From: Magnus Bäck (magnusdsek.lth.se)
Date: Tue Mar 06 2007 - 15:07:14 CST

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On Monday, March 05, 2007 at 05:09 CET,
     ericdmcontact.com wrote:

> > dbmail is the only one I've heard of. Why do you want to store the
> > messages in MySQL? I hope you're not one of the people who uses
> > MySQL for everything no matter if it's the best solution. Now,
> > sometimes it is useful to store mail messages in a relational
> > database, but most of the time traditional file system-based
> > solution are preferable.
>
> I am really curious, in your opinion, when is storing email in files
> preferable?

Regular file-based storage of mail is less complex, has better software
support, makes it easier to distribute the storage (no large monolith
file that needs a huge file system), and is generally sufficient. A mail
system can be quite complex as it is, why introduce even more complexity?

Ask not "why not RDBMS", ask "why RDBMS". For bulk storage of mostly
opaque data that is accessed through a small number of queries it's not
the least obvious why an RDBMS should be preferable. Unless you have
mail clients that can utilize the power of an RDBMS (features to
efficiently search and organize the mailboxes e.g), what's the point?

[...]

--
Magnus Bäck
magnusdsek.lth.se

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