DBMS or flat file for e-mail system?
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im coding a newish kind of e-mail system and im looking to make the actual e-mail server easy to deploy. the only e-mail server i've had to deploy was Red Hat which came with CinMail, and that required next to no labor. however the distro i used was wrapped by the Gallantry company.(GallantWeb Server)
Long story short. Is requiring a DBMS like mySql within the tech expertise of the typical person that might be tasked with such a job? Also, would the advantages of a real database system be overkill for an e-mail system, or is it common practice to embed such a system in a large scale e-mail server?
My university's email system (it's not proprietary, but I don't know what it is) uses files, SquirrelMail uses files, Outlook stores all email messages in one file. It shouldn't be impossible to use a DBMS (doesn't GMail use one?), but it is one extra step that you are forcing people to go through (setting up mysql or something). I'm of the opinion that, if you don't need to do major manipulation of the data (such as sorting and what not), then a DBMS has no merit over a file on disk.
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