Thunderbird 3 is a pain in the neck

[Chan Chung Hang Christopher]

>>>>> It's not that I don't believe you, but at a previous job our main
>>>>> product was built with FoxPro, so I'm a bit familiar with that
>>>>> database
>>>>> format, but I never noticed that OE uses it.
>>>> Well, it uses some form of database. Foxpro is listed for the file
>>>> extension of the 'Outlook Express format' file dbx.
>>>> http://filext.com/file-extension/DBX
>>> That website is not reliable. The file extension doesn't tell you
>>> everything, you should look at the file header: the first few bytes of a
>>> file. The Linux utility 'file' uses that approach to determine a file
>>> type. But you could see it yourself when you open an OE dbx file with a
>>> hex editor and compare that with a real foxpro file.
>> Yes, I have not bothered checking yet because it was a programmer that
>> told me about it. I'll look after I get quicktime deployed across all
>> the school computers.
> 
> Ahhh yes programmers...

Yes, it has been and always will be operations versus 
engineering/development.


> Never trust a programmer who claims something about software that he
> hasn't written himself, and that he can't back with hard evidence. And
> don't trust him with a screwdriver either. ;-)

You're preaching to the choir. :-)


> 
>>> It doesn't make sense to store email in a database format, because
>>> databases have fixed-width fields and email is variable-width.
>>>
>> You have heard about this thing called Exchange right?
> 
> You may guess 3 times what my day job is. Or better yet, google for my
> full name and add 'exchange' to the query.

Well, I guess I know who to go to if ever I get Exchange forced down my 
throat. In the meantime, I shall regale the uninitiated with the stories 
of my experience in the biggest global textile conglomerate watching the 
Exchange admins blow their migration from 5.5 to 2003, attempt to 
hide/redirect attention from their incompetence by trying to stab me in 
the back after I point out something had gone wrong on their side (too 
bad they did not disable logging - they would have succeeded) and 
implement draconian policies against the Hong Kong branch the tax haven. 
Sure glad I was not regular staff but 'outsourced' staff so I could say 
to them they had zero authority over what I did for staff with my 
status. Too bad for the bosses though. I get to just wait for something 
to happen so that I can laugh.

I hope you have never had to restore an mail store. I have not but I 
have heard of horror stories...

> 
>> I am not saying
>> that this means Outlook Express is using foxpro (or some other database
>> format) for its mailboxes but such, er, weird things do exist. Databases
>> have also moved beyond fixed-width fields too but not sure what foxpro
>> supports...
> 
> When you're talking about Foxpro, you're talking about old skool
> dbase-type databases, where 1 table == 1 file. There is no layer of
> abstraction between the database engine and the filesystem. That's what I
> meant. Foxpro supports variable-width fields called memo fields. These are
> used to store binary blobs of data. But they are not optimized for
> performance.

So foxpro did not get an sql language layered on top and the thing is 
direct access. I am surprised that, if it never got beyond this, it 
actually managed to get into 'enterprise' solutions. Or so I read on the 
Net anyway. Been a while since I last touched Visual Dbase 5.5 but I 
cannot imagine that being 'enterprise' class...


> Records are read sequentially, unless there is an index (some kind of
> binary tree) to speed up queries. MySQL is actually quite similar to old
> skool dBase from that point of view.

That is why I have heard people call it a toy. *prepares asbestos suit*


> 
> The new generation of databases doesn't use the file=table paradigm. In
> that sense the OE message store as well as the exchange messages store
> (mdb) are also databases, but they add another abstraction layer between
> the database engine and the file system. SQL server is similar. The data
> isn't physically stored in tables, but in some kind of binary tree.

OE has a file for each mailbox. I am afraid that it is not at all like 
the Exchange mail store and so there is a chance that it is foxpro-based.


> 
> Sorry, I don't want to give you a lecture on databases.
> 
> 

You just gave me an excuse to diss mysql. ;-)