Subject: external list "type"

From: Kristin Hubner <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 11 Aug 2008 14:16:38 -0700

A comment regarding draft-melnikon-sieve-external-lists-01:

I think it would be useful to have a compromise mode of referencing 
external lists,
where the user provides a list name plus the "type" (e.g., LDAP, 
CardDAV, ACAP) of
storage for the list.

I'm thinking of this in the context for what we're considering 
implementing, and thinking
that I don't want the user to have to provide the entire URL for 
accessing every list,
which seems prone to user error.  On the other hand, in order to 
support accessing different
sorts of storage for different sorts of lists (perhaps addresses 
compared against a list
stored in LDAP, but dates compared against a calendar accessed via 
CardDAV), then knowing
how to construct the right sort of URL given just a list name is not 
quite adequate.  One
could impose additional structure on the list name itself, e.g., 
friends-addressbook,
friends-facebook, holidays-companycalendar, vacations-personalcalendar, 
but then one has
to parse critical source/access information out of the list name.

That is, in addition to allowing the :list <test-name> <list-name> form 
or
:list <test-name> :<opaque-full-url> forms, I'd like to be able to do 
something
perhaps more like:

:list <test-name> <list-name> ":ldap"
:list <test-name> <list-name> ":http"

With the construction of the full URL of the specified type, using the 
<list-name>, then
being done by the Sieve implementation.  That is, for our 
implementation, algorithmic
construct of the full URLs for external lists, possibly accessed 
diffferently for different
lists, gets more feasible if in addition to Sieve owner and a 
user-friendly list-name, we
also get an indication of what sort of URL to construct.

Regards,

Kristin Hubner
[email-masked]