Re: [Evolution] [Bulk] Fast full-text search of e-mails?

[Pete Biggs <pete biggs org uk>]

On Fri, 2014-11-07 at 07:34 +0100, Milan Crha wrote:
> On Thu, 2014-11-06 at 21:41 +0000, Patrick O'Callaghan wrote:
> > On Thu, 2014-11-06 at 06:39 -0500, Adam Tauno Williams wrote:
> > > So either
> > > (a) Evolution did not ask the server to do the search
> > >   - or -
> > > (b) their implementation of IMAP search is lame.
> >
> > Without tracing Evo, I can't say which of these is the answer, 
> > though I suspect it's probably (a). Google obviously does do search 
> > (duh) and there's no reason why it should do it badly just because 
> > it's an IMAP connection, even if their IMAP implementation is not 
> > the best. I don't know how Evo decides whether the server can do 
> > searching.
>
>         Hi,
> I tried to trace it (better know than guess). I invoked a simple "body 
> contains evolution" search on a GMail Inbox folder from evolution and 
> that was done server-side, as can be seen here:
>    H02430 UID SEARCH BODY "evolution"
>    * SEARCH 112 116 376 468 748
>    H02430 OK SEARCH completed (Success)
>
> I think it depends on the search itself, but the IMAPx tries to search 
> as much on the server as it can. Searching in summary headers is left 
> for a local search, of course.

Not Gmail, but an interesting aside - I use Dovecot a lot, it has FTS
indexing implemented as plugins, but since I don't search *that* much
I've never bothered to look at it closely.  But, I just saw this on
their wiki: 

        "By default the FTS indexes are updated only while searching, so
        neither the LDA nor an IMAP APPEND command updates the indexes
        immediately. This means that if user has received a lot of mail
        since the last indexing (== search operation), it may take a
        while to index all the mails before replying to the search
        command."
        
There are options to enable an auto-index, but the implication is that
it is an expensive process and clearly not worth doing for only the odd
occasional search.

My feeling is that Evolution is "doing the right thing" and that other
than local folders, the perceived slowness is down to the remote server,
whether it be IMAP or EWS, and not an Evolution problem.

P.