JavaMail usage in future James and users vs. recipients

[Vincent de Lau <vi...@delau.nl>]

I have a few questions about how James will be using JavaMail (JM) in a
future release. I'm trying to implement the structure I posted a few days
ago. It will consist of an abstraction layer that makes the database
connection and hides the database specifics (tables, fields) from the rest
of the code and an JM Store implementation that uses this abstraction layer.
The database itself will hold message store, user and directory information.
A James UserStore implementation could provide access to the user data.

If I understand it correctly, James will be using JM to connect to any kind
of message repository (or protocol) that is implemented using the JM API.
This would make the James server the 'user' of the JM system, right? So when
connecting to a Store object, the url, username etc. is grabbed from the
config file and not from the user requesting access using e.g. POP3.

The next problem would be the folder structure. How will James know where to
find a (James) users root ( or INBOX) folder or a specific newsgroup store?
Will this be analogue to the current implementation, so that James wil use a
direct subfolder for each user or can that be changed to be configurable,
maybe using variables in the path definition? (e.g.
"/users/$USERNAME/mail/INBOX")I suppose this will vary depending on the
Store implementation used. (POP3 doesn't support folders, IMAP4 does but
will serve the connecting users folder, in our case the James server user
from the config.)

(BTW, nice possible config loop if you were using a IMAP4 or POP3 store:
mail for James user foo is located on imap://foo@localhost. This will cause
James to connect to itself which will cause James to connect to itself
which....)

My last issue is not about JavaMail. Would it be possible to split up the
user concept into a user and a recipient concept? This way a user doesn't
have to have a local mail address (for instance a NNTP only user) and a
recipient doesn't have to be a user but can be a NNTP group, mailinglist,
system addres. You can then use LDAP to serve (part of) the recipients
database and you would have a Global Addreslist, which would be rather
difficult now, because you can't see the other types as they are defined in
mailet properties.

(This is basically what MS Exchange does. A mailbox is something completely
different then a NT user. A mailbox consists of a directory entry and a
piece of storage (which doesn't have to be allocated for a mailbox to
exist). In the directory there can be a reference to a (default) NT user.)

Thanks for any comments and thoughts.

Vincent de Lau
 vincent@delau.nl


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