[Kroupware] Web interface frontend

[Andreas Jellinghaus]

Hi Martin,

hmm. two people saying to each other "You do not seem to understand"
is silly. Can i call you? in the morning would be best, thats evenig in
new zealand (+10 hours to german time).


> Multiple tier architecture here means:
> Tier 1: GUI or command line frontend
> Tier 2: backend on the server
> Tier 3: database in ldap
> 
> Basically the potentialy mutliple frontend implementations manipulate data in 
> the db aka ldap and then the backend is triggered to create the final config 
> file, imapd accounts etc.

i understand that well.

except for initial installation you never need to touch config files.
so i think there is only overhead in putting that data into ldap.

all day-to-day work is done by creating/changing ldap objects and
imap mailboxes. moving the imap configuration into ldap is _hard_,
as it requires rewriting the imap daemon (as the client can change
the configuration on the imap protocol level, a simple template/read
from ldap isn't good enough).

so my opinion is:
 - basic configuration is rarely changes and thus the effort to put it
   into ldap might not be worth the work.
 - ldap is very fast and stable. the effort to cache it (download it
   with ldap and create a config file from it) might not be worth the
   work.
 - using ldap, imap and sieve in combination is very easy, all protocols
   are internet rfc's (except sieve protocol is a draft and sieve
   vacation even an expired draft, so these are work in progress
   or less), and it will require work, if you want to do the same things
   with ldap only.

of course you have the freedom to do whatever you want, and i dont
want to stop you. maybe i'm completely wrong, and nothing would be
better than anyone showing me i'm wrong.

all i say: i live quite well without this and see no need to change
the way my servers work.

regards, andreas