[Mailman3-dev] Problem with the schema

[J C Lawrence]

On Thu, 31 Mar 2005 12:21:53 +0100 
Ian Eiloart <iane at sussex.ac.uk> wrote:
> --On March 31, 2005 02:05:36 -0800 J C Lawrence <claw at kanga.nu> wrote:
>> On Thu, 31 Mar 2005 10:40:46 +0100 Ian Eiloart <iane at sussex.ac.uk>
>> wrote:
 
>>> Alternatively, viewed from the perspective of a subscriber, rosters
>>> are internal nodes and lists are leaf nodes. This isn't really a
>>> tree - it's a net.

>> It becomes more complex when/if you want to support the concept of a
>> user having an account with the system,

> Yes, I do want to do that. In fact I want two types of account: local
> and non-local. A local account is one that is already defined on my
> LDAP (or whatever) servers - they're students and staff on my
> campus. A non-local account type would be closer to what Mailman has
> right now - it could use any non-local mail addresses.

If we step away from the abstraction a little bit, especially once we've
assumed that rosters are first class objects, the situation becomes
quite complex:

  A roster can be populated externally to any list.

  A list may reference multiple rosters in such a fashion that
  subscriptions variously accrue to different rosters based on pilicy
  (eg internal, external).

  Rosters can be used as the definition of the moderator and owner sets
  for a list or lists.

  Lists themselves can be roster members.

  Rosters can have complex contextual read/write policies.  For exmaple:

    Roster QRS:

      Can (not) be read by any identity (not) in one of the following
      rosters...

      Can only be written to by members of the following rosters...

  etc etc etc.

There's a non-trivial design piece there.    

> -- Ian Eiloart Servers Team Sussex University ITS

Hehn.  I used to live not too far down the road from you guys (I was in
East Grinstead).

-- 
J C Lawrence
---------(*)                Satan, oscillate my metallic sonatas.
claw at kanga.nu               He lived as a devil, eh?
http://www.kanga.nu/~claw/  Evil is a name of a foeman, as I live.