> I'm getting asked to research the storage, archiving and possibly
> the retrieval of messages which might be years old. Is anyone using
> an in house product to maintain an archive of all email messages
> that transfer through your host machine?
We use a few different methods to do this, at a few different clients.
At one site, we use the IMail 'Copy All Mail' feature to copy mail to
a retention mailbox which is rotated out every night and copied across
the wire to a dedicated box for mail retrieval, as well as being
backed up to WORM for compliance reasons. We then scan the box as
necessary using Advanced E-mail Parser, a "streaming" [1] MBOX format
parser, to extract messages matching certain content queries.
At a second site, we 'Copy All Mail' to a retention box in a similar
fashion, but there we run dtSearch's indexing function [2] nightly
against the directory holding all MBOXs in order to speed up queries
many-fold. The data is then queryable, though not extractable, over
the web using dtSearch's ASP-based web forms, or via their desktop
application.
At a third site, we 'Copy All Mail' to...gasp!...an assortment of
mailboxes on a dedicated Exchange server running full-text indexing.
Outlook Web Access can be used to inspect and extract messages, though
we are building (well, we've been contracted to build, but we're a
little lazy!) some custom message store queries that will probably be
more robust than using the standard OWAC GUI.
You must be acutely aware of the regulatory requirements--if this is
more than an internal-only requirement--which will dictate how
flexible your system must be. For example, some people--including
commercial vendors--think SEC 17-a "outside representative" compliance
can be achieved by just having a web-queryable interface, but if that
interface only accepts an Active Directory Administrator's username
and password, that may present other internal security issues, as you
can imagine.
--Sandy
[1] A "streaming" MBOX parser is a term I use to describe an app that
understands MBOX, but not IMail's MBOX indices. It therefore must scan
the entire MBOX on the fly. AEP is very good at this, however,
embarrassing a lot of full-fledged MUAs that use indexed MBOX format
(like Netscape Messenger).
[2] dtSearch has a proprietary indexing format that is not compatible
with IMail's, so every MBOX must be parsed, indexed, and then
searched. The reindexing process is CPU and disk-intensive, but the
result is almost instantaneous queries. It's suited for data that may
have to be queried many times in a short period.
------------------------------------
Sanford Whiteman, Chief Technologist
Broadleaf Systems, a division of
Cypress Integrated Systems, Inc.
e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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