Courier's database -- An under-appreciated format!

godzillex · 12th April 2007

One of the main reasons for my choosing Courier was its unique, all-in-one database. What a blessing it is to have all my communication parameters, address book, emails, and attachments stored in one file

I'd be very interested in finding out if there are other email clients with this feature.

Thanks.

Szwagier · 12th April 2007

Of course, the other way of looking at a "unique, all-in-one solution" is that you're putting all your eggs in one basket. Fine until you drop the basket.

I'm afraid I don't know if there are clients that do the same.

I decided to play safe and go for one that didn't.

godzillex · 12th April 2007

Of course, you have a point. Though, I must admit that Courier's database repair utility has been quite good for me when I needed it.

I think an email database, much like a ZIP or a RAR archive, can be designed with redundancy so that it is resilient to data corruption. This way, should there be any problems with the database, the program could find enough intelligence within the database to "heal" it.

Prior to Courier, I was using TheBat! email client. I lost so many emails with that program that I finally decided to wipe it off my drive for good. That program also made many, many separate configuration files on my system.

Some may think of me as "old-school", but it bugs me to not know how my data is stored. And more importantly, whether the integrity of my database depends on other configuration files which might be distributed throughout the entire system. I won't even go into the various INI, and registry values that most programs use nowadays to hide, and spread out their information in the Windows environment.

Cheers.

Szwagier · 12th April 2007

I, too, tried The Bat! for one evening. It drove me crazy. Nothing was obvious, nothing was easy, and it

kept bloody talking to me

No matter how lonely and desperate I might get, lectures from an email client are contraindicated