Question: Individual annotations vs One large annotation (conceptual riddle for the interested)

[Georg C. F. Greve]

On Tuesday 11 October 2011 16.21:14 Jeroen van Meeuwen wrote:
> The only reason "large" is being used in the context to refer to one
> annotation, is a misconception created by Georg putting "large" in the
> topic.

Considering we're talking about several kb of data per annotation in some 
cases, putting them all into one annotation seemed to make "large" a 
reasonable attribute to apply.


> Obtaining:
> [...]
> is actually more traffic then
> [...]

Yes. For the special case of "retrieve all annotations" there will be slightly 
more traffic with individual annotations. But there is no scenario where that 
special case makes a reasonable default assumption, as also pointed out by 
others. 

Usually clients want to get/set that one setting, and that setting only.

It even seems questionable that the special case of "retrieve all annotations" 
has any application, as it is unclear why Kontact would want to routinely 
retrieve the Horde settings or the ActiveSync configuration.

Optimizing traffic for a non-existing scenario at the expense of the default 
scenario does not seem sensible.


> Note that some features, not so many, are perhaps better suitable for
> configuration through Kolab XML objects. Nobody is arguing *all*
> configuration should go into one folder annotation, nor separate folder
> annotations.

Indeed.

The question of "is this stored best in XML or annotations" is fully 
orthogonal to the question of "do we want one 'superannotation' or 'one 
annotation per use case'?" - they have no connection whatsoever.


> Nobody so far has recognized the fact using one annotation for
> configuration to be shared across application isn't mutually exclusive
> with, in addition to said one annotation, additional annotations of
> which perhaps only one application may be compatible.

So the suggestion becomes we can have one 'container annotation' and 
individual annotations per use case in parallel? What would be the advantage 
of that and by which criteria would we decide what goes where?

Best regards,
Georg


-- 
Georg C. F. Greve
Chief Executive Officer

Kolab Systems AG
Zürich, Switzerland

e: greve at kolabsys.com
t: +41 78 904 43 33
w: http://kolabsys.com

pgp: 86574ACA Georg C. F. Greve