SOCKETMAP performace (was Re: [Mimedefang] sendmail 8.13.0)

[David F. Skoll]

On Mon, 21 Jun 2004, Matthew Schumacher wrote:

> I already have sendmail rules to check valid email addresses against a
> supported map backend (LDAP) so this basically a different way to do the
> same thing but would be a bit more flexible.  I wonder if their are any
> performance differences between having mimedefang doing the ldap lookup
> instead of sendmail.  Have you noticed any performance differences in
> your initial testing?

I haven't done any performance testing.  I expect that a native Sendmail
map lookup will be faster if the map setup is quick.  For example,
Sendmail's native Berkeley DB support will probably always be faster than
a SOCKETMAP equivalent.

However, for LDAP, if establishing an LDAP connection is expensive, then
using a persistent connection within MIMEDefang, plus SOCKETMAP for
communication with Sendmail, might actually be faster than a native
Sendmail LDAP map.

I expect that if you use a SQL backend, then keeping a persistent
connection inside MIMEDefang would be a big win compared to opening
a SQL database connection each time sendmail forks.

I'd be interested in seeing some actual measurements.

Regards,

David.