Hi Paul,
I never used the word replication - it should be possible to create a
REST based couchapp driven MIME transfer p2p web quiteindependent of
replication which is also cool. Front the couchapp with the usual
auth-proxy stuff for now so only auth'ed people can communicate with you.
Just replace JSON with MIME in all the reference docs and make the URL's
point to a design doc that does the transformations.
On the way out it could be just _shows or an _list that takes multiple
objects and wraps them as a mime multipart.
On the way in set up some REST endpoints that take POST's, parse mime
multiparts ( jchris's mimeparser?) convert to Couch docs, manage
attachments and puts them in _attachments ... and we're off to the races
- free user controlled, MIME-and-Mail-as-aplatform driven webmail apps
for all.
Yay Couch!
Nitin
Paul Davis wrote:
Definitely some interesting points here. There have been discussions
on using multipart-mime messaging in the replication protocol which
could setup for some interesting prospects like this. I'm not sure on
specifics in terms of replication, but having an endpoint that allows
edits via multipart-mime could be a very fun thing to play with.
Also, AFAIK there's nothing that prevents an isomorphic
representation. As you point out, couchdb-python handles everything
just fine here.
Paul Davis
On Thu, Aug 6, 2009 at 4:46 PM, Nitin Borwankar<[email protected]> wrote:
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]
