[Spambayes] Guidance re pickles versus DB for Outlook

[Skip Montanaro]

    Jeremy> Put another way, I'd be interested to hear why you don't want to
    Jeremy> use ZODB.

Disclaimer: I'm not saying I don't want to use ZODB.  I'm offering some
reasons why it might not be everyone's obvious choice.

For most of us who have *any* experience with ZODB it's probably all
indirect via Zope, so there are probably some inaccurate perceptions about
it.  These thoughts that have come to my mind at one time or another:

    * How could a database from a company (Zope) whose sole business is not
      databases be more reliable than a database from organizations whose
      sole raison d'etre is databases (Sleepycat, Postgres, MySQL, ...)?

    * Dealing with Zope's monolithic system is frustrating to people (like
      me) who are used to having files reside in filesystems.  Some of that
      frustration probably carries over to ZODB, though it's almost
      certainly not ZODB's problem.

    * It seems to grow without bound, else why do I need to pack my Data.fs
      file every now and then?

It doesn't really matter if the perceptions are accurate or not.  They still
need to be addressed to some extent before people are going to be
comfortable with it.  ZODB is, for better or for worse, tied to Zope the
application.  Accordingly, perceived problems with Zope will rub off on
ZODB.

Also, there is the issue of availability.  While it's just an extra install,
its use requires more than the usual Python install.  Having it in the core
distribution would provide stronger assurances that it runs wherever Python
runs (e.g., does it run on MacOS 8 or 9, both of which I believe Jack still
supports with his Mac installer?).

Skip