[Dovecot] SQL as a storage backend

[Zachary Sturgeon]

Hello,

I am researching using dovecot with an SQL database as the storage
backend. From what I've read, dovecot only supports mbox style file
storage, but I'd like to investigate the possibility of using a database
instead.

According to http://dovecot.org/pipermail/dovecot/2006-June/013818.html,
this possibility has been explored before and has generally been
accepted that Dovecot is not optimized to handle this.

Any suggestions?

- Zachary Sturgeon

[Muzaffer Tolga Ozses]

Dovecot supports maildir as well as mbox.

Post by Zachary Sturgeon
Hello,
I am researching using dovecot with an SQL database as the storage
backend. From what I've read, dovecot only supports mbox style file
storage, but I'd like to investigate the possibility of using a database
instead.
According to http://dovecot.org/pipermail/dovecot/2006-June/013818.html,
this possibility has been explored before and has generally been accepted
that Dovecot is not optimized to handle this.
Any suggestions?
- Zachary Sturgeon

[Timo Sirainen]

I am researching using dovecot with an SQL database as the storage backend. From what I've read, dovecot only supports mbox style file storage, but I'd like to investigate the possibility of using a database instead.
According to http://dovecot.org/pipermail/dovecot/2006-June/013818.html, this possibility has been explored before and has generally been accepted that Dovecot is not optimized to handle this.

http://dovecot.org/list/dovecot/2007-November/026632.html

Nothing prevents adding a well working SQL mail storage backend. There just isn?t all that much point in doing that.

[Sven Hartge]

Post by Zachary Sturgeon
I am researching using dovecot with an SQL database as the storage
backend. From what I've read, dovecot only supports mbox style file
storage, but I'd like to investigate the possibility of using a
database instead.
According to
http://dovecot.org/pipermail/dovecot/2006-June/013818.html, this
possibility has been explored before and has generally been accepted
that Dovecot is not optimized to handle this.
Any suggestions?

There is one relational database based mail-system out there I know of:
DBMail.

In my opinion its performance compared with the cost of reaching good
performance (you need a very big database server or cluster with tons of
RAM) is problematic.

Relational databases are not very suited for the storage of the largely
unstructured data format called "mail". You could do this, but you would
degrade your relational database to a simple object storage, not being
able to use the full feature set. (The commercial Dovecot Pro version
features several object storage plugins: <http://www.dovecot.fi/products/>)

And most operating systems already include a very fast and highly
optimized object storage: a filesystem.

Also see this discussion from March 2012:
http://www.dovecot.org/list/dovecot/2012-March/064653.html

Gr??e,
Sven.