer to go to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc., but > there are > people telling them not to use it that way. There are people who would > like to > use their computer to hack into corporate businesses, but... > > -----Original Message----- > From: Ben Scott [mailto:mailvor...@gmail.com] > Sent: Wednesday, May 06, 2009 6:29 PM > To: MS-Exchange Admin Issues > Subject: Re: Exchange archiving > > On Wed, May 6, 2009 at 2:11 PM, John Cook <john.c...@pfsf.org> wrote: >>> But why isn't an e-mail system a file transfer and storage system? >> >> Because it's a database app with performance limits as opposed to a > file >> server. > > [This message is somewhat vague theory, somewhat devil's advocate, > and somewhat philosophy, but I think this is a discussion worth > having.] > > Fundamentally, and from a high level, a database and a filesystem > are not all that dissimilar. Indeed, in a lot of the historical > literature I've read from the 1940s and 1950s, there isn't a clear > distinction between the two. That idea came later. > > It's not like a filesystem doesn't magically not have performance > lists. Do a directory of a folder with tens of thousands of files in > it sometime. Slow. > > Databases and filesystems generally have different optimization > goals and feature sets, of course. And that's some of the reason why > trying to move large files out of Exchange is a good idea. ESE > doesn't do well at that, and NTFS does. But there's more to it than > that. > > As many have said, having more than a few thousand items in a single > folder slows Outlook and Exchange way down. See above about large > NTFS directories. Both are slow, so going to NTFS simple moves the > problem around. > > One could point to the performance wins that fixed sized records > give you in a contiguous file, and that's a reason why databases are > good at that. But ESE (Exchange^W Extensible Storage Engine) doesn't > use that model, as far as I know. > > More importantly, I would argue that a mail system has more in > common with a filesystem than a traditional database anyway. Message > body lengths vary hugely. That's more like files than fixed-length > records. > > Ultimately, computers should be a tool that serves the needs of > people. Telling people not to use email they way they *want* to use > email is not an ideal situation. Sometimes one has to adapt to the > limitation of a system, but when possible, it's better to adapt the > system to better do the job. > > -- Ben > > ~ Ninja Email Security with Cloudmark Spam Engine Gets Image Spam ~ > ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Ninja ~ > > ~ Ninja Email Security with Cloudmark Spam Engine Gets Image Spam ~ > ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Ninja ~ > > -- Sent from my mobile device ~ Ninja Email Security with Cloudmark Spam Engine Gets Image Spam ~ ~ http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Ninja ~
