Re: [tpop3d-discuss] MySQL Authentication

[Paul Makepeace]

On Sun, Jun 24, 2001 at 01:11:08AM +0100, Chris Lightfoot wrote:
> Including a perl interpreter (auth_perl) or
> allowing users to call into an external program
> (auth_other) seems to me a better and more general
> strategy. In particular, to allow people to choose a
> database query at runtime is subject to a number of
> subtleties and random design decisions; also, I don't wish
> to implement additional database drivers (auth_pgsql;
> auth_oracle; etc.), and I would be reluctant to include
> numerous such things into the source tree on the basis
> that it would make maintaining the program more difficult.
> The DBD::... drivers in perl are sufficient for this
> purpose, and I can't see any point in trying to replicate
> that work.

One thing worth noting here if only because it's intriguing and
unexpected for most people is that for high performance database work
perl is slow. The rate limiting factor in Oracle access using perl is,
yup, perl. Funneling the data into perl structures and then retrieving
them for use in the program, fast as this is compared to most scripting
languages is still a dominant chunk of the time spent accessing data
from an Oracle database. So if a stated aim of tpop3d is speed, this
might be a consideration for some (that aim was one of my origin reasons
for selecting it).

Oracle is really, really fast.

Some point in the reasonably near future I will do auth_oracle.c (or
whatever) as well as an exim patch. I was hoping to do this 'n' months
ago where 'n' is now 'embarrassing' :-)

Paul