[Kolab-devel] Is IMAP still the right choice?

[Thomas Koch]

Hi Gunnar,

thank you for answering. See my comments inline.

Gunnar Wrobel:
> > I've the impression that IMAP may have been a good, quick choice at the
> > beginning of the project that should be revised now.
> 
> Revised for which specific reason?
- for the disadvantages listed, most importantly the complexity of IMAP which 
may be a burden for people to write clients for Kolab
- Using IMAP means in practice that there is no place for an intermediary 
server component to either check written data for validity or to hide changes 
in the storage format from the clients. All clients have direct read/write 
access to "plain files". This in turn makes it hard to evolve the storage 
format.
- There may be additional disadvantages of IMAP compared to HTTP which I'm not 
aware of since I don't know IMAP internals. Therefor I'm asking.

> I think I fail to see the link between being a "restful groupware" and
> the actual storage backend. As far as I know Kolab Systems is moving
> towards a more RESTful interface anyway. But that does not include
> changing the storage backend.
IMAP is not the storage backend but the communication protocol between server 
and clients. The storage backend is the mailbox format of cyrus. Is it 
maildir?

Beste Grüße,

Thomas Koch, http://www.koch.ro