Rick, >Other than that, it will increase the performance of your mail server >by 100 fold.
Um, no. Try the other way around, maybe. - Registry: runs from RAM, optimized for reading. - SQL: backed on disk, mucho API overhead. Though I know this from direct experience (as do others), I ran a brief test just now for you. Machines are two otherwise identical PII-400s, one Win2K Pro workstation with 128 MB RAM and one WinNT Server/SQL Server 7 with 384 MB RAM. Both are fully patched with up-to-date drivers. For the Registry, I tested the time to read 1000 REG_SZ password values under 1000 user keys (RegQueryValueEx for HKLM_SOFTWARE\testbed\usernnnn\passwd). The test was run from the workstation to its local Registry. For SQL, I tested the time to read 1000 password fields from 1000 user database rows (SELECT passwd FROM testbed WHERE username = 'usernnnn') with a clustered index on the username column. The test was run from the workstation to the server over a 100Base-T half-duplex switched connection using DSN-ful Named Pipes. The results over 5 tests, with the machines otherwise idle: Registry: avg. 3.746875 seconds SQL: avg. 43.13802 seconds This was not the most controlled test there ever was (all reads were serialized, for one thing, and the SQL server could've been a heavier-hitter), but I believe the results are instructive. You may have been misled by the response time of the Imail Administrator, which is faster with SQL because of SQL's native support for SELECT * queries--that kind of enumeration is much slower with the Registry, but that's not what your server is actually doing when it checks a username for SMTP/POP3 access. But if you've got a counter-benchmark, bring it on...:) Regards, Sandy Please visit http://www.ipswitch.com/support/mailing-lists.html to be removed from this list. An Archive of this list is available at: http://www.mail-archive.com/imail_forum%40list.ipswitch.com/
