[Kde-pim] Store Kaddressbook photos outside of VCF file?

[Dotan Cohen]

2008/6/29 Ingo Klöcker <kloecker at kde.org>:
> On Sunday 29 June 2008, Dotan Cohen wrote:
>> Currently, Kaddressbook stores photos in the VCF file, which makes it
>> very bloated (300 kB without photos, over 5 MB with photos). Will
>> KDE-PIM 4 with Akonadi suffer from this as well? Could someone
>> enlighten me as to how photos will be stored? I know that Akonadi is
>> a database, and I personally think that it is a bad idea to store
>> binary data in a database. Should I file a bug requesting that the
>> photos be stored in a folder, and that the database contain only the
>> location of the photo?
>
> Akonadi includes a cache, but Akonadi is not a storage. Your contact
> data will still be stored in a vcf file (or in whatever storage you
> choose). Which data Akonadi stores in the cache is regulated by cache
> policies. For a local storage (like a locally stored vcf file) it might
> make sense not to store the photos in the cache. For a remote storage
> (like a groupware server) this might be different because you might
> want to have access to the photos even if you are offline.
>

I see. I did not realize that Akonadi was a server (with a cache). I
thought that it was a database protocol or something, I should have
done my homework first. In this case, where I would prefer to have the
photos outside the VCF file, I will file a wish bug as BKO.

> Do you have technical reasons why you think storing photos (or other
> binary data) in a database is a bad idea?

In the little php that I do, I have seen it mentioned time and again
on the php list not to store binary data in a database. I can ask
there for solid reasoning if you like.

In the case of text VCF file, I back that file up on a regular basis.
I prefer that it be as small as possible. Also, I would assume that
the whole file is in RAM while Kaddressbook is open, so there's a good
place to save a few MB of RAM, and to speed parsing of the file. Is
this the case?

Dotan Cohen

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