[Kolab-devel] Non-unique UIDs

[Joon Radley]

Hi Bo,

> We have come upon a problem with the ACL folders of Kolab2.
> 
> Currently, KOrganizer has a very basic assumption that an 
> event must have a unique UID. Now consider this scenario:
> 
> 1) Secretary and Boss both agree on a meeting invitation and 
> get the event stored in the calendar folders.
> 
> 2) Boss gives access to his calendar folder to the secretary. 
> 
> 3) Secretary now has two folders that contain an event with 
> identical UIDs.
> 
> Currently, KOrganizer (or rather libkcal) will just not load 
> the second event. So, depending on the order of loading, the 
> secretary will see one or the other event. Joon, do you know 
> what Outlook does in this case?

I load the events based on the IMAP4 folder content. I will have the same
object in two files, local to each user (PST), but only one message on the
server. I use the IMAP4 UID for that synchronization.  I only
generate/preserve the Kolab UID because it is part of the format. Outlooks
has it own internal uid system called entry id's.

> What can be done to fix this problem?
> 
> I see two possibilities:
> 
> 1) We demand that whenever the user chooses to see other 
> peoples folders, he disables his own first

Good luck on that one. Users ... :)

> 2) We fix the applications to be able to handle it.
> 
> 1) has the problem that the user is bound to fail doing this. 
> And I'm not sure it will always work with group folders and 
> shared folders (those can't be said to be another person).
> 
> We might be able to do 2), by changing the way we store an 
> event. So when the user accepts an invitation, we make a new 
> event with a new UID and keep the scheduling UID for 
> reference. But I think this is more easily described than done.

When I merge the IMAP4 INBOX and the Outlook Inbox, I will have to resolve
this issue. At the moment I am just working on making Outlook events work
with the kolab format, my brain is too small to think about this now as
well.

Best regards 

Joon Radley
Radley Network Technologies CC
Cell: +27 (0)83 368 8557
Fax: +27 (0)12 998 4346
E-mail: joon at radleys.co.za