[Mailman-Developers] Re: Mailman-Developers External user database

[Charlie Clark]

On 2003-04-30 at 23:32:02 [+0200], mailman-developers-request at python.org 
wrote:
> > 1) External user database. I'm sure you're all aware of the desire of 
> > some
> > folks to have this. I found a Wiki document somewhere on the zope.org 
> > site that had discussions on this but I believe it was somewhat dated. 
> > Have any conclusions been reached with respect to the direction here? I 
> > think I read talk of a Zope-specific solution. I'm wondering if this 
> > means that we're likely never to see a Mailman that can talk to a MySQL 
> > database. I believe this one feature alone would elevate Mailman 
> > significantly. How hgh of a priority is this to the development team 
> > and what is the status? Are there current discussions on this somewhere 
> > other than the list (wiki boards, chats, what-have-you) , and if so, 
> > may I take part?
> 
> See MemberAdapter in Mailman 2.1.x. As it happens, I'm currently writing 
> an advanced LDAP backend [ yes, I've see the other one :-) ].

We are currently using a generic RDBMS adapter which is available 
(commercially) from the developer; I assume there are others out there. 
This is a non-trivial piece of work so I think it may be a while before it 
is part of core mailman. I cannot recommend using MySQL for this because it 
will not enforce data integrity which is one of the key reasons for using 
an RDBMS in my view another being size: our lists are due to get very, very 
big (100.000 + users) I think Mailman's data store gets pretty bloated on 
such lists.

Charlie