Lemonade E. Burger, Ed. Internet-Draft BEA Systems, Inc. Intended status: Standards Track R. Cromwell Expires: August 27, 2007 S. Maes Oracle Corporation February 23, 2007 WITHIN Search extension to the IMAP Protocol draft-ietf-lemonade-search-within-04 Status of this Memo By submitting this Internet-Draft, each author represents that any applicable patent or other IPR claims of which he or she is aware have been or will be disclosed, and any of which he or she becomes aware will be disclosed, in accordance with Section 6 of BCP 79. Internet-Drafts are working documents of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), its areas, and its working groups. Note that other groups may also distribute working documents as Internet- Drafts. Internet-Drafts are draft documents valid for a maximum of six months and may be updated, replaced, or obsoleted by other documents at any time. It is inappropriate to use Internet-Drafts as reference material or to cite them other than as "work in progress." The list of current Internet-Drafts can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/ietf/1id-abstracts.txt. The list of Internet-Draft Shadow Directories can be accessed at http://www.ietf.org/shadow.html. This Internet-Draft will expire on August 27, 2007. Copyright Notice Copyright (C) The IETF Trust (2007). Burger, et al. Expires August 27, 2007 [Page 1] Internet-Draft Search Within February 2007 Abstract This document describes the WITHIN extension to IMAP SEARCH. IMAP SEARCH returns messages whose internal date is within or outside a specified interval. The mechanism described here, OLDER and YOUNGER, differs from BEFORE and SINCE in that the client specifies an interval, rather than a date. We expect WITHIN to be most useful for persistent searches from mobile devices. Burger, et al. Expires August 27, 2007 [Page 2] Internet-Draft Search Within February 2007 Conventions Used in this Document In examples, "C:" and "S:" indicate lines sent by the client and server respectively. The key words "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 [1]. When describing the general syntax, we omit some definitions as RFC 3501 [2] defines them. Burger, et al. Expires August 27, 2007 [Page 3] Internet-Draft Search Within February 2007 1. Introduction This extension exposes two new search keys, OLDER and YOUNGER, each of which takes a non-zero integer argument corresponding to a time interval. The server calculates the time of interest by subtracting the time interval presented by the client, and either returning messages older or younger than the resultant time and date. Burger, et al. Expires August 27, 2007 [Page 4] Internet-Draft Search Within February 2007 2. Protocol Operation An IMAP4 server that supports the capability described here MUST return "WITHIN" as one of the server supported capabilities in the CAPABILITY command. For both the OLDER and YOUNGER search keys, the server calculates a target date and time by subtracting the interval from the current date and time of the server. The server then compares the target time with the INTERNALDATE of the message, as specified in IMAP [2]. For OLDER, messages match if the INTERNALDATE is less recent than, or equal to, the target time. For YOUNGER, messages match if the INTERNALDATE is more recent than, or equal to, the target time. In some cases, the server may be unable, or unwilling, to use a precision of a single second. This is expected to be the case particularly for dynamically updated searches. In these cases, servers are permitted to reduce the precision used for date calulcations and comparisons, but SHOULD ensure that a precision of no less than an hour (3600 seconds) is used. This might mean re- running the search criteria only every hour for a dynamic search, for example. Clients MUST be aware that search results, whether viewed directly or through some other mechanism, MAY not be accurate as a result. For example, if the client requests messages that are younger than 4020 (67 minutes), but the server only performs searches with hourly accuracy (as mandated above), the server performs the search as if the client requested a 60-minute interval. Note the choice of rounding up or down is at the discretion of the server. However, rounding down to zero is NOT RECOMMENDED, as this may result in searches for messages YOUNGER than a value being rounded to YOUNGER 0, which will always fail. Burger, et al. Expires August 27, 2007 [Page 5] Internet-Draft Search Within February 2007 3. Formal Syntax The following syntax specification uses the Augmented Backus-Naur Form (ABNF) notation. Elements not defined here can be found in the formal syntax of ABNF [1], IMAP [2], and IMAP Extended ABNF [3] This document extends RFC 3501 [2] with two new search keys: OLDER and YOUNGER . search-key /= ( "OLDER" | "YOUNGER" ) SP nz-number ; search-key defined in RFC 3501 Burger, et al. Expires August 27, 2007 [Page 6] Internet-Draft Search Within February 2007 4. Example C: a1 SEARCH UNSEEN YOUNGER 259200 S: a1 * SEARCH 4 8 15 16 23 42 Search for all unseen messages within the past 3 days (72 hours) according to the server's current time. Burger, et al. Expires August 27, 2007 [Page 7] Internet-Draft Search Within February 2007 5. Security Considerations The WITHIN extension does not raise any security considerations which are not present in the base protocol. Considerations are the same as for IMAP [2]. Burger, et al. Expires August 27, 2007 [Page 8] Internet-Draft Search Within February 2007 6. IANA Considerations None. Burger, et al. Expires August 27, 2007 [Page 9] Internet-Draft Search Within February 2007 7. Normative References [1] Bradner, S., "Key words for use in RFCs to Indicate Requirement Levels", RFC 2119, BCP 14, March 1997. [2] Crispin, M., "Internet Message Access Protocol - Version 4rev1", RFC 3501, March 2003. [3] Melnikov, A. and C. Daboo, "Collected Extensions to IMAP4 ABNF", RFC 4466, April 2006. Burger, et al. Expires August 27, 2007 [Page 10] Internet-Draft Search Within February 2007 Appendix A. Acknowledgements The authors want to thank all who have contributed key insight and extensively reviewed and discussed the concepts of LPSEARCH and the authors of its early introduction in P-IMAP. We also want to give a special thanks to Arnt Gilbrandsen, Alexey Melnikov, Ken Murchison, Zoltan Ordogh, and most especially Dave Cridland for their review and suggestions. Burger, et al. Expires August 27, 2007 [Page 11] Internet-Draft Search Within February 2007 Authors' Addresses Eric W. Burger (editor) BEA Systems, Inc. USA Phone: Fax: Email: eric.burger@bea.com URI: Ray Cromwell Oracle Corporation 500 Oracle Parkway Redwood Shores, CA 94065 USA Email: ray.cromwell@oracle.com Stephane H. Maes Oracle Corporation 500 Oracle Parkway, M/S 4op634 Redwood Shores, CA 94065 USA Email: stephane.maes@oracle.com Burger, et al. Expires August 27, 2007 [Page 12] Internet-Draft Search Within February 2007 Full Copyright Statement Copyright (C) The IETF Trust (2007). This document is subject to the rights, licenses and restrictions contained in BCP 78, and except as set forth therein, the authors retain all their rights. 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Information on the procedures with respect to rights in RFC documents can be found in BCP 78 and BCP 79. Copies of IPR disclosures made to the IETF Secretariat and any assurances of licenses to be made available, or the result of an attempt made to obtain a general license or permission for the use of such proprietary rights by implementers or users of this specification can be obtained from the IETF on-line IPR repository at http://www.ietf.org/ipr. The IETF invites any interested party to bring to its attention any copyrights, patents or patent applications, or other proprietary rights that may cover technology that may be required to implement this standard. Please address the information to the IETF at ietf-ipr@ietf.org. Acknowledgment Funding for the RFC Editor function is provided by the IETF Administrative Support Activity (IASA). Burger, et al. Expires August 27, 2007 [Page 13]