Thanks for the feedback Joe.
Joe Cheng wrote:
It's more than that. When a client selects an IMAP mailbox, the server must tell it the number of messages flagged, existing, recent, unseen. These need to be *fast*. When an e-mail client starts up it might ask for these statistics over most or all of the folders that the user has.
Right. Common flags, such has those declared manatory by the IMAP RFC can be left as 'calculated properties' by the backend. In MAPI, The 'messages seen' property is calculated by the container ( folder ) and is retrieve by a single property request. The folder object knows when a message is added, and knows when a message is deleted, so it does not ever have to traverse the messages to count them. Also property searches are very close to the unlying 'data store', ie. database, file system etc. A data store that has a very effecient search capability will return those values near instantly. For example if the 'backend' interface is implemented on an embedded SQL database. Eg. a 'Get all unseen in the *entire* server for this user' is translated to... SELECT COUNT(*) FROM seen_flag_table WHERE id IN ( SELECT message_id FROM Messages WHERE USER_ID = some_id ) Or something like that. Depends on how the backend setups up the tables. Regards, Kervin --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
