Date: Sat, 9 Jul 1994 12:21:55 -0700 (PDT)
From: Mark Crispin <MRC@CAC.Washington.EDU>
Subject: Re: sequence numbers ( was: (long) sketch of proposed imap: URL syntax ... )
To: "Steven D. Majewski" <sdm7g@elvis.med.virginia.edu>
In-Reply-To: <199407091851.AA23653@elvis.med.Virginia.EDU>
Message-Id: <MailManager.773781715.18656.mrc@Ikkoku-Kan.Panda.COM>
On Sat, 9 Jul 1994 14:51:22 -0400, Steven D. Majewski wrote:
> Unless I'm missing something, the UID is guaranteed
> across sessions, but ONLY for that particular server. If I
> upgrade to a newer version of imap server software, or switch
> from washington.edu's server to JGM's, I don't believe I have
> any reasonable expectation that UID's from one server will be
> conserved on the other.
Yes, you're missing something.
My server uses traditional UNIX mail file formats (several of them, in fact);
it's completely compatible with the installed base. John's server uses his
own mail store format, and derives considerable performance benefits from
*not* having to be compatible.
You can't replace my server with John's server, or John's server with mine,
without going through an extensive conversion process. Any conversion process
which fails to preserve UIDs would, by any reasonable definition, be amazingly
flawed.
I suspect, that should the issue ever come up, I would probably end up adding
John's mail store format as a supported format in my server, which would
pretty much eliminate the conversion issue. I'm not sure what John will do;
most likely he's waiting to see how I implement UIDs and will then work around
that.