Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Webmail, Innobase & Passion
So I have almost wrapped up the installations I was working on last week. They went rather smoothly, and with a few lucky surprises. I had a requirement to setup web mail. _Simple_ web mail. Horde/IMP was overkill. I had invested a great deal of time working with the virtual setup so I was armed with the knowledge of what I had to work with to make my decisions.
I started searching out web mail packages. I won't get into all of the details. I finally settled on Squirrelmail. One of the reasons was simple IMAP configuration of Squirrelmail. Since this virtual mail system was originally running on qmail, it was working with Maildir folders. We had originally thought this would pose a small import task. Thanks to the Postfix developers for being uber smart and adding config options to handle Maildir formats. Yippee!. SO I made the smart decision to just keep all of their data in the same format and support it through postfix. The problem with that is the IMAP support.
IMAP support was not a requirement, and specifically stated to not support IMAP to their clients. Webmail runs through IMAP though. I don't even know of any webmail packages that do not. :S Finding an IMAP server that supports Maildir format proved to be more challenging than I expected. cyrus apparently does not support it, so I settled on the courier packages from the kunbuntu repository. The installation and MySQL configuration was a breeze. I fully tested the IMAP was working before I shut off the public access and just ran it locally to suit their needs. Squirrelmail has a nifty perl config script that will setup the proper configuration for several IMAP packages ... just run the script and pick courier and I'm done. Sweet! This went way smoother than I thought. I actually can't wait to do it again ... I'll be way ahead of the game next time. :D
In recent news Oracle has bought Innobase. You can read about it here : http://www.oracle.com/innodb/index.html. There was some buzz about it on the postgreSQL camp. The big question is what this is going to mean for MySQL. Since MySQL basically relies on the InnoDB storage for cool things (Like ACID compliance) this could mean things are going to change for them once their contract is up within the year. The problem comes down to the non-GPL version of MySQL (read $$$ from commercial licenses). If the InnoDB support (Oracle) becomes too pricey they'll have to drop support for it from the commercial (and most likely the GPL too) version. That's not very good considering dropping that would turn the database into an access comparable toy.
I'm of the mind set that hitching yourself onto someone else's work is not going to help you in the long run (like this case). If you really want to create something good ... then you need to _create_ it. The PG community will never have issues like this. The code is always available. The code is also homegrown and solid. They know how to do it right (IMO). I also believe the _want_ to do it right. The developer community takes pride in creating, and are not there to get to the bottom price line. They are there to make the best product they can. I guess that's what has always bugged me about MySQL ... it was about $$$ not the actual product. Business decisions ... shows why money talks. What is it saying to MySQL now?
That got to me thinking about passion. People I know tend to describe me as passionate. I tend to agree. I'm a 110% or nothing kind of guy. With anything I do I usually live and breathe what it is I am involved with. Tonight I'm listening to Neil Young. I think I have a connection to his music because I find it so passionate. You can actually "feel" what he is feeling. It's not too often you find that in artists anymore. I recently watched a not so recent concert of Neil Young (circa 1970s). It was him in the center of a circular setting with just his guitar, harmonica and a microphone. It was amazing to say the least. I was memorized by the performances. Especially "Old Man" which has always been a favorite of mine. He gave a little explanation of some songs and it was quite intriguing the history behind some of his works. I hope my work shows my passion, and hope my life will tell the tales of my many passions too.
So I have almost wrapped up the installations I was working on last week. They went rather smoothly, and with a few lucky surprises. ¶ 3:43:00 AM
I started searching out web mail packages. I won't get into all of the details. I finally settled on Squirrelmail. One of the reasons was simple IMAP configuration of Squirrelmail. Since this virtual mail system was originally running on qmail, it was working with Maildir folders. We had originally thought this would pose a small import task. Thanks to the Postfix developers for being uber smart and adding config options to handle Maildir formats. Yippee!. SO I made the smart decision to just keep all of their data in the same format and support it through postfix. The problem with that is the IMAP support.
IMAP support was not a requirement, and specifically stated to not support IMAP to their clients. Webmail runs through IMAP though. I don't even know of any webmail packages that do not. :S Finding an IMAP server that supports Maildir format proved to be more challenging than I expected. cyrus apparently does not support it, so I settled on the courier packages from the kunbuntu repository. The installation and MySQL configuration was a breeze. I fully tested the IMAP was working before I shut off the public access and just ran it locally to suit their needs. Squirrelmail has a nifty perl config script that will setup the proper configuration for several IMAP packages ... just run the script and pick courier and I'm done. Sweet! This went way smoother than I thought. I actually can't wait to do it again ... I'll be way ahead of the game next time. :D
In recent news Oracle has bought Innobase. You can read about it here : http://www.oracle.com/innodb/index.html. There was some buzz about it on the postgreSQL camp. The big question is what this is going to mean for MySQL. Since MySQL basically relies on the InnoDB storage for cool things (Like ACID compliance) this could mean things are going to change for them once their contract is up within the year. The problem comes down to the non-GPL version of MySQL (read $$$ from commercial licenses). If the InnoDB support (Oracle) becomes too pricey they'll have to drop support for it from the commercial (and most likely the GPL too) version. That's not very good considering dropping that would turn the database into an access comparable toy.
I'm of the mind set that hitching yourself onto someone else's work is not going to help you in the long run (like this case). If you really want to create something good ... then you need to _create_ it. The PG community will never have issues like this. The code is always available. The code is also homegrown and solid. They know how to do it right (IMO). I also believe the _want_ to do it right. The developer community takes pride in creating, and are not there to get to the bottom price line. They are there to make the best product they can. I guess that's what has always bugged me about MySQL ... it was about $$$ not the actual product. Business decisions ... shows why money talks. What is it saying to MySQL now?
That got to me thinking about passion. People I know tend to describe me as passionate. I tend to agree. I'm a 110% or nothing kind of guy. With anything I do I usually live and breathe what it is I am involved with. Tonight I'm listening to Neil Young. I think I have a connection to his music because I find it so passionate. You can actually "feel" what he is feeling. It's not too often you find that in artists anymore. I recently watched a not so recent concert of Neil Young (circa 1970s). It was him in the center of a circular setting with just his guitar, harmonica and a microphone. It was amazing to say the least. I was memorized by the performances. Especially "Old Man" which has always been a favorite of mine. He gave a little explanation of some songs and it was quite intriguing the history behind some of his works. I hope my work shows my passion, and hope my life will tell the tales of my many passions too.
So I have almost wrapped up the installations I was working on last week. They went rather smoothly, and with a few lucky surprises. ¶ 3:43:00 AM
