I've been told that Entourage's underlying mail/calendar/contacts database
is built on a flat, proprietary format rather than in an open format such as
XML. The same friend says that Entourage's data is not divided into
different databases for those three classes of data.
This person believes that using that format leaves Entourage more vulnerable
to corruption than an XML-based system such as those employed by OS X's
AddressBook.app, iCal, and Mail.app.
Are these assertions accurate? Are there any plans for Microsoft to move in
the direction of XML?
First, a little history...
I used to be a confirmed user of Eudora, and was, for a long time, a highly
outspoken critic of the monolithic database philosophy. I was finally
persuaded to try entourage, and I liked what it had to offer, but took up my
issues concerning the database with the developers.
I was finally convinced of several important points:
1. All databases are liable to corruption. This will happen for a variety of
reasons including bad coding by the database developers, bad converson of
that code to programme instructions by the compiler writers, errors in data
transmission to/from the disk, loss of data on the disk due to random gamma
rays etc..
2. An XML database is no less liable to corruption than any other format
they¹re all just series of 1s & 0s on the Now, disk.
3. what is important is that effective rebuild routines are in place that
can rebuild indexes and recover data.
4. data can be lost from any type of storage format due to disk corruption
or failure. This doesn¹t just apply to databases.
Now, what I can say from my own experience is that both the robustness of
the database itself, and the capability of the rebuild routines have
improved with every release and update to entourage. I have no concern at
keeping my data in the database, which is a complete turn-round from a few
years ago!
Is it true to say that nobody has lost any data in entourage? No, it isn¹t,
but these occurrences are rare and getting rarer. What is important is that
you develop some means of backing up your critical data in the event of disk
loss etc. And that this backup regime is consistent with the value you give
to your data.
