Hi guys, I see that the python based dump/load uses MIME multipart docs as an on-disk serialisation format for couchdb databases. An overall question then arises - can CouchDB be considered a MIME database which oh also happens to talk JSON? So before that - is there a 1-1 strong correspondence between a CouchDB document and a MIME multipart, or are there things around the edges that are crufty - I would assume a strong correspondence since dump/load uses it and I haven't seen any caveast about document content that is not dumpable.
So assuming the 1-1 correspondence - could one use some "translation layer" couchapp that accepts arbitrary content/type + multipart-mixed MIME object over HTTP and then transparenty serialise them to JSON underneath. Given that dump/load already does this - it would see that there are no obvious glaring flaws in this logic - but I have been known to be wrong, once :-). If this is indeed feasible - then each CouchDB + MIME-trans becomes a web mail node - and Couch begins to be the platform for a messaging revolution as well as an application revolution. I am thinking now not as CouchDB for backing up your email - but CouchDB as your mail client/server for p2p MIME based "email". Permissions etc are important to avoid complete disaster of course - but private high quality communication that just reuses existing message formats, with better storage and transport would seem like an idea whose time has come a long time ago and has been knocking at the door for a decade. Yes, yes, there's the issue of spam - so see the P.S. Just a few idle thoughts, Nitin P.S. Back in 1998 I tried to convince Sybase to have MIME as a native type in the db and it even got speced out ( I have the spec with the date on it! ) but got canned becous ethe VP of enginnering wanted to know "what was the market exactly for this kind of stuff". Other than that I was granted a patent for doing p2p discussions over email back in 2003 - I let it expire for multiple reasons. So I am somewhat non-naive about and aware of the issues and pitfalls around this sort of thinking. At the same time I am of the strong belief that when one looks at messages as data to be moved around between endpoints with well defined addressing schemes, and one ignores the protocols for a bit, then all sorts of fun things start to happen. 37% of all statistics are made up on the spot ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Nitin Borwankar [email protected]
