Re: Wanted:MAIL.MAI structure definition

Tom Linden wrote:

I see the merit to your arguments. I am not convinced that XML is a step
forward.

For an arbitrary operation, XML is a massively large step forward from a locally-defined and locally-parsed data format -- it gets the application out of the business of processing the structures and the format, and into the business of dealing with the data. Is it the most efficient? No. Does it work? Yes. And XML is seriously flexible.

I have looked at embedding an XML parser in PL/I as IBM has done
and is used as part of their Websphere package. Personally, I don't think
anyone should have to write XML, if you need to use it as an interface then
let's develop tools to generated it.

libxml2 works quite nicely, and I've been (re)porting versions of it. Versions are available at the Freeware V8 staging area -- and FWIW, the submission deadline for Freeware V8 is rapidly approaching: 15-Jun-2006.

If I have understood correctly, mail
is organised as an ISAM file. Such files are eminently more efficient than
relation DBs.

More efficient, and less flexible -- it's a trade-off. There are serious limits within the current design, such as the inability to generally search the mail file, or to have a message in two folders, or to handle the information in a transactional format, etc.

.

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