DoveCot vs Cyrus-Imapd Performance

[Aleksandar Milivojevic]

Ow Mun Heng wrote:
> You know.. How fast is LDAP compared to using SQL? For one thing, LDAP
> is optimised for reads rather than writes.
> 
> I would believe that LDAP is more suitable in this case.
> 
> Writes are only needed when adding users and that doesn't happen as
> often as reads.

You are completely right.  However, this was long time ago.  As I said, 
today we'd go with LDAP, no questions asked.  Back then, the dicision 
which way to go wasn't that clear.  We tested both SQL and (what was 
available of) LDAP servers, and Oracle was better fit.  So it wasn't 
like "SQL sounds cool", it was "built the test server, place it under 
load our production servers would generate, optimize it, see what we get 
out of it".  LDAP servers that were available back then simply didn't 
deliver numbers we needed.  Oracle database did.

Also, have in mind that ISP will want to keep logs in a format that is 
easy to get various statistics out of it.  SQL database is perfect for 
something like that (so basically, the system wasn't used only by mail 
server, it was also used to authenticate dial-up users, and keep track 
of usage logs -- not really your classic 90% read environment, there 
were lots of writes too).  Oracle delivered both read and write 
performance, so why complicate things by keeping data in two places.

-- 
Aleksandar Milivojevic <amilivojevic at pbl.ca>    Pollard Banknote Limited
Systems Administrator                           1499 Buffalo Place
Tel: (204) 474-2323 ext 276                     Winnipeg, MB  R3T 1L7