Re: [Imap-protocol] If Crispin were creating IMAP today how would it be different?

Bron Gondwana <[email protected]> wrote:

> > And let the DB guys solve the intermittent connection problems :-).
> > Oracle, for instance, has a "Mobile Server" product that synchonizes a
> > local cache on a mobile device with a remote Oracle DB, including SSL
> > encryption on the sync connection, and data compression.
> 
> The problem is, DB protocols are pretty chatty.  And you need to solve
> authencation too.

I'm guessing that's why Oracle has a sync protocol instead of a remote
DB protocol.  The mobile client works against an on-phone copy of the
DB, using a variant of Oracle's full SQL -- the documentation says it is
SQLite compatible -- and then there's a minimal sync protocol which
keeps that in step with the full DB back on the server.  Interesting
question as to whether the on-phone copy is a subset or not.

> Seriously, I think we've pretty much done what you're suggesting in
> JMAP, but we've solved the latency problems that chatty protocols have
> when you don't have a nice short piece of solid copper between you and
> the server as well.

Sure, JMAP's great, but it's very email-specific.  Seems to me this is a
problem which lots of other domains have as well.  So: take JMAP, skip
the enumeration of email object types, generalize the getFooUpdates to
get/putTableUpdates, add some ability to specify per-table
parameterization which says things like how much of the remote table you
need locally, how frequently it needs to be updated, how precious
on-device changes are, etc., and you've got a general protocol.

That way, when you want to add a new object type, say Conference Rooms,
you don't need to change the protocol.

Bill

> 
> Bron.
> 
> -- 
>   Bron Gondwana
>   [email protected]
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