SQL Backend

Discussion of general topics about Mozilla Thunderbird
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MrAndreas
Posts: 5
Joined: July 10th, 2014, 6:09 pm

SQL Backend

Post by MrAndreas »

I want to query my e-mail to generate a list of unique e-mail addresses grouped into ones where I have replied and ones where I haven't replied. Based on this I can then, for example, build a solid correspondence contacts lists and another list that I could half query half manually manually split into SPAM contacts and Notification/Subscription contacts lists; and, using these lists, I can then execute further operations such as moving into specific folders, etc.

I found an extension called EMail Address Crawler that, although doesn't work with the latest versions of Firefox, could have helped in collating the addresses. I could then, possibly, have used it to collate the addresses into separate groups and then populated a database and then queried that for the results I am after. In doing so I looked around to see if, by any chance, Thunderbird maintains a database that I could query, but it seems it is a flat-file system. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.)

I then came across this and, being a geek, this made me drool...

http://www.manitou-mail.org/

The concept is awesome. Having a database at the core allows for a lot of flexibility. One could query and present the data in a lot of different dynamic and flexible ways, and do it fast.

Is there a remote chance that Thunderbird has such an implementation already or that it may be/is considered/planned?


Cheers,
-A
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tanstaafl
Moderator
Posts: 49647
Joined: July 30th, 2003, 5:06 pm

Re: SQL Backend

Post by tanstaafl »

SQLite was considered as a additional mail storage system but was rejected. However, global search/indexing is enabled by default and creates a search index for its own use. That is SQLite based, using global-messages-db.sqlite . The subsystem is called Gloda. See https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/doc ... bird/gloda

The Emailpicky add-on is a replacement for the email crawler add-on. There is also a Incoming Addresses Collector add-on which does something similar. See http://kb.mozillazine.org/Mailing_lists ... dress_book

You might find it easiest to just white list the contacts that the crawler add-on finds and have the junk mail controls use it. I would expect the addresses that spam is supposedly sent from to be pretty volatile. Sometimes they also deliberately spoof the From: address using either your address or the address of people you know to make it more likely that you will open the spam message. Don't over look configuring the junk mail controls to trust the judgement of SpamPal, which uses DNS blacklisting based on lists of domains maintained by Spamhaus etc. SpamPal isn't well known anymore as its boring old technology with a very dated GUI for the configuration program and no company marketing it. However, it keeps working and will let you leverage the work of many people (who are identifying the hosts the spammers are using). You can choose which black list it should use. There are also SpamPal plug-ins such as RegEx Filter that let you filter or whitelist your email based on Perl Regular Expressions.

http://spampal.sourceforge.net/index2.html
http://www.majorgeeks.com/files/details/spampal.html
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Junk_Mail_Controls
https://www.rackaid.com/blog/email-blacklists/

Periodically somebody discovers message filters in Thunderbird and tries to re-invent the wheel by creating hundreds of rules to detect spam by checking for certain keywords. Have fun using Gloda but be careful you don't fall into the same trap.
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