27 Aug
2007
27 Aug
'07
11:40 a.m.
Hi BJ,
On Aug 3, 2007, at 11:57 PM, bjquinn wrote:
Hi, we're looking into using Xwiki to replace part of a large
Microsoft
Exchange setup. The users email large (sometimes 50MB) attachments
back and
forth to each other and in and out of the company, ballooning the
size of
the Exchange database, making it too large, corruption-prone,
unwieldy, and
nearly impossible to back up and/or restore. The fundamental
problem with
using Exchange for this (beyond the fact that it doesn't provide
all the
other inherent benefits of a wiki) is that it stores EVERYTHING --
email,
attachments, etc., all in one file. We're looking into doing an
Xwiki setup
to prevent sending these attachments back and forth so much, but my
limited
ability to audit Xwiki has resulted in me thinking that Xwiki does
the same
(stores everything in one file/database). Is there any way to
store pages
in individual files, more like Xwiki's progenitor, Twiki? Or at
least for
attachments?
Right now the only storage available is through a relational
database. We're working at implementing a JCR storage which will
allow you to use whatever supported physical storage you want (files,
RDBMS, OODB, etc). Artem had a first implementation done a while ago
but I don't think it was ever finished.
Artem, would you mind giving us a status on the JCR work and the plan
ahead?
BTW there's a good reason XWiki uses a DB instead of the file system.
File system doesn't allow the type of advanced queries that are
required for XWiki. FS are good for storing large number of documents
but they're bad for doing queries on them. For attachments, I agree
we could use an FS storage. Actually XWiki's architecture already
separates the storage for documents from the storage for attachments.
It just happens that currently attachments are also stored in the DB.
All that said, DB should get you a long way but you'll need to set up
indexes in the your DB. For example: http://www.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/
view/AdminGuide/Database+Administration
Thanks
-Vincent