On Fri, 18 May 2007 16:39:47 -0400 csnyder <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Fri, 18 May 2007 10:18:20 -0400 > > "Nicholas Tang" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > This is a really interesting concept. How would you deal with a.) > > > priorities, b.) due dates, c.) simultaneous multiple users, and finally > > > d.) performance? > > > > On 5/18/07, Michael B Allen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > You could do some of these thing though. You would need an actual database > > but considering you need to consistently generate new ticket numbers, you > > probably need one anyway. Then you could hang all sorts of ticket metadata > > off of that. That information would not be accessible through email > > however. There would have to be a separate web screen for that. > > Each email message has a unique message id. Most modern mail clients > will show you threaded conversations by id, so it wouldn't exactly be > difficult to carry on conversations about tickets using just the IMAP > database. Priority is obvious as well, but due date not so much. > > Simultaneous users could be an issue if you scale past 3-5. I always > cringe a bit when I realize I have email clients open to the same > account at work, home, and in two web browsers at once. But I've never > seen them do anything unexpected. > > As for performance, how many messages are in your inbox right now? > Apple's Mail.app can search a mailbox with a few thousand messages in > real time, something no web frontend can do. Actually SquirrelMail is pretty good at this. I just searched my Spam folder with 1600 messages in it for the word 'incredible' in the Subject+Body and got 17 results in less than 5 seconds. I don't know if it's issuing a server side search command but SquirrelMail and IMAP are on the same host. But if you're just searhing for a ticket number you could also limit the search to the Subject line. And closed tickets could be moved to a 'Closed' folder so the search might also be limited by folder. Overall I'm not really clear as to why you think performance would be a problem. There would be nothing happening that you wouldn't do with a regular mail client and AFAIK IMAP servers are supposed to be able to handle a large number of users. > I'm not saying it's not crazy, but it is fun to think about. Until > someone selects all the tickets and hits 'delete'... :-( True but I suspect someone could do the same on any ticket system. Clearly an "IMAP server as the ticket database" ticket system would not be ideal for everyone. But I think it would be ideal for me since 90% of the time I would just want to handle tickets as email. Mike -- Michael B Allen PHP Active Directory Kerberos SSO http://www.ioplex.com/ _______________________________________________ New York PHP Community Talk Mailing List http://lists.nyphp.org/mailman/listinfo/talk NYPHPCon 2006 Presentations Online http://www.nyphpcon.com Show Your Participation in New York PHP http://www.nyphp.org/show_participation.php
