Re: Can PostgreSQL be a mail backend?

On Tue, 27 Feb 2001, Morten W. Petersen wrote:

> I'm wondering if postgres could be capable of acting as a
> mail storage.  This would imply storing messages, from
> 1KB to > 100MB in size.  The expected volume is 4000
> messages a day, and the database may store up to,
> lets say, 500000 messages.

I've thought about this before, now that 7.1 (still beta) breaks the 8K
max row length limit from 7.0 and before.

I get the idea that the occasional 100MB message shouldn't be a big
problem with TOAST, and heck postgres can even compress the data (though
at some cost, especially for >1MB messages).  Compression can be disabled
on a per column basis though, I believe.

Since the ability to do this kind of thing is new in 7.1 beta (which has
not been officially released yet), I'd be surprised if anyone has tried to
implement a mail store in postgres.

It's an intriguing idea, though, and as long as you match the hardware to
your expected load, it should be quite feasable.

4000 messages a day is an average of about 3 per minute -- even if they
reach one per second (20 times more) at peak times, it seems reasonable to
expect postgres to be able to handle this pretty well.

The next question is, can we use it for a Usenet spool?
--
Tod McQuillin