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nning committed Jul 30, 2014
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3 changes: 2 additions & 1 deletion doc/study/commands.tex
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\newcommand{\y}{\checkmark}
\newcommand{\n}{$\times$}

\newcommand{\textref}[1]{\emph{\nameref{#1}} on page \pageref{#1}}
% Easy reference to section name and page.
\newcommand{\textref}[1]{"\nameref{#1}" on page \pageref{#1}}
154 changes: 72 additions & 82 deletions doc/study/study.tex
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loads: Several servers handling incoming mail or users reading their
mail act as readers on one or more database servers. The performance of
the frequent look-up of domains, mailboxes and aliases (forwardings)
for receiving mail or user logins can be increased. (The actual
for receiving mail or user logins can be increased. The actual
accommodation of E-Mails -- another big problem with horizontal scaling
-- can not be considered here.)
-- can not be considered here.

% API (e.g. for accounting)

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Not only for the development of \emph{Møil}, some of the criteria
arose from shortcomings of \emph{postfix.admin} (see page
\pageref{sec:contestants:postfix.admin}), which is a quite widely
deployed solution. The criteria will be classified into five
categories (Data model, features, security \& robustness, user
interface and miscellaneous) and numbered for easier reference.

There is some meta-data like website, programming language, last
update in VCS and number of commits, which is not numbered and
compared. The used programming language would be a neutral
attribute but gets a criterion, because before the development of
\emph{Møil}, a decision was made against deploying further PHP
applications to accomplish a more maintainable and secure web
hosting environment\footnote{\urlPHPBashing}.
deployed solution. The criteria will be classified into four
categories (Data model, features, security \& robustness and user
interface) and numbered for easier reference. An example for the
textual distinguation is the criterion \crit{normalized database
schema}{1.1} as it is written here. There is some meta-data like
website, programming language, last update in VCS and number of
commits, which is not numbered and compared. The used programming
language would be a neutral attribute but gets a criterion, because
before the development of \emph{Møil}, a decision was made against
deploying further PHP applications to accomplish a more
maintainable and secure web hosting
environment\footnote{\urlPHPBashing}.

\subsubsection{Data model (1)}
From a database engineering perspective, it is in general
favourable to design a database with a \crit{normalized
favourable to design a data\-base with a \crit{normalized
relational database schema}{1.1} \cite{dbnorm}. For a query to
check the existence of a mailbox for example, a JOIN or nested
query would be necessary, which has a very small performance
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other software.

\subsubsection{Features (2)}
There are features, without which a mail server administration
user interface would not work at all and yet I list them,
because it is more about analyzing, how these are implemented.
The \crit{basic domain, mailbox and alias management}{2.1} is
one of them. The \crit{password changing ability for
users}{2.2} is a feature, which is also quite basic and the
first one legitimating letting users access the administration
front-end. Some solutions also integrate into popular
self-hosted web mailer software for password changing. When
users are allowed to access the administration front-end,
\crit{access control}{2.3} or authorization is needed to
selectively restrict the access to resources. It could also be
possible to delegate administrative access on domains or
resources in general to certain users.
\s
There are features, which no mail server administration user
interface could spare and yet they will be listed here, because
it is important to analyze, how these are implemented and how
the implementations differ by solution. The \crit{basic
domain, mailbox and alias management}{2.1} is one of them. The
\crit{password changing ability for users}{2.2} is a feature,
which is also quite basic and the first one legitimating
letting users access the administration front-end. Some
solutions also integrate into popular self-hosted web mailer
software for password changing. When users are allowed to
access the administration front-end, \crit{access control}{2.3}
or authorization is needed to selectively restrict the access
to resources. It could also be possible to delegate
administrative access on domains or resources in general to
certain users.

More mature utilities also bring useful non-basic features as
an \crit{audit trail}{2.4.1} for example, which can be used to
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therefore includes facilities like schema migrations and an
\ac{ORM}. It passes almost every criterion; just when it comes
to the \crit{audit trail}{2.4.1}, there is no undo support.
Also the user interface on a mobile phone, was a little sloppy.
Also the user interface on a mobile phone is not fully
elaborated and has some minor flaws.

\subsubsection{Møil}
\infotable{https://github.com/nning/moeil}{Ruby}{2014-07-26}{353}

Further information on \emph{Møil} is to be found under
\textref{sec:moeil}.
Further information on \emph{Møil} is to be found in the
section \textref{sec:moeil}.

\subsubsection{postfix.admin}
\label{sec:contestants:postfix.admin}
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\subsubsection{PostVis Admin}
\infotable{http://postvisadmin.sourceforge.net}{PHP}{2010-06-24}{183}

PostVis Admin is the best acknowledgement for the non-PHP
policy it was decided on when searching for a
\emph{PostVis Admin} is the best acknowledgement for the
non-PHP policy it was decided on when searching for a
\emph{postfix.admin} replacement. The code is very bad
structured and full of redundancies. There is no \crit{schema
normalization}{1.1} and the schema seems \crit{compatible to
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\label{sec:moeil}
The development of \emph{Møil} has been begun in May, 2013 as an Open
Source project licensed under the terms of the AGPL, Version 3
\cite{agpl}.

% Rails

It is written in Ruby\footnote{\url{https://www.ruby-lang.org}}
utilizing the popular \ac{Rails} web framework, which has some features
that emphasize it against other frameworks or web development
approaches. It promotes the development by \acs{REST} \cite{rest}
criteria, supports test driven development and implements many
well-known software engineering design patterns and methods of agile
software development as Active Record, \ac{CoC}, \ac{DRY} and \ac{MVC}.
Additionally, the \ac{Rails} community is quite vivid and there is an
huge ecosystem of extensions for many recurrent problems.
\s
\cite{agpl}. It is written in
Ruby\footnote{\url{https://www.ruby-lang.org}} utilizing the popular
\ac{Rails} web framework, which has some features that emphasize it
against other frameworks or web development approaches. It promotes the
development by \acs{REST} \cite{rest} criteria, supports test driven
development and implements many well-known software engineering design
patterns and methods of agile software development as Active Record,
\ac{CoC}, \ac{DRY} and \ac{MVC}. Additionally, the \ac{Rails}
community is quite vivid and there is an huge ecosystem of extensions
for many recurrent problems.

% Causes for a new solution
% Data model, migrations
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\subsection{Features}
\label{sec:moeil:features}
At the time of writing of this document, \emph{Møil} comes with the
below-mentioned features.
below-mentioned features:

\begin{description}
\item[\rm Managing domains, mailbox and aliases]\ \\
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% Modules

The code is strictly modularized according to the \ac{MVC} pattern,
like it is encouraged by \ac{Rails}.

The model connects to the \ac{DBMS} via TCP/IP or Unix Sockets. The
abstractly noted queries are translated to the respective \ac{SQL}
(or NoSQL) dialect. All communication with external services like
\emph{postfix}, \emph{dovecot} or the relocation daemon (see
like it is encouraged by \ac{Rails}. The model connects to the
\ac{DBMS} via TCP/IP or Unix Sockets. The abstractly noted queries
are translated to the respective \ac{SQL} (or NoSQL) dialect. All
communication with external services like \emph{postfix},
\emph{dovecot} or the relocation daemon (see
\textref{sec:moeil:model:relocation}) happen solely with the
\ac{DBMS} as an intermediary.

The view templates are written in
\ac{DBMS} as an intermediary. The view templates are written in
Haml\footnote{\url{http://haml.info}}, styling is done in SASS and
CoffeeScript is used for client-side dynamic functionality. Markup,
styling and scripts are delivered to the client after being
processed by the \ac{Rails} asset pipeline, which converts HAML to
HTML, SASS to CSS and CoffeeScript to JavaScript. It also
compresses the output and packs it in as few as possible files to
keep the requests to the server low.

Controllers and their actions are routed to by URL path patterns
and are responsible for updating the models' state and providing
the according data for the views.

keep the requests to the server low. Controllers and their actions
are routed to by URL path patterns and are responsible for updating
the models' state and providing the according data for the views.
The search is either solved through using the \ac{DBMS} via
\ac{SQL} or by using \emph{Elasticsearch}, which is an indexed
search server based on \emph{Apache Lucene}.

\subsection{Data model}
% Data model
% Structure / ERD
% Migrations
% sha512-crypt

The application model is put into graphs in the following image. It
shows the model classes and their relations among each other. (The
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\includegraphics[width=\textwidth]{images/erd.pdf}

\noindent
The model classes will be examined individually in the following
subsections.
\s

In this chapter, whenever a resource type is mentioned, which
corresponds to an actual \ac{Rails} model class, it is written in a
monospace font and -- as the class name -- capitalized, like
\texttt{Mailbox}. Attributes of models are also in monospace font,
but lowercase, as the \texttt{username} attribute of a
\texttt{Mailbox} for example.
subsections. In this chapter, whenever a resource type is
mentioned, which corresponds to an actual \ac{Rails} model class,
it is written in a monospace font and -- as the class name --
capitalized, like \texttt{Mailbox}. Attributes of models are also
in monospace font, but lowercase, as the \texttt{username}
attribute of a \texttt{Mailbox} for example.

\subsubsection{Domains}
For \texttt{Domains} the following attributes are saved per
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default but can be used to move the users mail data location),
\texttt{quota}, \texttt{active}, \texttt{admin} and timestamp
attributes for saving the date of creation or the last update.
As a password hashing algorithm, currently only
\texttt{sha512-crypt} is supported.

\subsubsection{Aliases}
\texttt{Aliases} represent mail forwardings and are also
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(\texttt{item\_id} and \texttt{item\_type}), the type of change
(\texttt{event}), the transacting individual
(\texttt{whodunnit}), the serialized \texttt{object} (only on
deletions), the \texttt{object\_changes} (only on updates) and
the point in time (\texttt{created\_at}) are saved.
deletions, can be used for undo), the \texttt{object\_changes}
(only on updates) and the point in time (\texttt{created\_at})
are saved.

\subsubsection{Relocations}
\label{sec:moeil:model:relocation}
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which can be read by a daemon (yet to be implemented) running
on the actual Mail Store.

% Migrations
% sha512-crypt

\subsection{Perspective}
Not least through the evaluation of the different solutions for
Open Source mail system administration user interfaces, some
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The relevant configuration files for \emph{postfix} and
\emph{dovecot} (especially regarding to the \ac{SQL} statements
compatible to \emph{Møil}) can be found in the source code
repository on GitHub in the folders
\texttt{doc/postfix}\footnote{\url{https://github.com/nning/moeil/tree/master/doc/postfix}}
and
\texttt{doc/dovecot}\footnote{\url{https://github.com/nning/moeil/tree/master/doc/dovecot}}.
repository on GitHub in the folders \texttt{doc/postfix} and
\texttt{doc/dovecot}\footnote{\url{https://github.com/nning/moeil/tree/master/doc}}.

\subsubsection{Setup of the rails application}
The setup of the rails app for testing or deployment on
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